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July 31, 2012

these are your instructions. part II.

begin with something hollow. 

take a breath and sit. sit with a blank word document or legal pad or stack of neon pink post-its. start writing. get it out. sit in it. it. the it you feel in every part of yourself. you sit with your feelings or you ignore them. you try to ignore them. this is your choice. but there is no ignoring these things and if you are able to numb and ignore how you feel, this doesn't last. nor should it. be thankful that this doesn't last.  in attempting to ignore things we feel them tenfold. we try not to think about how happy we are or how overwhelmed we are and in that moment it's all we can think about. this is how it works. thinking about feelings makes the feelings real.

feelings are real. 

if you can't sleep at night and if you feel the need to abuse yourself in a multitude of ways these aren't accidents.

if you feel something to the extent that your bones ache, pay attention. life rule #1: pay attention. we weren't built to be robots. people feel things. this is a gift. don't throw it away.

sit. it's hard to do this. it's hard to sit on a bench in a park and eat lemon cupcakes with a friend and talk about heavy things. 

but i did this today. i dragged a friend to go sit in a beautiful park. and i got a little preachy. i got preachy because i love her and worry about her and want more for her. i want more for everyone i care about. 

we sat on this bench and talked about things that are happening to her. there are a lot. and she puts more on her shoulders. i know that game. 

i sat with her and felt the sadness she thinks is swallowing her whole. 

it's not.

it won't. she won't let it. i won't let it. in that moment on that bench under those trees she couldn't see a way out of a bad situation, but i could. 

are you happy? 

what do you want? 

two important questions we should constantly be asking ourselves. if we don't like the answers then we work on changing them. this is what we do. these are our instructions. there is no manual for life. our gut is our manual. our heart is our manual. our brain makes things harder than necessary. and sometimes we make things harder than necessary. 

this girl i sat next to, she said things i used to say to myself. and i told her, you are the only one who can change this. this is your life. and you can change it. 

i worry about this girl and at the same time i don't worry. she's strong, stronger than she sees in the mirror right now and stronger than she feels when she wakes up. i'm here to remind her when she forgets. 

this is your life

sit. be still. practice being still with yourself. it's worth the energy. you are worth the energy.

July 29, 2012

sunday night list of gratitude.



today i am grateful for...

plans
this (it's working.)
the compliment i got about my calf muscles (as creepy as the guy was)
really, really good banter
french toast and bacon
baseball radio announcers
friends who finish my sentences before i even say them out loud
getting to see my boyfriend with his daughter
more "pinch me" moments than i can count

adventures in chinatown. and whiting, indiana.









"Hey, that'd make a good picture!"-Ben



Such a good sport.









July 26, 2012

where we put our attention is where we put our value.


the soul always knows what to do to heal itself. the challenge is to silence the mind.
-caroline mys

i know the game of feeling like you aren’t enough.

this is a game that will break you if you let it. this is a game that will make you so physically exhausted you'll find yourself crying in the shower. and on the bus. and in line at the dry cleaner’s.

when we feel inadequate we fill that silence with doing. do do do some more. i can do more. i will do more.

the idea of, if i just continue to do all of these things for everyone else, i will finally feel enough. i will be enough. i will show this person how much i care by doing all of these things: running errands and making plans and cooking dinners and baking cakes and not showing and sharing my anger and sadness and complete and total truth of, “i don’t feel valued by you. i don’t feel appreciated by you.”

i dated someone a long time ago and i remember emailing a friend and actually typing the words, "i just want to feel like i'm important to him."

if there’s one thing in this life i know for sure it’s that if you are squinting with disbelief and discomfort and disgust with yourself as you write something, this is a sign.

if you have to ask a question like that then you already have your answer.

stop ignoring these things.

no one can make you feel anything. we allow people to treat us certain ways. we give them permission.

if you don't feel that someone thinks of you as important or treats you like you're important, you aren't.

but if you're lucky enough to find yourself with someone who shows you, all the time, how important you are to them, when you feel how much they appreciate you and care about you, say thank you. say it again.

keep saying it.

thank him, and thank the universe for helping you find this man.

when we fill every second of every day trying to do more for other people there is nothing left for ourselves. nothing. there is no room and no energy left. it’s a deliberate thing, this excessive doing for others. where we put our attention is where we put our value.

where are you putting yours?

i think of my friends, especially girlfriends, who do so much for so many. and it makes me tired. they operate with the thought of, i care about this person enough to do anything that will make them happy. it makes me happy to make others happy. there's nothing wrong with wanting to do nice things for other people. but there's a distinct place when it becomes wrong, when it becomes too much.

pay attention to how you feel in this place. don't ignore it.

if only we could think that way for ourselves. if the energy people use on others was spent on self-love, the entire world would be a happier place. our hearts would be happier places.

we fail to remember that we’re already enough. we come into this world enough and as we make our way through it, the world takes more and more from us, demands more from us, and we give. we make it our job to give. we give until we’re frantically making lists of what else we can be doing to make ourselves feel whole. we give until nothing is left.

keep some for yourself.

you are the only person who can make you whole. you are the only person who can make yourself see that you already are.

