lapse of spirit

sometimes you just need a break from being the strong one.

you need an evening to let everything catch up with you.

to feel upset for you instead of for everyone else.

instead of holding up for those who need you.

its hard when you think the whole story might mess things up.

to try and tell part without telling the whole.

you look more stupid without the background story.

and it takes all the strength you have left to hold back the rest.

it would be easier to tell everything, to put it all in the open.

you don't want to add more fire to the flame that others feel.

so you neglect yourself.

and wait for a moment of bottled up emotion to break free.

and when it does, you push it away as quick as it came.

do the needed damage control, and go on as if it never happened.

merry christmas!

i don't even need tomorrow to come to be happy with everything as it is right at this moment. i'm home with a family who loves me. i've been lucky enough to see friends i haven't seen in a few months. my best friend is home and safe. and once again i am simply awestruck by all that i have been blessed with.

i would never describe myself as religious, spiritual maybe, but not religious. however, in attending a private religious university, you can't help but pick up on things, especially in religion classes. Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Jesus, and the number one thing that Jesus stands for is love. Love. so today i will surround myself with people who love me, and i will make sure those close to me know they are loved because i believe that is truly what this holiday is all about. not just about the presents, not just about Santa, or sugar cookies, or christmas lights...it's about the love that is shared in the ideas, the set-up, the concepts of all of those things.

so merry christmas to everyone, may your day and your life be filled to the brim with all kinds of love! ♥

Materializing Importance

i have a really hard time buying people christmas presents, especially people who mean a lot to me. i don't know why, i think i just put too much pressure on myself to get them something great and meaningful, and then any hint of an idea just escapes me because i'm so worried about it being perfect. so what happens? its almost two days before christmas and i'm still stumped.

but presents shouldn't matter right? i mean, i don't expect to get things from others, more often i would rather not...people don't need to spend their money on me. but i understand that it is used as an expression of feelings toward another person, and although not altogether necessary, it can be a nice gesture. when viewed in that context, obviously it shouldn't matter what you give to another person, the gesture in itself says enough. i feel that way about people giving me gifts...someone could give me something i may never use in my whole life, but i would appreciate it because there was definitely some thought behind it.

people say "it's the thought that counts." i think i'm getting to caught up in how big the "thought" is, rather than the fact that it is just there. i feel to big of a need to show people how much they mean to me by the greatness of the gift i get them, not necessarily in terms of price, but in terms of making sure i get the one thing in the world that i see as the most perfect for them. but why worry about making or buying a gift that says that, when i can use my words and just say it?

psh, easier said than done (no pun intended).

today's moment of beauty

today i sat in my car in the pouring rain waiting for a friend i was meeting for coffee. i looked out my window and saw the blurry image of an elderly couple leaving the cafe next door, bundle up from head to toe in rain-proof clothing. they walked slowly and cautiously to their car, the man standing behind the woman, holding the one umbrella over her head, while he got soaked by the downpour. his eyes were looking downward, not watching his own feet but rather the slow steps of his wife, arms out next to her side, ready to catch her if she were to slip or fall.

they reached the curb and as she started to step down, they exchanged some words as the man moved around her and stepped down the curb himself before holding out his hand to help her down the step. all while keeping the umbrella over her head. he walked her around the car, opened her car door for her and held her hand as she climbed in. only after closing her door did he walk back around and get in the driver's side.

it took probably a good three minutes longer than if they would have walked separately to their respective sides of the car. the man probably got more drenched than he needed to have. it wasn't necessarily the easiest way to go about it.

but it was beautiful.

sucks the joy right out of christmas!

i really dislike being at school during the month of december because it really does make christmas come as a surprise...and by the time i realize its actually here, it seems that it's already gone. it doesn't feel like christmas here at school. lights in windows of dorms are not the same as going on a tour of the neighborhood back home. wrapping and unwrapping presents isn't the same with out the christmas tree.

i don't like missing out on putting the lights up on the house with my dad. i don't like that buying our christmas tree and decorating it gets pushed back because of finals week. i miss my family. i miss my friends. i just want to be home already! i want to feel like christmas!

