Very tired, but ready....I think.  Up at 4:30 tomorrow.  I feel so much support and good wishes from everyone.  My heart is full!  I cannot believe this trip is really happening.  I hope I can write soon and share my travels with my friends and family.  See you in Africa!

Packing

After meeting with Sherri the other night we finally decided on the zillion and one games we're bringing for the school and family we're staying with.  I attempted to pack yesterday and got discouraged not by the amount of stuff in my bag, but by the weight.  The maximum weight designated by the airline is 48 pounds.  Every additional pound costs roughly $35!  So the question is what do I leave behind... tough one.

Fog

The fog rolled in on Sunday and spread its unrelenting fingers over the coast. On my walk to the beach I could see the distant hills bathed in sunlight and blue sky, a reminder that happiness lies just out of reach for me at this moment in my life. It’s there, waiting patiently for me to arrive, but I figured out that I have to come to it. It won’t knock on my door. That fact really pisses me off and yet I have no choice, but to seek it out. In fact it is an agonizing ongoing journey, this “happiness thing,” and I’m hoping my stamina grows as I proceed because right now I am exhausted. I am mentally, physically, and emotionally wiped out. I just keep thinking “make it to the airport!”

The jewel in my eye at the moment is, of course, my trip to Africa. I want it to be so many things that I might just be sabotaging myself. I know it won’t be the cure to my disease of sorrow and despair, but it most certainly will be eye opening and amazing. Amazingly beautiful, amazingly shocking, amazing-horrifying, amazingly profound in ways I don’t know yet. I’m ready to feel those emotions, gain some perspective and move beyond these foggy days.

Holding Pattern

In less than one month I will be in Africa. In the mean time I am stuck in a flight pattern that is going nowhere. I am waiting to finish the school year, waiting to leave on my trip, waiting to rent my house out for the fall, waiting to move up to the city, but nothing has actually happened yet. After being so idle last year, unable to move beyond my depressed coma on the couch, I am now more than ready to start my life again. Lately I have felt a great deal of regret for that “lost” time, feeling like everyone was busy doing amazing things while I was paralyzed by my loneliness. However, I understand now the time wasn’t lost. I needed to grieve over the changes in my life. It was essential before I could move forward, so I suppose it was time well spent on me. Compassion for the self is a difficult skill to learn. It’s so much easer to be your own harshest critic.

Audible Inner Voice

My friend in a semi-crisis texted me this today:

Give in or take risk? Arg!

I laughed out loud because of how intimately I know the feeling. The unknown is crippling, incapacitating and yet necessary in so many instances to improve my life. Why does it have to be such a mind-numbing dilemma? I guess it all comes down to how well I know my inner voice. How much I trust myself and by this I mean the true self unclouded by societies norms, family expectations, and everything else the media and people around me project. I never understood until recently how crucial an audible inner voice is to a successful life. Because ultimately only I know what I want despite my earlier assumption that others might be wiser.

With much practice over the past year I have fine-tuned my hearing to pick up this internal whisper, which as luck would have it gives pretty shrewd advice. So as long as I remember to turn the volume of other things down and listen carefully I can retain that critically perceptive insight only I can provide. A daily activity, which is exhausting, but profoundly worthwhile.

The Ascent Begins

I was talking to a friend the other night over dinner about the struggles in my life. She said, “It sounds like you have done a lot of settling over the years.” I sat there for a moment frozen, listening to the hum of the restaurant and the clanking silverware, unable to respond to her very observant, honest answer.

In response to this notion, with the reality that at 32 I have already let many things I desired silently drift by I am creating this blog. It is a chronicle of my ever-changing battle to push forward through a divorce, depression and creating a new life alone. It is a journal of what I have learned and continue to learn from my mistakes. It is also an excavation through layers of the past in an attempt to discover how I truly wish to live my life, to unearth the things that make me want to get up in the morning. I am tired of feeling like everyone is on a well-marked trail to the summit while I am bushwhacking on a distant side of the mountain. The only thing I know for sure is that I adamantly refuse to quit despite how tired I am and how many wrong turns I’ve taken. The ability to continue on for me is possible because of the connections I have made with others who have suffered through some of life’s trials and tragedies. Their ability to persevere and become happy, conscious, deliberate members of society allows me to entertain the idea that creating a new and better path is not only possible, but the only true authentic action. My hope is that others in my position can relate to my journey and move forward taking bits of nourishment from my words as they make their own equally challenging ascent.