July 24, 2012

a moment of strength in the middle of a hard day.

yesterday was a hard day. i won't get into the why. the back story isn't important.

i had a moment of grace at an intersection of what could've been actual trouble. i was waiting at a red light in the proximity of three fast food restaurants: mcdonald's, burger king, and taco bell. me at age 15, 17, 21 would've made a quick left into the mcdonald's parking lot. i would've ordered the usual: two big macs, large fries, sweet and sour sauce to soak everything in, and a large pop. i am a creature of habit, for better or worse.

old habits did not creep back in yesterday. 

i sat in a friend's car listening, mostly singing, along to adele's live at the royal albert hall. i didn't turn it up. i already had it playing very loudly as this is how i like my music, but i didn't deliberately make it louder. i didn't tune out my feelings. i felt every single feeling i had in that moment, the good and the bad ones. i didn't rattle. i sat there and waited for the light to change.  i didn't even want food.

everything is a choice. sometimes things are hard. you wait for green lights and keep going.

this is all you can do.

it's moments like this, at 3:45 on a monday afternoon, when i can feel how lost/sad/numb i used to be in those same moments ten years ago.

i can feel how far i've come. and how that woman's incredible voice made my own that much clearer. 

July 22, 2012

life, as of late.

















July 20, 2012

these are your instructions.

these are your instructions
should you choose to follow
sit down with pen and paper
begin with something hollow

sometimes life catches up with you. part of it is being overtired and part is feeling not enough and part is being a woman and the things we go through and part is simply having emotions. lots of them. but you remember that in spite of this stuff you have beautiful and good things happening in your life. and beautiful and good people in your life. sometimes you don't know what to do with that feeling. 

you try to change this. 

you run. you run through your neighborhood and you fall more in love with all of it. there is color here. stories. there is life here.

you make lists. you make plans. you dive in. 

you take the beautiful things people do for you and acknowledge them. you look at these things and hold them and feel them. you return them. you do not fight them and push them away. you do not diminish them. it's okay to accept kindness and sweetness from people, from a man.

when it's late at night and a man pays attention and calls you on things, be thankful for that. listen to his question. answer it. when this man continues to show you warmth and kindness, stop shaking your head. stop trying to convince yourself that none of it is real.    

tell yourself, "it's okay to accept these things. he's real, rhi."
  
you call your mom just to hear her voice. it calms your soul. you say a prayer that you can call your mom. you cry on the phone. you tell her how happy you are. you tell her you’re afraid. you tell her why. you say out loud the things you worry about: the body things, the health things, the work things, the writing things, the life things. you realize that all of these things do not control you. she picks you up and has mary chapin carpenter playing and you smile because you learned to love that woman because of your mom. you grew up singing those songs in her car.

sometimes you just need to spend the night in your old house with dogs who love to jump and kiss all over you. 

you text your girlfriends. they know you, who you are in your soul, and they always know the words you need. 

you walk, walk, then you walk some more. you get out of your chair if all you’re doing is staring out the window and it doesn’t feel good like it usually does. 

if something doesn’t feel good, stop doing it.

not wanting to do something is enough. you don't need to offer up more reasons for not wanting to do things. you don't need to demand this of yourself.

you allow yourself to be happy. 

it really is that simple. you grant yourself that permission. because you are the only one who can give it.

these are your instructions
if you choose to follow
stop and take a big breath
begin with something hollow

July 18, 2012

chicago girl in kentucky.

this is an essay i did for the wonderful mackenzie of whatever, gatsby. (i immediately loved the name of her blog.) thank you for including me, mackenzie!

“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.”
-Why We Travel, Pico Iyer


 I cried a lot when I went to Kentucky.

I took my first road trip at the age of twenty-six. I went alone. I regret waiting so long to go.

I drove almost eight hours from Chicago to Lewisburg, Kentucky to spend six days with my great Aunt Hope and Uncle Norman, the most beautiful and loving black lab, and a group of characters I instantly dubbed The Lewisburg Rat Pack. 

