:: 2013 28 September :: 3.45 pm

you're here. there. everywhere.
My psychologist basically told me I wasn't accepting help. Or that maybe I was and just wasn't ready to dive into the problems and face them like I should. I'm afraid of pain for some reason, even though I shouldn't be. Pain to me is something I should embrace and learn to grow from, not cower away from.
I am constantly afraid, constantly afraid to better myself. It's like I fear a better version of myself. I fear that I'll be leaving my family behind and not be my mother's or father's daughter. But that's okay right? I don't have to keep on with family traditions. I can be my own person.
There's always this push and pull within myself, like I want to make myself better but I want to do it tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes though so I'll never be a better person unless I start now, now now now.
Why is this so hard??

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:: 2013 19 September :: 11.08 am

freedom.
Falling. Falling.
Down and down we go.
Darkness.
Calm.
Peace.
We scrub ourselves clean.

We absolve ourselves of what we used to be.
Still darkness.
Dark versus light.
I choose light.
But darkness chooses me.

Freedom.
Found in the form of a pill.
Quiet.
Silence.
Heart beats, brain is still.

Asleep.
Fallen down into dreams.
Do I wake or do I stay?

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:: 2013 17 September :: 8.50 am

if you like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain.
We chase the things that we want but don't suit us. And as soon as we catch it, we decide we don't want it. We get the thrill from the chase and then as quickly as it started it's over.
But what happens when we start chasing perfection? We never reach it, we can't reach it. We are fundamentally flawed as a species, perfection is impossible. Yet why do we always reach for it? We reach for the moon, hoping to get there but what's the point? We always fall short and land on a star.
The point is the chase, I get the thrill from the chase. The coming so close and then realizing it's within my reach and then as soon as I touch it, it's gone. I want to keep trying to reach it.
I want to overshoot the moon and reach Pluto, or another galaxy.
But I don't want perfection.
I want the best version of myself possible. Which means I have to keep trying.

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:: 2013 15 September :: 7.33 pm

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman

For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to have a career in medicine. At first I wanted to become a general practice physician but for the past few years, my passion has been physical therapy. There wasn't one defining moment that made me change my mind, there were many. At first, I was skeptical of physical therapy as a career because I had spent so much of my life in and out of the physical therapy office, between multiple sprained ankles and sublexed knees, I became a regular at my local physical therapy office.
It wasn't until my junior year of high school that my passion began to change. I had signed up to become a student athletic trainer. I wasn't athletic myself but I wanted to be involved somehow. Learning about the human body and mechanisms of injury fascinated me. I would look forward to going to class and learning the different ways to tape an ankle or a knee to send the player back into the game. That was just a drop in the bucket for the passion for physical therapy that would follow.
My senior year of high school, my friend talked me into joining cross-country, at that point in my life I wasn't even able to run a mile without stopping to take a break. I kept at it though and as I kept pushing myself further and further, I kept thinking about my body and how amazing it was. How with every swing of my leg, different muscles were lengthening and contracting, how my heart was beating and how my lungs were working. I was intoxicated with curiosity about my own body and it's inner workings. As I prepared to go to college, I decided that I would pursue a biology degree with a focus on physical therapy. Something inside me kept telling me this is where my passion is.
The more I dove into my studies of biology the more I enjoyed it. I loved human anatomy and physiology, I loved exercise physiology. I loved it all. I was hungry for more knowledge, so I decided to take a break from school after I graduated and took a job as a rehabilitation aide.
For the past three years, I have been a rehabilitation aide in different out patient clinics and I can say with certainty that I want to become a physical therapist, not a doctor, not a nurse, not a medical assistant, not a PA but a physical therapist. I wake up for work every morning excited to go, excited to learn more, to connect with patients, to share my passion with them. I look forward to leading patients through their exercises, answering what questions I can and educating them, making them more aware of their bodies and the way they move. I want to be able to take my passion further, go from rehabilitation aide to physical therapist. I want to wake up every morning even more excited to go to work because I know that I will make a difference to patients, the way my therapist made a difference with me.

1 let | go

:: 2013 15 September :: 2.06 pm

perfectionism.
Last week, I had a breakdown in my therapists office. Granted that's what she's there for but I had managed to hit rock bottom again. After a few months of flying high with my new job, finishing my master's certificate at school, being on the upswing of running/training, I just lost it. I've been slowly loosing control of myself and who I want to be. I've just been giving into the world and what it wants for me, not what I want for myself. The world is an unforgiving place sometimes, I hold myself to higher standards than the world does. I hold myself to almost perfection while the world says no, it's okay to slip up and keep slipping up. I understand that we're human ans so we're going to make mistakes and that's part of who we are but shouldn't we be trying to better ourselves instead of constantly letting ourselves slip further and further from our true selves? That's what I believe anyway, I believe in the constant bettering of the human race, myself included.
So even though the world says it's okay to fill your life with possessions and things, I want to fill my life with love and relationships and good food. I want to not feel like I need to keep with the Jones like the world tells me too. Hey, that girl in yoga class has the newest Lululemon top! That means I need to get one too! No, it does not. I am perfectly fine in my two month old Lululemon sports bra. Part of it is insecurity, part of it is not wanting to feel deprived of anything, part of it is that I feel like I deserve nice things, there are multiple parts to it but they're all just excuses. Excuses to fill a void, to sweep a problem under the rug that needs to be addressed. I am $9,5000 in credit card debt, most of that is from clothes. Which is quite sad considering I don't even have half of those clothes anymore because I get bored with them and want new ones and keep going and going. It's an ugly cycle but I'm trying to break it this time.
I am trying to tell myself that when I'm out running and see the girl with the matching fancy tops and shoes, I tell myself I'm just as good as she is because I'm out there running just as hard as she is and with just as much drive. Even though my tops and bottoms may not match exactly or my shorts may be my old Nikes that I refuse to get rid of. My passion for the sport is still the same and that's the important part. My passion, my love for life, not what I'm wearing, I don't even remember what I wore last Monday but I remember what I did, who I met, what made a difference in my life.
That's what I need to keep telling myself, the clothes, they break, they fade, they don't always last but the moments do. The relationships I make do. The experiences I have, they last. As long as I look clean and put together, it shouldn't matter if my clothes come from Lululemon or eBay. None of it should matter.
I need to find another way to fill the void.

