Waiting in My Wings

My 2015 Purse Collection

2015-12-02T01:53:00.000-05:00

Dooney & Bourke, Michael Kors, Coach, Bebe, and Banana Republic.

I had this Bebe purse for over 7 years, oldest one I got!

Summer 2015

2015-08-18T04:11:00.000-04:00

Summer is almost over! :(

Here's the list of what I did,

and the adventure I took..

I went to..

..Charlotte, NC.

..Nashville, TN.

..Omaha, NE.

..Des Moines, IA.

..Knoxville, TN.

..Pittsburgh, PA.

..Syracuse, NY.

..Buffalo, NY.

..Rochester, NY.

..New Jersey.

..Virginia.

..Maryland.

..Washington, DC.

..Downtown Chicago (love it!!).

..Disney & Sea World at Orlando, FL.

..Went parasailing and snorkeling in Key West, FL.

..Got sunburn at Daytona Beach.

..Hot air balloon ride in Tampa, FL.

..Had fun and fought with my little sister.

..Colored my hair dirty blonde.

..Bought the Hollywood Vanity Mirror I had been wanting for years!.

There's much more important things..

2015-04-06T01:38:00.000-04:00

I have to get over you. For months now, a stone had been sitting on my heart. I shed tears over you, lost a lot of sleep, eaten a lot of chocolate. Somehow, I have to move on. Life would be dismal if I didn't shake loose from the grip you have on my heart. I most definitely didn't want to keep feeling this way, alone in a relationship meant for two. Even if you feel like The One. Even if I wanted us to last. Even if you still have a choke chain on my heart.

The funny thing about a broken heart is that it's not fatal. Though you wish in vain that it were, life continues on and you have no choice but to continue on with it. You take the hand that fate has dealt you and you press forward because there is nothing else that can be done.

God, I'm torn apart inside.

2014-07-27T14:53:00.000-04:00

Though it's been a while now
I can still feel so much pain
Like a knife that cuts you the wound heals
but that scar, that scar remains

and now I see you found somebody new
and I never meant that much to you
And to know that tears me up inside
And to see you cuts me like a knife

Biltmore Estate, Asheville NC

2014-07-22T16:32:00.000-04:00

Niagara Falls w/ my baby sister.

2014-07-19T14:34:00.000-04:00

Spent two nights at the Sheraton hotel, best view ever!! No other place can top the view we saw from our room. We had dinner at Keg the 1st night, and at Skylon tower the 2nd night. The rotating dining room at Skylon tower was awesome! We rode a helicopter to get some aerial views, it was my sisters 1st helicopter ride, so needless to say she was excited. Also spent a day at Marineland and pet a beluga whale! We ended our trip by riding the boat cruise at the falls. Great weekend getaway!!

Lake Placid, NY

2014-07-12T16:02:00.000-04:00

I still think about you

2014-07-08T16:14:00.002-04:00

Though a huge part of our largely-silent, post-dating acquaintanceship is based on the idea that neither of us have any interest in the other — that whatever happened between us is something entirely left in the past to wither and rot — I still think of you.

And saying that I miss you wouldn’t quite be the right term, either, though I know that admitting you still think of someone you used to love immediately conjures up images of someone sitting alone in their room, listening to sad songs, and crying. I’m not crying. I am no longer tricking myself into thinking that we should have made it work (or that it was even a possibility), and the mourning period of your loss has passed. It’s more now a quiet sadness about the love that has disappeared from my life. We knew each other so well, and meant so much to each other, and now we don’t speak at all. It’s as though all of those moments we lived together have just evaporated behind us, and that seems such a shame.

I don’t want you back, it’s just that, when I hear from you, or see you, or hear through the grapevine of something that you’ve been up to, thoughts of you linger. I think about what you’re doing, who you’ve become without me, what parts of your personality have risen to the top or almost faded away now that I am no longer a daily influence on your life. I guess it’s kind of selfish to center so many of my questions about you around our relationship, but you have to understand that I only knew you in one context.

I know you still think about me? Your texts shows that. I also know, it’s selfish, it’s childish. Nothing screams “immaturity” like wanting to catch up with someone only to shortly thereafter find out exactly what percentage of their life has to do with you still, but I’m curious. As much as I genuinely find myself thinking of what your life must consist of, it would be comforting to think that you have the same moments of reflection about me. Tell me that something as strong as we felt, strong enough to turned my life upside down, sort of echoes through the rest of your life, occasionally tapping you on the shoulder to remind you of a past that we so clearly left behind. Tell me, because the world would seem a bit too cold if it didn’t.

