Same Love

In our last class on Monday, my policy and systems professor, who is absolutely amazing (and one of the most academically recognized and respected people I know) spoke to the class about the importance of the food systems analysis we'd been trying to understand all semester.

She spoke about human rights and human right to food and water.  She's been working on high profile cases for years, and is well known in human rights advocate circles.

And then she spoke passionately about the civil rights movement, and how she had watched it, from the beginning, and seen it transform the world.

And all I could think of was this:

I hope that some day, and some day soon, the pockets of people that believe that others cannot love whoever they want will not exist.  Until that happens, I will fight for love - anyone and everyone's love.

Love, Bethy

PROcrastinator!

Anyone who knows me will not be surprised by this, but for all of the rest of you, let it be known that I fully admit that I have the potential to procrastinate for an EXCRUCIATINGLY long time.

...and now that I've cleared my inbox, send emails and/or facebook messages to pretty much everyone I know, scoped out some of my college acquaintances' wedding photos, drank my entire cup of coffee, and gone to the bathroom, I am ready to start finishing my paper that was due an embarrassing number of days ago.

FML.

different time, same place

No one talks about
the chances you didn't take
the things you didn't say
the "wait..." that never came

No one seems to realize
the hesitation is sometimes
the most important part
of it all

That it's hard to say
Words that stick in your throat
don't ever come out as easily
as you want them too

trying to use "I need"s and "I feel"s
in order not to offend
when all you really want to do is scream
and shake
and sob
and know why

Being here before doesn't make it easier
if anything, it's harder to look around and realize
you're back
and the landscape hasn't changed

Still stuck
still ending up in this place
even though circumstances couldn't be more different
the question asks itself:

Is it me?

one of THOSE posts...

you know, those really annoying ones where the person is all "I'm mad at this person for something", and then you're all "oooohh, what happened??" and then they're all "I don't want to talk about it", or even better "omg.  so crazy.  I'll message you..."

Um HELLO?!?!?!  You're posting all that shit all over the internets and NOW you're trying to be bashful about what the FUCK you're talking about??

Well, ok, this post won't be that bad... (I hope...)

BUT I do have some questions about how people my age (roughly 25...ish...ok, let's say people in their mid 20s to mid 30s) communicate intensions in this day and age.  I don't know exactly when, in the last few years I have noticed that I've become both more aware of my strong personal feelings about people and circumstances, and that I've become less nervous/uneasy about sharing those feelings with others (especially when it involves them).  I've been told that that's just "growing up", and that everyone goes through that.

As a 25 year old single, straight woman, I have found that there are MANY young men my age who do NOT subscribe to knowing how they feel and sharing that openly.  It's frustrating.  I'm ready to live my life openly in that way - when I know something, and I feel something for real, I'm gonna fucking say it.  And I'm gonna fucking mean it.  Don't waste my time with bullshit, and, more than that, if you don't have something real to say, please, please PLEASE for the love of God, don't say anything at all.

I know that the stereotype of women is that we read things into everything.  Yes.  We do.  Get fucking used to it.  If you say certain things, I will think that you mean something to that end.  And come ON!  This is not just me, this is a lot of people...

I guess just all I wanna say is "what the fuck?"

And also, that I'm sorry for this turning out to be one of those posts...it was.  I admit it.  And now I'm done.  (And I promise I'll never do it again, I swear - haha)

Love, Bethy

Musical Punctuation

     Yesterday, I had a long day.  A very long day.

     And, to be honest, I didn't start it the most well-rested...Monday night, I slept in four to five 20-30 minute increments trying to finish papers for school, so by Tuesday morning, I was getting pretty loopy already.

     I got to work a few minutes early and sucked down some coffee before getting on the truck.  Normally, I work from 8 to 4, but I had a dentist appointment at 4:15 all the way across town, so I left the truck at 3:00.

     Now generally, after I leave work, I am so exhausted I can hardly stand, much less focus on anything, and this time, though I left early, I was just trying to get to the dentist on time.  I got on the red line from work, transferred at Park St, and instead of getting on the green line home, I walked to Downtown Crossing, relishing the warm air in the underground tunnel that normally is stifling and too hot, as it seeped into my bones.  (One thing that I didn't think about when I got the job on the food truck was, um, winter.  It's freaking cold on that truck.)

