A beautiful blur

Sometimes life goes by deliciously fast

Life went by rather quickly in 2014. I haven't had time to sit down and take stock of every thing that's taken place. Life swept me off my feet so grandly, and if I am never swept away by any kind of love affair in my lifetime, I will look upon 2014 and still feel that life has given me enough.

new things

Image from seanwes.com

It's 6:27 AM by my watch right now, but I have been up since 5:30 in the morning. I was feeling really sick last night, so I found myself asleep in bed by 7. I actually woke up at around 2AM (about an hour before I find myself going to sleep most days), but I forced myself to go back to sleep -- partly because I was sick, partly because it was so dark out. Anyway, I'm so happy that I did.

I've been wanting to wake up early like this for months -- years, maybe. I can't count the millions of times that I've told myself I was going to wake up early, only to wake up some time past 10 (barely 11), frantic and needing to forego breakfast just so I can catch up on my day. I've forgotten what it feels like to not feel tired when I wake up in the morning. I kind of like it, this quietness, this absence of rush that is so pervasive when I find myself waking up at 8 or 9, after having worked till 2 or 3 in the morning. Maybe, after all those years of being a night owl, I am becoming a morning person.

I am trying to think of all those times in my life when early mornings were part of who I was. There was the month I spent living in a hotel for the Presidential Youth Fellowship, waking up at 5 AM so that I could get first crack at the bathroom (was kind of the mother hen who made sure everybody got up on schedule, and was dressed and down for breakfast in time). Then, there were those 3 weeks in Dumaguete, spent being the first person in our cottage to wake up, so that I could have quiet time to write in my journal. I've always wondered why it is that I find it so easy to get better starts to my day when I am away from my own home. I suppose, I always chalked it up to my desire to escape to somewhere else -- that when I am far away from where I am, far from the pressure and the drama, the burden of comparison, that I can truly be myself.

Yet, here I am, in my old room, same old me, up at 5:30, writing this blog post by 6:30. I am kind of grateful for the fever which forced me into bed early, actually.

It seems like such a small achievement, waking up before someone wakes me, but I feel like this is a good omen. For months now, I have been really unhappy with my circumstances, and am contemplating a change. It sounds silly, but there's a part of me that feels like if I can just make myself wake up early in the morning, I can do anything -- letting go of the safety job, applying for the  MA I really want, going after a teaching position, surviving the move abroad.

slivers

only when things are exactly right, i suppose. image from here.

You have come and gone into my mind far too many times now to ignore, I suppose. I don't know what to tell you, actually. I have no words for what I feel, or what I think I feel, or what I think I should be feeling for you. Not that you are asking.

But if you were, I would tell you that I find myself remembering moments -- your hands on my shoulders for that one song, you repeating to me words we both loved, the quiet smiles we exchanged but never talked about -- and wondering if there is any space or time where I wouldn't find you and me together strange.

Maybe there are only those shards of time, those split-second, blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments where I feel myself falling for you, when I allow myself the luxury of what if and if only, right before I catch myself and remind myself that being an "us" is far too bizarre to make sense. Maybe, those ought to be enough for the both of us.

And yet, my mind keeps going back to you. Why?

all good things

there's always some good in every day. Image from here.

The busyness of March left me without time to write a birthday post, yet I couldn't help thinking of how wonderfully this year is turning out.

2013 has been filled with so many good things that there are few things I could ask for.

Courage, I suppose -- to leave what I am comfortable with so I can live my dream.
Diligence, to push myself to work as hard and as well as I know I can.
Persistence, to commit myself to a path towards healthiness.
Wonder, to observe and witness the great things happening everyday.
Abandon, to throw out my armor and break down my walls and finally let life happen.

the universe is listening

Image from here.

I think when it's your heart that's speaking, the universe listens. Harder. Today, the universe listened. It set me on a path that I wasn't sure I was meant to take. I wasn't sure I could give myself permission to tread it. 

Maybe this is the universe's way of saying -- HERE IS YOUR PERMISSION. Here is the validation you need to take a bolder step, maybe even a leap. Here is the thing you need to believe that when you jump off that cliff, you will fly. 

March 5, 2013. I am one step closer to becoming a writer today :)

things falling apart

Image from here.

Things are falling apart in our house.
There is the light in the living room with the faulty starter,
the light in my bedroom which pretends to be working until I replace the glass lid and then it doesn't,
the fake old wood varnish that is chipping away from my cabinets,
the creaky front door that sags and scratches the floor when you close it,
the invisible leak that jacks up our water bill,
the ratty couches with their springs exposed,
the wooden floorboards that have become uneven over time.
This is not really my house, I just live here.
But there is the feeling that I am supposed to be doing something more than taking note
of all the things that are getting run down
because these things are happening on my watch, and my parents
are now just watching me
grow into the supposed adult shell that I have developed.
But I haven't.

1:33 AM March 5 2013

time slips away

Image from here.

My father turned 60 today. Yesterday, we had a nice day, celebrating the milestone year. I took them to see a play and to dinner and we were all rather pleasant because of the experience. I was distracted by the idea of what having a 60-year old for a parent meant. And then as we were pulling out of the mall parking lot after the play, I realized that there might not be a lot of years left when I could rely on my dad to drive us to places -- the thought terrified me. Not even of him dying, though everyone dies -- just the idea that he would be there but unable to fulfill the functions I had grown up being used to: driving, getting cars fixed, having all the answers, things like that. It made me feel so inadequate and unprepared for anything.

Today, during his all-day birthday party, I had a similar thought again. My grandmother was here for the celebrations, and while I was trying to coax a birthday greeting out of her, I realized that she was no longer as lucid as I thought she was. I realized that she could barely open her eyes because she no longer saw very well. I want to say that this is what a big big family does (you could go on living not thinking about your grandmother because there are too many of you to think about) but I really don't want to use that excuse. I can't believe that so much time has passed and despite my grandmother living a few minutes away, I have not taken the time to know her beyond the cursory "hello" and "how are you" when I come and go. She was lying on the couch (she has been immobile since she broke her hip a couple of years ago) and as I was trying to get her to recognize my voice, I rubbed my hands on her legs and she smiled. It was a little girl smile, a smile I didn't see on her face when my grandfather was alive, or when she was lucid for that matter. It made me realize that it must have been so long since someone rubbed her legs like that -- since she felt anything about her legs like that, and it made me smile that even when she could no longer recognize me, I could comfort her by simply rubbing her legs. I wish that I had given her more, that I had more to give back when she still knew the difference.

The idea of time passing makes me nervous. What have I done with the time that's gone by?