one. more. day.

trudging through pre-finals week

so all that motivation has pretty much up and left, as i was well aware that it would. i was just hoping it would last a little longer. now i just want to be done, and i just want to be HOME.

i have nothing deep and meaningful to write about tonight. my brain is too exhausted to write anything of real meaning. right now, all i can think about is the music flashbacks claire and i have been having during homework time. boy bands, disney music, and other typical 90s music. and they really just don't make music like they did back then. sure it's a little corny, but really, it's cute and most of all, it's respectful; a trait that seems to be lacking in a lot of today's mainstream music.

and i won't lie, that corny cute-ness appeals to a part of me. i'm a sucker for stuff like that. maybe it gives me false hope, maybe my expectations are too high when i listen to songs and wish that i could find a guy who could feel that way about me. but if someone wrote it, someone felt it. right? so i don't feel its completely out there to hope for something like that in my own life. and hey, i'm a bit of a cheeseball myself, so of course i'm gonna like this stuff. :)

i think i'm just longing for something real. something that's stable. something that has a future. yeah, that would be nice. i'm ready.

to bed i go. well...if the roo and i can motivate ourselves to move the 10 feet from the couch to our room. ohhh finals....

dangerously beautiful

a simple concept was brought to life for me by my ethics professor yesterday in class - the most beautiful things in life have the potential to be equally as dangerous. its like, we aren't allowed to experience some of the most breathtaking and beautiful sights and emotions without acknowledging the potential dangers they also present.

most people go through an average part of their young life without understanding the flip side to all they feel is beautiful. when you're little, you don't have any comprehension of the things that can hurt you in life. but it only takes one experience to begin and change the way you view the world; that innocence can disappear in the blink of an eye.

you learn the sun that you find joy in playing in can sunburn you. you learn the pool where you splash away your summers that it can take the lives of others. you learn the beach and its crashing waves has sharks and jellyfish and waves that can destroy. you learn the beautiful roses outside of your house have thorns. you learn that the people you love most in your life have the ability to hurt and betray you in ways you never thought possible.

just because you learn that something has dangers, does that take away the initial beauty of it? if you experience these dangers, should you shut yourself off to something you once got so much enjoyment out of? i wouldn't say you should shut yourself off, but you have to develop some degree of caution that you regard things of beauty with. i really do not believe you can go through life disregarding the dangers in life, but this is not to say your cautions should be so high that they interfere with the way you live your life.

it seems to be a little easier, in general, to define these caution levels in external experiences, like roses and thorns and the sun and sunburns. its when you get to the stripped-down, raw human emotions that things get hard.

i would consider myself a bit of a hopeless romantic - i believe that love is truly a beautiful human emotion, to experience oneself as well as to give to others. but i know, from my own life experience and witnessing those of others that love is also one of the most dangerous things that exists. when you truly love someone, your heart welcomes them into your life and you allow yourself to deeply connect with them...so deep that if that connection is ever broken, you can literally feel your insides ache with an indescribable pain that is inequivalent to anything else you will ever experience in your life.

it only takes a single broken connection to seriously alter your mindset on love as a whole. its so much easier to be overcautious with your heart, to guard it, to put walls up that are nearly impossible to break down...because you don't want to ever experience what you felt again. it feels dangerous, it feels scary...so why subject yourself to that again?

i have to remind myself of this almost every day...not everyone you love is going to leave you. its hard to fight the urge to shut love out of your life for good after you get heartbroken, and its even harder if you experienced this sort of pain more than once. you have to understand that despite your awful experiences, it is not a prediction of all future experiences.

by no means am i an expert at any of this. i've been hurt in the past and it is never a struggle that is far from my mind. but i truly do believe that there is too much beauty in this world that i want to experience to let a danger get in my way. part of what makes love so beautiful to me is the passion that is behind it; passion does not come from an easy path. passion derives from battling and fighting and setbacks and victories and downfalls. it's like my mom used to tell me when i was little: if you fall, get back up, dust yourself off and try again.