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:: 2013 9 September :: 6.43 pm

as a species, we kind of suck.
Now, if I felt like being upbeat and optimistic, I would tell you that humans may suck and disappoint you in numerous ways but there is still a beauty and a mystery to them. Today however, I'm not in that mood. I am in the humans upset me, they are fundamentally flawed mood.
I work in an office full of women, women who are catty and two faced for the most part. None of them just want to do their job and do it well, they always want to snitch on someone or point out someones mistake and make it seem catastrophic, when really it was just the size of a paper-cut. It's not like the world ended over it.
When I work, I like to do my job and do it well, I don't want to deal with all the drama that women bring. (And men sometimes too!) I just want to work. I want to take care of patients, I want to put all my energy into them because isn't that what healthcare is all about? I also always strive to be better at my job, not saying that I always give it 100% of my attention but I try my best to do it well.
At all the other jobs I've been at, I've always been attacked for that. People feel threatened by me, which to me is the equivalent of being threatened by a bunny. Or a penguin. I just don't understand it. I don't understand how humans work. Are we really that scared that we protect ourselves so much we sacrifice relationships with those around us? Is it really that difficult?
I honestly think in order to be a functional human being in this world, you have to be able to let go and trust that God, the universe, the god of cake, what say you, will take care of you. I actually read somewhere that those who survive evolution are those who are most adaptive to change, to movement, to fluidity.

Be free and let go. Fall into the abyss. Just let it go.

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:: 2013 8 September :: 10.07 pm

seeing through a finite lense.
Now that I have time for a real update, I'll get right to it.

My therapist won't believe me but I think I have a mood disorder of sorts. Or maybe it's just the normal flow of my hormones, I don't know. All I know is that when my time of the month comes around, I all of a sudden feel like time slowed down for me and I can watch the wings of a hummingbird flutter. I feel like I am honed in on everything, it all of a sudden becomes so crystal clear, who I want to be, what I want to do. It's at this point that I start jumping into grandiose self-projects. Screaming to myself, "I can be better!! I can do it this time!" I start tackling large goals and tasks and feel like I'm riding high, only to come tumbling down a week later. The tumble never gets any softer or any easier, it's just as hard and debilitating as the last one.
Sometimes I wish I could keep these feelings of grandeur forever. I love feeling like I'm on top of the world, I love feeling like I can conquer all that is set in front of me. If you asked me to run with the bulls right now or scuba dive with sharks, I'd probably say yes.
Every part of me wants the thrill, the change, the holy grail that I seek. That perfect person. When I'm in this mind-set, I only see perfection. If things aren't perfect, I don't stop until they are.
I am always running after this person that I want to be, constantly moving and not enjoying where I am at right now, in this moment. Every month around this time, I'd always go through my wardrobe, go on a shopping spree and find the look that suits the new me, the me that I will become if you just give me time. The me that only works for a month and then decides it's time to shed that skin and move onto another me. Sometimes I feel like I'm a chameleon, always changing, always blending.

I want to put a stop to this. I don't want to always feel like I need to shed my skin every month. I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say this is me right now and I am happy. I am content.
I want to stop chasing perfection because I feel like I'll never find it. I feel like it's a ghost, a whisper that likes to tease me. Haunting me, only giving me fleeting tastes, leaving me wanting more and more.
I don't want that anymore. I want to stop running towards it. I want to run towards peace and contentedness. I want to run because I love it. Not because I'm seeking a perfect body or a perfect mindset or a perfect solution.

I want freedom.

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:: 2013 8 September :: 7.04 pm

We always come back.
It's been a long time woohu, but I'm back. Not under any of my old aliases because those have been long forgotten. I'm not that girl anymore, I have more grown-up mature problems now. I've tried over the past year or so to blog via blogger, livejournal, xanga, you name it, I've tried to pour my feelings out into it. I thought about blogging again and then I remembered this place, it feels so old and familiar. Like I can literally let everything out here and no one will find it. No one will notice it. I can be at peace with myself and with what I put online. Maybe it's because I'm familiar with this place, maybe that's why I feel safe.
But anyway, point being, I need a place to sort all of this stuff out. I need a place of calm and quiet in my crazy day to day life. So here I am, back again.

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