     So I'm standing on the Platform for the orange line towards Forest Hills.  This particular train/station is pretty well known for having at least one homeless man with a guitar wailing a Jesus-themed song (usually quite badly) at the top of his lungs.  And as I looked around with my glassy eyes, I saw a man...with a guitar...sitting and preparing to sing.  I anticipated the worst.

     ...and I received a gift.

     This man started playing the guitar, and some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard poured out of it.  His playing was technically good, but more than that, there was such emotion and soul coming out of his instrument.

     And all I could do was stand and watch him, and wait for my train.  And I'm sure that if I didn't have to get to the dentist, I would have missed the next one that came, on purpose just to listen to this man for longer.  The tension started pouring out of me, and I just stood.

     The rest of the day was not quite as stress-free as I would have liked it to be...but at the end of the day, that music, just for the few minutes that it was in my life, took a day that could have been all stress, and punctuated it with music.  It was beautiful, it was life-giving, and it was a perhaps not-so-subtle reminder that maybe I should ride the orange line more often...

Love, Bethy

Dry Fall

It was a dry fall

Hardly enough rain to satisfy her Northwest roots

The leaves crunched under her feet as they pounded down the pavement

She watched him leave

Bag slung over his shoulder like a jaunty cowboy

It was a sight she was familiar with

She’d seen it before.

Too many times before.

It must have been love

Or something just like it

Because she’d never wanted something so badly

And been willing to work as hard as she possibly could for it.

The fear that it still wouldn’t be enough was paralyzing

And she couldn’t breathe for fear of upsetting a delicate balance

 - one that in reality, hadn’t existed for a while…

At the end, it turned out to be a waiting game

Continuing to go on, waiting to see when their paths would cross again

Always waiting waiting waiting for something that would just happen

Spontaneously, as if neither of them had any control

It was a dry fall

And she turned away from him walking away from her.

She couldn’t watch it again

For fear that her tears would trigger the rain.

imaginary futures

It is strange to meet someone, to know someone that you can see your life with.  Your entire life.  Marriage and babies and old age - forever and ever amen.  It happens with more frequency than we realize, and for every time two people meet and develop expectations for each other, there have to be many many more who end up parting ways than those who stay together.

And it's a strange feeling - to feel the connection so intensely with someone that you not only can see the next hour, the next day, the next year with them, but the next decade and beyond...  To see a lifetime, perhaps not the where or what, but the with whom.  It is exciting - and terrifying.  It takes us out of our selfish selves, wanting to give for someone else - to meld lives, even at the risk of sacrificing for yourself.  To meet someone who complements your personality in those intricate and special ways...it can feel like a fairy tale.

Yet, it's not always that happy ending.  For whatever reason, it doesn't always work, and sometimes that is for the better, sometimes not.  But it doesn't stop that feeling of the future you say being ripped away from you, being replaced by a vast dark nothingness.  Of fear, of doubt, of unknowing how to continue to move forward.  Like most things, it will just take time.  Lots of time.  Time to forget those things that made you see in the first place the next forty, fifty, sixty years.  Time to distract yourself with other things, other people, to try to relearn how to do those everyday things that used to remind you of that person.  To cut ties to him or her, literally if you have to.

It is more than love that creates this feeling - perhaps a childish fantasy of a "happily ever after" instilled in us by society.  To meet the person you think could be "the one" - even if it's the 100th "the one" you've met, never feels like less than breathtaking, never seems less than miraculous.

And you must learn to breathe again, learn to break from the autopilot that is all too easy to snap into as a reaction to this loss.  To build a future for yourself in your head - one in which that other person doesn't exist, one in which you take back your preferences - no longer needing to compromise.  It is hard.  It.  Is.  Hard.

There are questions I don't know the answer to anymore.  There are pieces of myself that I had left behind that I struggle to find again, and pick up.  And there is a hole.  I believe that in time, much of it will heal - but not all.  Having never done this before, I do not know, but I imagine that there will be a part of me that cannot heal, a part that will always stay in that mystical future that long ago faded away. I'm not going to be ashamed of it - a sign that I loved and I lost.

What my own future holds now is a mystery, yet to come.