The Duke and I Went on a Walk

My camera phone does no justice.

This morning my best friend and I went on a walk. There was a storm brewing when I woke up. I found myself full of hate, fear, loathsomeness and spite. While my husband slept, The Duke and I ventured out. There is a beautiful walking path at Quiet Place Park near my house. It feels like fall outside not even close to a January’s chill. The air was crisp and sweet and I merely wore long sleeves and a light jacket. The rage within me grew as we walked down a fairly steep hill towards the park. There were cars and gravel and construction.

When we turned into the park. The world grew still. The further we walked the more the rage inside me was quelled, slowly. Church bells rang from town, sounding mass. There was peace. As we walked, I steadied myself put water to the fire inside. I hopped up on a log and the sight threw out any further thoughts. A valley of ferns and green and water and mountains and trees and sky and sun. It was beautiful.

To live is to feel and to have experiences and to grow and change from those experiences. Whether the experiences are positive or negative. We need to process feelings and events. We need to find ourselves among the rubble. We need to love and hate. 

I cling to my childhood with vigor. I still am excited over little things. I like remote controlled anything, comic books, coloring books and board games. Mostly, I cling to my childhood because my mother is there. I hold tight because that was when I was truly whole. You can hold tight to the past and grow into the future. While there are parts of me who cling to a child, I am married, I am an adult, I have a career, degrees, intelligence and love. I hold responsibilities and life. I have plans and dreams for the future.

We lose sight of the moment, lost in a veil of rage and trivial annoyances. We let people's actions or our current situations, our frustrations take hold. We all need to GROW UP. Life isn't about fighting and pain and trying to prove that we are the biggest and the baddest. Grow up. It's not about how cool you are or how rich or how beautiful. Life is about survival, finding the joy and peace in daily life, learning to cope with heartache and loss, learning to trust people to support you when you can't support yourself. I am happy I love my life because I've grown up but kept my childhood in my heart.

Lately, I've been having blinding pinpoints of realization. Little statements and mantras to keep me sane. Here are the things I've come up with to help remind me that life is a gift that we fight for.

Motivation Day: There are times we disappoint ourselves. We expect great things from ourselves maybe it's education, maybe it's a career, maybe it's family, maybe it's travel, maybe it's something else. We expect these things achieved at certain points in our life and when they're not realized many of us give up or loose gumption. Just because we gave ourselves a time line doesn't mean life is going to follow it. Sometimes it's the trip not the destination. Sometimes we have to admit defeat and sometimes we achieve all that we expected and more. But the point of all this is, right now, are you happy? If you're not happy that is the bigger loss than your expectations. I am happy and know that whatever I expect of myself will be realized over time and through hard work, patience and understanding. But I am happy.

Reflection Day: Our moments with the people we love can be long or brief and sometimes we let little things taint our time. We let the small things infiltrate and poison our love. We hold grudges, cling to regrets, replay moments that went wrong over and over, we over analyze and think to hard and talk ourselves out of forgiveness. We let our bitterness and our envy and our jealousy consume us. Often times we need to learn to let things go, so we can enjoy the time we have with the people we care about. I just want everyone to know that while I may bitch and moan about the little things I value the bigger things which is having you in my life. Thank you.

There will be more days like these, I'm sure but I'm no prophet and my life is no great matter.

Year in Review...I’m 28…

I’m going to be summing up/reviewing my life one year at a time over the next few years they’ll be filled with a multitude of struggles, triumphs, love, disappointment and more.

On the dawn of my 28^th birthday I took an inventory, of everything. In March of my 27^th year I got a job that has brought me so much joy and friends I can’t believe how lucky I am. My job for the first 3-4 months of the year was a horrible job where I made decent money but I worked an opposite schedule from my husband I was paying for parking, gas, wear-and-tear on my car, ferry fees and was barely spending anytime at home. I worked in real estate for a guy who often yelled at me about wanting to work from home and who I had to haggle with for my paycheck. I have an amazing job now with a great company and fantastic people. I even get to bring my dog to work. I hope to always be employed with this company, but the job is not in the career field I wanted nor does it pay what I’d hope with my 2 degrees. I’ve shelved my journalism dreams because I’ve failed at it one too many times. Now I write blogs and hate myself for it because it’s just an outlet, an online journal for the world to see and often times the world is not kind. Not that I mind but I know it will go nowhere.

I’m 30-40 pounds overweight. I’ve struggled with my weight since I was 12. I have never been thin enough. I lost 35 pounds in 2008 and have pretty much gained it all back. I work out a lot. It’s very depressing. I’ve got a substantial credit card debt paired with a car I purchased and am still paying off. Between the debt, bills, food, vet bills, saving for the unexpected and other little chips and stabs at my paycheck, I’m not left with much to do the things I want to do before Tim and I lay some serious roots.  

My marriage was the biggest joy this past year. I am madly in love with my husband and look forward to our future together. However, our wedding caused a lot of rifts and strained a lot of relationships. My father and I didn’t talk for awhile after the wedding. We fought a lot with the planning my maid of honor – my baby sister Nani – further aggravated the situation. I was called a bridezilla a lot through the planning process. All I wanted was a simple backyard, Hawaii wedding and while the wedding was amazingly, stunningly beautiful, it was entirely too stressful. Wires got crossed, feelings got hurt. I cried twice because my dad yelled at me and my family wouldn’t do what I wanted to do on my wedding day. People traveled from as far as France to Hawaii and it was a fantastic event but you couldn’t pay me to go through that again.  Thankfully, Tim and I are stuck like glue to each other so I don’t foresee there ever being a need.

The wedding, however, did bring me back to one of my longest running passions – hula. I danced a hula for my husband and it reignited my 13 previous years of professional dancing. I love hula dancing and have recently started joining a class again.

Overall this year in review was amazing, I got a great job that stopped my panic attacks and I married the man of my dreams. I’m hoping over the course of year 28 to alleviate some of the above pressures, but it’s like a new year’s resolution, made to be broken.