OH! Where do I begin? Was it only one day since I blogged? Really? Every day seems like five or so. Today was fantastic. All of this time living in the present- eyes wide open - is making time pass a lot slower. I’m glad that the rule about time dragging only when things suck doesn’t apply at the moment. There are a lot of rules of conventional wisdom that don’t apply to me at the moment. I guess that’s one of the benefits to living life unconventionally.
Tonight I met up with Sue and Duane. It’s funny. I lived in San Diego for so long and always intended to get together with them more often when I lived here. It has been a very rough two years…I think today might be the anniversary of when I left my husband, but I really, really, really try not to keep track of these things. I can’t even keep track of anniversaries that commemorate happy things. I’ve been in a big fog from then until about the time I began this journey. Lots of phone calls went unreturned, and many space-out moments happened. I’m very grateful that my friendship with Duane and Sue survived my flakiness. There are a lot of people I’m going to attempt to get together with in San Diego whose most recent memory of me was “flaky, wiggy, divorce girl”….ouch. In my normal life, I would avoid the awkwardness. There have been a lot of times in my life, but particularly in the past two years when I just didn’t look good at all. A lot of people dumped me, and a lot of people stuck around. I absolutely have to love the ones who stuck around… even if I tried not to it wouldn’t work. The inconvenient flip-side of that is that I still love the ones who didn’t stick around, too.
My #1 priority, besides taking care of myself and George, is visiting all of the “friends” on my friends lists. I don’t have 17 years to do this. So, I don’t have the time or the luxury to wait until I believe the timing is exactly right. I am contacting every friend on facebook and myspace with the goal of making a genuine connection, and getting to know what all of my “friends” are about. For this, I have to be present with the people I am visiting, and approach every meeting like it might be my best friend that I am visiting. I am very open when I see people, and it has led to wonderful things. It has also left me wide open for devastating things, and this trip has become somewhat of a dragon-sleighing- safari. I am revisiting my entire life, through all of the people of my facebook and myspace friends lists in a very short period of time. I probably wouldn’t see everyone in person again in my entire life under ordinary circumstances. People are the essence of drama, and I am seeing a lot of people and I don’t have much of a budget to do it, so there is uncertainty. I’m pretty sure lots of people and lots of obstacles = lots of drama. So, as much as I try to shy away from the drama queen persona, there are a lot of times on this trip where I am interacting with people in the middle of drama-situations not yet processed (Sorry, Dan). The funny part of it is, I have to pick up and keep moving on, or else I won’t complete what I set out to do. I can’t be present with the person I am visiting if I am distracted by a previous person I visited, so I have to get over things quickly. This trip has presented so many situations where I would have dwelled for months on end, but the time constraints don’t really permit that now. It’s a good thing! My recovery time is a fraction of what it used to be.
My fear of becoming a drama-queen- or worse, just a nut-case, made me fully appreciate the feedback from Duane and Sue. They were trying to put their finger on how I looked “better” than the last time they saw me. They both looked at me for a while- I could almost see the wheels turning in their heads. Then, Duane said “It’s your eyes. You look more relaxed. You’re making direct eye contact”. Sue agreed and said I looked “centered”, and Duane quickly said that was the perfect word. Ahhhhh…music to my ears. If I can find a way to be centered in the middle of all of this chaos and drama, then I just might be on to something. My first few nights in San Diego were so bad. It was like a letter bomb sent express from Left Field. Something like that might have destroyed me not long ago, or at least devastated me for a long time. With all I have going on now, it is more than a giant relief and compliment to be told by old friends that I am showing up as “centered”… How completely fabulous. Things are getting better…including me.
