Checking In

It's amazing what can happen in a month.

Isn't it? I mean, we sort of just go along at a decent clip and don't stop to realize just how much stuff we do in the course of a single day. How do we remember anything? How do we recall that amazing dinner we had, or that awesome play we went to, or how our favorite person sounds over the phone? Sometimes I am simply staggered by how amazing our brains truly are, for cataloging all of these things that make up our individual experience.

Anyhow, the month of February was... a long, exhausting, emotional blur. I am not going to get into it much; too many things that happened don't belong on the internet for everyone I don't know to see. But a lot of it was really bad, and a lot of it was pretty good, and now I'm just trying to recalibrate and take stock of how to move forward.

Isn't that what it's all about, anyway? Moving forward? I always struggle with that. I'm always looking over my shoulder at what has happened, or looking ahead to what might happen, and never looking right in front of me at what is happening, and so I have this tendency to stumble. I mean, right now I'm putting one foot in front of the other and doing it reasonably well; I have a plan for the next few months and I know, generally, what my life is going to look like for the vast majority of 2012. But I feel so small, sometimes. I feel so... isolated from the rest of the world of people doing the exact same thing. Putting one foot in front of the other. Trying not to trip.

I don't want to feel this small. I want to feel so big that I could embrace every single creature in the universe and still have room for more. I want to feel like I deserve that. That I deserve to love everyone and everything, and have them love me, too.

The holistic wellness counselor I've been working with since August suggested I start a regular meditation practice (there are a lot of things I'd like to do regularly, like exercise... -_-), which I've kept up with for the last five days in the mornings before work. I find that checking in with myself in the mornings definitely helps to lift my mood, but by the time lunch rolls around I'm back to feeling tiny. And there are ways in which feeling small feels great (Niagara Falls comes to mind...), but lately the feeling small has not felt so great. I am just hoping that the meditation helps. I just hope that I can keep the practice going long enough to make it a habit.

I'm also reading Eat Pray Love, a bit late, I suppose. I am simultaneously in love with the book and wanting to throw it across the room because, yes, I understand what you're saying, but I will never have such an experience, simply because I'll never be able to afford it. Which depresses me even as the message she's trying to get across lifts me up. It's really weird.

Most things are really weird right now.

Still, I am healthy, loved, and have the opportunity to create beautiful things every day. Plus, someone else is paying for me to go back to school (again!). However I may feel (and I am allowed to feel however I'm going to feel), the external forces in my life are good forces.

It will have to do for now.