Yes, I am still curious. I wonder what has happened to you since I last saw you, touched you, whispered something in your ear. I wish that getting coffee and catching up like old friends was something acceptable for the two of us to do, and not something that came with a million implications about how desperate the initiating party must be. But, in the interest of honesty, I do wonder. It would be nice to feel that all of that love wasn’t meant to just be destroyed by the window of ugliness we experienced towards the end. Also, guess I’d like to know that your life has gone as well as I had once hoped it might, and that what you have become is something that you can sit with at the end of the day and be proud of. And if love is something that you spend your day looking for, I hope you find it..

It's only a phase.

2014-06-20T16:58:00.000-04:00

No matter how many colors my heart turns from being bruised and trampled, I haven’t lost my faith in you. So, I may have been wrong before, as much as I hoped I was right. At least I still believe that you’re out there. And through the chaos of heartbreak, my heart is still open for the taking...

Icarus wings.

2014-06-18T23:19:00.000-04:00

I’m learning (maybe more than I ever have before) to enjoy the now, to live in the present. But I want also to learn to “make space for the unknown future”—recognizing that it could very well bring with it “yet-to-come surprises” that are—it’s possible—better than what I originally planned, wished for, wanted, or thought needed.

So I’m working hard to lift my eyes, lift my heart, lift my hopes to see the wonder, mystery, grace, and whimsy in the uncharted future. To make space for possibility. To embrace ambiguity.

To lean in, even when I don’t know where it’s going.

It might not seem like much from the outside looking in, but I assure you—from the inside looking out—it’s demanding an enormous amount of courage for this tattered heart of mine.

Never give up on true love.

2014-06-16T16:42:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I think I have felt everything I'm ever gonna feel. And from here on out, I'm not gonna feel anything new. Just lesser versions of what I've already felt.

Weekend beach getaways.

2014-06-16T16:19:00.000-04:00

The jumped from one boulder to the next..

2014-06-04T15:53:00.000-04:00

The hiked to Sugarloaf Mountain

2014-06-02T15:15:00.000-04:00

Baltimore aquarium with my 2 younger siblings

2014-06-01T14:57:00.000-04:00

This is why I pretended not to see you.

2014-03-18T00:47:00.000-04:00

We were tumultuous; we were the happiest accident that ever was made. Yet, that was it. We never matured, we never progressed, and if love is kindness, all we had to offer was chaos. All along, we made up one another in our minds, in our wildest dreams. In reality, we never wanted one another at our worst, but didn’t it hurt worse when we didn’t want each other even at our best? It could not have been more of a stereotypical mess. We wore ourselves out wearing each other in, and we yielded the same catastrophic results day in and day out. Isn’t insanity defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
Well, as it turns out, I do not want to be insane any longer.

Friday is a good day to stop the chase..

2014-02-28T15:27:00.001-05:00

This is how moving on looks like..

2014-02-20T11:20:00.000-05:00

Moving on is not like a birthday, you can’t count down the hours ‘til it arrives and you can’t mark it on a calendar and you can’t call up your friends to help you celebrate. You can’t plan for it and you can’t conclude it by blowing out a candle. When moving on happens there will be no announcements, no notifications, no congratulations. There will be no parade; only you will know. Moving on is like aging that way, if aging happened backward. If the passing of days made you new and young, if your condition only had room to improve. Instead of a throbbing pain in your right knee forcefully, increasingly making its presence known, first with a whisper and then with a mumble and then with a shout, ‘til you can’t move, ‘til you can’t walk; moving on is gradual like that except when it’s over, you can walk just fine. You can run, even.

Moving on is like this: one day you forget the taste. The next, you forget the smell. Then the touch. Then the laugh. Then the smile. Then the jokes. Then the eyes, the hair, the hands, the feet. You forget the pulses, the beats, the rhythms and how you sometimes felt like they all belonged to you. You forget the words; finally, you forget the voice that spoke them. Moving on is like one day, you’re walking or reading or drinking the sun and one of those footprints, one of those artifacts will creep into your consciousness, “already seen,” the French call this, déjà vu, and you won’t know where it belongs or how it got there. All it takes is a familiar laugh, a recognizable word and you are transported to who knows where. You are a confused paleontologist now, scrambling to make sense of things left behind, trying to reunite the right dinosaur with the right bones. The scar from his burst appendix goes here, the part of his leg that doesn’t grow hair belongs there, I think this is his morning breath but maybe it belongs to someone who came before him; some other ghost, some other relic. His taste is an aftertaste now, his crow’s feet a souvenir with no place to call home. That’s what moving on is like.