I cried for a lot of reasons. I cried because I was overwhelmed at the idea of driving that far by myself. I cried because I was at the tail-end of a relationship I wasn’t happy in and I cried because those six days were overdue. But I cried the most sitting in a hotel room in Lexington three hours from my aunt’s house the Saturday I was there. I built this trip around a Mary Chapin Carpenter concert. I emailed my aunt, bought a concert ticket, booked a rental car, and started counting the days.




I sat on an ugly flowered bedspread in that hotel and felt my loneliness wrap itself around me. I felt it come over me and try to make me hard. I sat like this for a long time. I finally threw water on my face, put on a dress and heels, and drove myself to dinner. I sat with myself and drank margaritas and chicken tacos and salsa and felt my sadness, sadness that was a number of things. You’re in a city where you don’t know anyone. You’re three hours from your family. You’re scared. But you’re relaxing, on those walks with your uncle, his friends, and their dogs, you are relaxing. And you don’t know what to do with that feeling. But at home in Chicago you aren’t happy. You need to ask yourself why you aren’t happy. You need to be honest with yourself because you already know why you aren’t. And you need to forgive yourself for ignoring all of these things. The time for ignoring is over. I felt all of these things,but I didn’t let them swallow me. I sat on a bar stool and watched the people around me: couples, old and young. Everyone was with someone else. I was alone and I felt it, in every sense of the word. I told myself, you need this trip. You need to sit here with yourself and not be doing five things at once. You need this quiet. Sitting by yourself does not mean you are lacking anything. You, as your own company, are enough. You need to feel this sadness instead of trying to push it deeper inside yourself. You need to have that second margarita if you want it because you’re on vacation and you’re wearing a dress that makes you feel pretty and you’re going to see one of your favorite singers and sit in the second row and cry because you are happy. You’re learning to let yourself grow accustomed to that feeling.


There are a lot of things I still miss:

Long conversations with my Aunt Hope, a miniature version of Shirley MacLaine, someone who calls people Chicken and Toots and feeds you bacon every morning and wraps you in love. You feel it just being near her. She has the perfect name.



Their dog Raven. I would sneak her into my bed as much as I could. That dog, sitting at my feet, licking my toes, that’s something I miss. Sitting on the edge of my bed my first morning there staring out the window with that dog next to me, rubbing her ear, saying a prayer of thanks for being in this house, this town, quiet so beautiful I wanted to kiss it.

Walking at 7:00 every morning with the Lewisburg Rat Pack: Norman, his best friend Eddie, Bob, and Kenny. Men who meet at the same corner every morning regardless of the weather. Men who walk with their dogs without leashes, with walking sticks carved out of tree branches. I stood behind them, taking pictures, breathing, actually breathing.


Singing my favorite country songs with my left food up on the driver’s seat, staring at nothing but open road and trees in front of me. Laughing and sighing and singing and crying because I felt something while driving in that car. I felt like enough for the first time in a long time.

Fishing with my aunt, uncle, and his best friend Eddie. I miss fishing. I miss trying to fish. The fact that Eddie couldn’t get my name right so I finally told him to call me Rhi. The fact that in just one hour on my uncle’s boat Eddie caught thirty-one. I caught two. I insisted on a re-count.



But sitting on that boat as the sun set, next to Hope, across from my uncle and his best friend, I’ll never forget how that moment felt. Quiet, calm, a different kind of lonely. Lonely always feels stronger when we’re in a place we don’t know. It’s easy to feel lost when we’re away from home, away from our routines, but it’s easier to find ourselves when we take the time to get lost in the first place.

July 16, 2012

on happiness, the embrace and fear of it.


sometimes there are things that come upon you and crack you open. you feel as if someone has shaken you and covered you in the most foreign feelings you can imagine.

sometimes you have good day after good day and happiness becomes something you can hold. you can feel it in your hands. and the fear of being hurt, though it never goes away, is shadowed by the fear of being happy. and the things you most want become things you push away because that's your instinct. you think, if i have this good thing then that makes it real which means it’s an actual possibility that i could get hurt. but bigger than all of this is the fear of not taking a chance, of not giving yourself the chance. the chance to see how good something can be. the chance to acknowledge how much good you deserve.

if you carry these prayers with you you’ll learn that your love and approval are all you need. 

sometimes you have to sit with yourself. sit and do nothing. this takes work.

you have to sit and feel what you're most afraid of. you have to feel the things you've been pushing down inside of you and you have to hold them in your hand, the things you used to allow to weigh you down. and you get to a moment where you can hear these things and feel yourself slowly letting them go. you know what you want. you will get there. you must learn to be patient with yourself. this is just as crucial as learning to love yourself. 

