vacation time

how i missed thee. i didn't have internet for the last two days but i wrote this anyway on thursday night, september 3.

mama bear is on a well needed vacation in a remote location with one person not even i would expect to be with.  the house is warm from both the sun and the baking chicken in the oven.  i can hear bits and pieces from conversations floating onto the terrace from the street below.  there is no madness, no history or any history of madness.  the houses look like something out of coloring books and the people are nice.  something i take for granted living in the hustle and bustle of new york and philadelphia.  i find myself smiling in the aisles of supermarkets and museums, smiles i haven’t smiled in those places for longer than i can remember.  even though this is my first time here, it feels like i’m returning to a place within myself that i hadn’t realized i left.  i believe it is the absence of responsibility that has freed up my hands from having the whole world in them.  i haven’t even put on makeup, which is all due to the fact, that i don’t have to follow my rule about looking great to feel great because i already feel great and that in itself makes me look great.  my hair is in a ponytail with a headtie around my edges, this heat isn’t a game. with a gray tank top and a gray spandex skirt, i look like lucille ball’s extra sexy house maid, which for a change, i don’t actually mind. i’m not worried about getting my nails done, because every time i look down, my pink toes steal all the thunder and i am happy again. not with the way things were but for the way that they are.  today i realize that what i’ve been through isn’t the end.  

i am evolving into a woman who knows her fears and has decided to finally have a conversation with them.  i used to think the problem was liking someone.  for the past two weeks, i’ve been going back and forth about how i actually despise liking someone. it’s such a weird feeling. but now i realize that i don’t have a problem liking someone, i have a problem liking myself.  instead of liking myself for who i am, i identify myself with the harsh things that have happened to me or that i’ve done, none of which is like-able. but here, i’m not the girl that broke your heart, i’m not a teenage mommy, i’m not a college dropout. i’m a young woman who is still cute without all the glitz and the glamour, who is just as happy walking through a museum as i am walking around with a new purse and i am the young woman who can define her brilliance through my existence as opposed to my experience.  it’s a different type of feeling, i thought i would be more excited, instead i am more relieved.  relieved that when i strip down to the bare minimum, i still see someone who can change the world by first changing my involvement in it.  it is an eye opener seeing yourself for the first time in years, with your own eyes and not everyone else’s. it is like i’m introducing myself to the old me.

the old me doesn’t reach out to shake the new me’s hand, the new me offers myself first. two points for being vulnerable. the new me says to the old me, “i respect what you’ve done and what you’ve been through but since you cannot understand that you deserve more, you will simply have to experience it and that’s why i’m here.  you are simply tired of fighting but that’s the only way you know how to live.  the difference between you and i is that you have always kept your distance but i am here to go the distance.  i am here to do the things you’ve never done, to love people you’ve never met and to accept you.  i am here to tell you that the reason it’s so hard to love someone else is because you think you are unloveable. and whoever and whatever did that to do is not stronger or better than you.  though you have put up with less doesn’t mean you don’t deserve more. you owe it to yourself to not look at things as painful reminders but hopeful possibilities.  and since you can’t get over the things that were done to you or the things that you’ve done, i’m here to tell you that wherever you buried those things, go with them. i will take your place.  i will welcome the world with open arms because that’s what you deserve.  i will think of others because i know that’s what you want me to do, but i will think of myself first, because that’s what you need.  you’ve never needed closure from anyone else, you were looking for acceptance. but who will accept someone that hasn’t accepted themselves first?  you are not marketable when you don’t recognize your value. so go, in peace. no hard feelings and no love lost. but i am here now. to live the life you couldn’t fathom being yours.”

sometimes vacations don’t take you away from reality but rather bring you to it.