Moving on is not like beginning a new chapter, it’s like beginning a new book — with each turned page, the last story you read fades into the background. A fairy tale that becomes just another book on a shelf; folded corners and underlined words the only reminder of how you used to touch and hold and love it. Moving on is when you begin to forget the intricacies of a character you knew intimately, you forget what he did for a living and the way he prepared grilled cheese and the nickname he had for his first girlfriend. You forget how he lost his virginity, you forget his middle name.

Moving on is waking up without a sour feeling in your stomach, looking at a familiar menu and ordering something different, taking the direct route to a destination and not the one that crosses a path you once set in stone. Moving on is when you think about him and don’t punish yourself for it, when he begins to evoke more of a scientific response than an emotional one, like “This is a 6’0” blonde-haired person who exists,” and not “This is a person I wish I’d never met; this is a person who has made me less of one.” Moving on is not to destroy or to combust or to set ablaze, it is simply to move, to advance through space and time, to leave behind the familiar dull of heartbreak for the new, the unknown, the strange. Moving on is a bird flying south for the winter who decides maybe the warmth isn’t so bad, who decides maybe it’ll stay there for awhile; moving on is like freedom, is what moving on is like.

Loneliness VS Aloneness

2014-02-16T08:45:00.000-05:00

The funny thing about loneliness is how very little it has to do with actually being alone.

The saddest, truest kind of loneliness seeps in when you least expect it. It arrives silently: while lying in the arms of your lover, measuring the frequency of their hand as it runs back and forth, up and down, caressing the dimple of your thigh. It’s noticing the way their touch occasionally slows, falters – the way they’ve grown so easily distracted by the static, violent movements of their video game, the one you bought them for their birthday.

It’s remembering the way your body once commanded their pulse to quicken, their heart to race. It’s how your touch once brought light to their eyes and tiny, dancing goose-bumps to the skin of their neck. Loneliness is is the pull-back to your lean-in, the hug to your kiss, the question to your certainty; it’s the time between replies, as you sit, staring at your phone — wishing death upon all those who dare message in their silence.

Loneliness isn’t measurable by numbers or bodies or answers to a questionnaire; loneliness is the perpetual state of seeking that which you so crave, that which you so need. Loneliness comes with settling for less than you deserve just as surely as it comes with reaching for that which you cannot attain. It’s incurable by company, it swells in the presence of friends; it grips you unforgivingly, from within.

Loneliness is the isolation that comes with nursing a feeling unreturned — an expectation unmet.

Aloneness is different. Aloneness is finding freedom in this very same isolation; it’s the strange state of bliss that comes with being truly, honestly, unapologetically content in your own company.
Being alone is buying a single ticket to a foreign film you know absolutely nothing about. It’s sitting in the back row, tearing open the wrapper to your favorite chocolate bar, immersing yourself so completely in the fictional love of fictional characters that you all but forget the to-and-fros of your own trivial existence. You forget about that person you met at the bar last week, the one you gave your number to but never heard back from. You forget about the photo that your ex just uploaded on Facebook; the one with their new love interest, laughing carelessly behind designer glasses. You forget because, in that moment, nothing matters more than the sweet crunch of your chocolate bar and the eventual union of Character A with Character B.

Aloneness is a Saturday night when your best friend is on a date and you forgot to make other plans. It’s walking to the wine shop while listening to that song you love and buying the second-cheapest bottle of wine — because even though you have no money, you deserve to be treated. It’s building a fort in your bedroom, one with high-speed WiFi, walls of pillows, and a moat of old DVD cases. It’s drinking your cheap wine in your cheap castle and understanding that nobody’s coming to save you. Because you don’t want them to. Because you don’t need to be saved.

Loneliness and aloneness stand as the two pillars to the one, emotional pendulum. There will be days when you’re so physically alone, so abandoned in your own company that you find yourselves smiling, laughing without reason. Then there will be the days spent by the ocean with the one you love, when you find yourselves suddenly, inconceivably, on the verge of tears.

We can’t allow ourselves to be defined by the people we surround ourselves with. We can’t allow ourselves to be defined by our relationship status or our weekend plans or the screaming silence of our mobile phone. If you’re single, please understand that a relationship isn’t the ticket to happiness. If you’re in a relationship, please know that being single isn’t a sentence to sorrow. We’re all just swinging on that same, rickety pendulum — forever in flux between being alone and being lonely.

We’re all just trying to find our balance, wondering how or why or what we’re doing there — wherever there is.

Just know that, whichever you happen to be or feel at this exact moment, the power to maintain or change it will always be in your own hands — not in theirs, or in anyone else’s.

And sometimes the best cure to loneliness is, in fact, to be alone.

Late Valentines..

2014-02-15T18:00:00.000-05:00

Got home and found this waiting at my doorsteps. Straight from San Diego, from a very thoughtful ex who knew tulips are my favorites.