it takes time and work, actual work, to recognize happiness, to embrace it. to hold it to your heart and say, i remember you. i’ve missed you. i’m choosing to keep you around.

happiness is running and loving it, feeling like you could keep doing it if you didn’t have to shower and go to work and do other things that need to be done. happiness is feeling how strong you’re becoming and looking down at your legs while you’re running and thinking, i built those muscles. i’m building this body. i’m building a beautiful life for myself.

we must build the life we want. no one else will do this for us. nor should we be looking for someone else to do this job.

my life is my job.

happiness is eating a sandwich on a bench and not filling the silence. happiness is loving silence. 

happiness is realizing how blessed you are to sit next to a man and not feel the need to fill silence. to sit with a man you can be still with. that is a blessing.

happiness takes time. and it takes time to be able and willing to take time with yourself.  

July 14, 2012

speak louder.


(via)

July 10, 2012

on men, part 1 of 1,000.

i'm a fan of men, real men. 

paul newman, jimmy stewart. men who wear ball caps with fish on them. men who open doors. men who kiss me for no reason. men who cook, and are good at it. men who ask questions and wait for the answers. men who ask follow-up questions. men who listen. men who ask how i slept. men who ask about my week when they call on sunday night and how my tuesday is going smack in the middle of it. men who put on sinatra and dance with me in their living room and spin me. twice. men who smoke cigars while shopping for fruit. men who drive buses and wait for people running to catch up to them. men who make plans. men who remember what i mentioned in passing six weeks ago. men who look so good in a suit you want to applaud. men who reach for my hand when they can tell i'm nervous.

men who whisper beautiful things in my ear causing me to cry tears of gratitude and joy.

i'm thankful, so thankful.

July 9, 2012

one version of heaven.

we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. -ernest hemingway

July 8, 2012

starting the week off right.




a cool and quiet morning walk, the sunday paper, and this woman. 

this woman. 

things that set my soul right.

July 5, 2012

tiny beautiful things, part 1 of 1,000. in list form, of course.

1. this list from nora ephron, which inspired me to write my own. (i found myself nodding over and over at both parts of hers. we agree on many things, especially our love for bacon, fireworks, laughing, and twinkle lights.)

what i won't miss

humidity
dusting
asthma
people without manners 
people without warmth
the brutal parts of chicago summers and winters
clowns
beauty magazines
tabloids
taxes
mushrooms 
high heels
bees/wasps/anything that stings
allergies
lactose intolerance
the cta
sunburn 
tardiness
people who talk at the art institute


what i will miss

baseball
babies
sunday mass followed by big breakfasts
breakfast in bed
reading in bed
steak tacos and lime margaritas on the rocks
dogs
cats
people full of warmth
hot baths
farmers' markets
sam cooke
kisses
it's a wonderful life
running
sunday football 
pedicures
sausage and peppers from tufano's
curling my eyelashes
kentucky
lilacs
pink and white tulips 
lemon cheesecake
the things they carried
the godfather (not part III) 
new york
italy 
pepperoni pizza and root beer
spring and fall in chicago
e.e. cummings 
tea at molly's kitchen table
beers on anna's front porch
libraries
butterflies
chili
onions 
christmas cards
having my hair cut
gardens 
plays
peanut butter
pumpkin pie
grilled cheese
sandwiches of all kinds 
rainy afternoons at the art institute
martha stewart
the way a hardware store smells
and this from john steinbeck: "don't worry about losing. if it is right, it happens—the main thing is not to hurry. nothing good gets away." 

nothing good gets away. i will carry this prayer in my pocket.

2. this article about a women's running club in texas. a strong reminder of the power of female friendships. and just how healing both they and running can be.

3. plans, plans, plans. having things on the books. i cherish this.


July 4, 2012

Something I'm still trying to learn.


“you cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” 

-Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

July 1, 2012

in the now.



in jim's office on thursday he said something several times, most likely to make sure i was listening.  

be in the now. 

whatever you're doing, try to focus only on that and the person you're sitting next to. don't think about work or your writing or the gym or your body. just be. you deserve to be happy. let yourself be happy. 

he repeats the last one a lot. 

i tell him the truth, that i’m trying.

this weekend i tried extra hard. i saw family and friends for a little lady's birthday party. i took too many pictures, like always. it was a beautiful day, surrounded by love and giggling children, everyone delirious and exhausted from the heat. 

and then, in a wonderfully tiny mexican restaurant i sat across from a man who makes me laugh and smile until my face hurts. i didn't think about other things. i looked at his face, those eyes, and the food on our plates. everything was better. 

i no longer want to entertain the thought of how much i miss because it's hard for me to be in the now

 p.s. jim, i'm always listening.