It bloomed overnight..

Winter wonderfully made!!

2014-02-13T17:28:00.000-05:00

2014-02-03T23:54:00.000-05:00

Dear (insert name here),

2014-02-03T22:00:00.000-05:00

I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your text message – the one where I was supposed to confirm the time and location of our date. I told you that I would, but I didn’t. It’s not that I forgot, either. I wasn’t run off my feet at school, or unable to find an appropriate moment. I spent the entire day at home, studying and writing and thinking and watching random movies from Netflix. I had the time.

I hate that I didn’t text you back, because I know how it feels to wait for a message that never arrives. If you’re anything like me, which I suspect you might be, you’ll probably start by concocting a long list of excuses – because, for whatever reason, you like me, and that’s what we do for people we like. We give them passes, whether or not they deserve them. They usually don’t.

Then, as the hours pass and you still haven’t heard from me, you’ll probably direct your analytical thinking inwards – asking yourself what you did to mess it up. You’ll relay the last two weeks, text-by-text, trying to piece the puzzle together. Was it that I didn’t find you physically attractive? Was it that your last message had one too many smiley faces? Was it that you were too keen – too excited?

I could tell you, in all honesty, that it wasn’t you – but you probably wouldn’t believe me. In the face of unrequited affection, it’s always our fault. I want you to know that you are physically attractive; your teeth are perfectly straight and white, you have a thick head of dark hair – the kind I like – and a gorgeous, smiling set of blue eyes. You’re creative, ambitious in your goals, just the right amount of sensible off-balanced by just the right amount of wild youthfulness. I wasn’t put-off by your being keen or excited and I wasn’t put-off by that one extra (unnecessarily happy) emoji.

In fact, now that I think about it, we’d probably get along really well, you and I.
It’s funny because nothing frustrates me more than someone not responding to a text message. I find it to be the height of rudeness, a cyber-slap in the face. It’s lazy, it’s selfish, it’s insensitive; it’s someone being so completely consumed in the movements of their own existence that they’re unable to comprehend the feelings of others. I understand that this makes me a hypocrite — I hate hypocrites.

Maybe it’s a warped defense mechanism of mine, a way of protecting myself after a long string of broken promises, hurt and disappointment. Maybe it’s my way of gaining some level of control or power — things I’m so often without when it comes to relationships and dating. It could be that I like feeling unattainable, that it strokes my long-bruised ego. Whatever it is, I guess all I can say is that I’m sorry.

But even then, I’m not sure I’d mean it..

Nesting

2014-01-26T16:04:00.000-05:00

I wanted to do something different and change the look of my loft/study room, but somehow the unorganized and plain look of it puts me in a "must work" attitude. Sooo I ended up redecorating my room instead. What do you know, maybe a year from now I wouldn't find this attractive, but for now I like how it looks..

I will forget you.

2014-01-20T11:45:00.000-05:00

I will forget you and if that doesn’t sound romantic, it’s because it isn’t. It’s a simple inevitability, a truth colder than the last night we spent together. Remember that night? Gosh! What year was that? When I woke up in the morning and felt nothing familiar, that’s when I knew it was over for good. At least, that’s what I think happened. I fill in the blanks sometimes because I’ve already begun to forget.

I remember the color of your hair, but not the color of your laugh. I remember your name, that one’s easy; I don’t remember how your parents say it in their native tongue (I forgot that one the second you told me). I remember that you exist, that we spent some of our time together for what now feels like a blip, a sneeze, a little nothing. But I forget everything else, like what brought us together and what drove us apart. And mostly everything that happened in between that.

I forget what it’s like to kiss you and what it’s like to want to. I forget what it feels like to hold your hand, to be wrap inside your arms. I forget what it’s like to trust you, to believe in you, to need you. I forget what it’s like to think that I’d never forget any of it. For a long time, I thought I never would. You and I both know you left ghosts behind, but they seem to have found someone new to haunt. Maybe it’s you.

The inside jokes have already dissolved into unordered words with no punchline. The gifts have been reduced to objects whose saving grace is their monetary value, no meaning and all function. There are photographs, somewhere, but I’m not the person posed in them anymore and whoever that is sitting next to me, all dressed up in your costume and wearing your mask, well, that’s not you either. But what do I know about who you are? I forget that part, if I ever knew it to begin with.

I won’t forget you the way I won’t forget the pain of getting a wisdom tooth removed. Like something that happened to me once and then unhappened to me and then didn’t matter anymore.

But I will forget you where it counts, like in the eyes and in the mornings and in the moments that felt and looked and tasted a lot like love. I will forget you in those places because I already have.