I have been wondering if I am visible for quite some time. I figured not. However, if I wanted to enter the dating world I should have predicted this. What is it to be seen? I go to therapy every other week to be heard, validated, and appreciated, but I pay for that. Please don’t attempt to see me if I have not explicitly told you to do so.

Isn’t that all we want, is someone to see us? However, when it happens it kind of sucks. Suddenly there you are, like a dream where you are naked and can not find your clothes. See me, see me, but only in the way I want you to. Please let me dictate the vision you have of me, but please see me. Contradictory, definitely.

I hope that I reach a place where I actually want someone to see me for what I really am. I want to stop being so private about myself. Here goes nothing-I am actually very vulnerable. I only cry in therapy. I am not always confident. I have insecurities despite my ability to own a room. I need help sometimes. I am not perfect, or grounded all the time. I have demons. I am a work in progress, always. I drink, smoke, and curse more than I would like. I wonder if I am doing a good job in this world with this life ALL the time. The majority of my struggles come from beating myself up.

That’s it. That’s all.

Being alone is overrated. Day after day I am simply dealing with myself, feeling uncomfortable and lost. Is it natural to have your days only belong to you? We come from tribes and communities that supported each other. The women taking care of each other, the children, the men. The men taking care of the community. When did we become so god damn independent? This city, this place, everyone in their apartments in such close proximity feeling alone. It’s better to feel alone and be alone than to feel alone sitting right next to someone.

I chose this. I wanted this. A couple glasses of wine drunk and all I want is someone to be next to me telling me that it will all be ok. Reminding me that if all else feels empty, I am loved and supported. We were not meant to be alone, not like this. I watch the world go by and all the people in love around me and I just feel sad that I am not a part of it. The songs, the art, the poems are all about what it is to be next to someone. We need that. I need that, to know that all the pain is worth it. Human existence at its finest.

I like lying in bed next to someone. I like knowing that when I don’t sleep at night someone was there to feel my shifting and hear my strained breath as I have a nightmare. My dreams expressed and explored. Real. It’s not all just some idea I have come up with. The soft reassurance of a hand on my leg at a party. A funny story told rather than kept. A song with meaning. A day worth telling.

Lately I have realized just how out of whack several areas of my life have become.Finances, relationships, my career, school, cleaning, health. I am constantly ignoring aspects of my life in hopes of becoming free of them, like ignorance will make everything work out the way it should. However, I am seeing that ignorance leads me straight to the harsh truth that I must diligently take care of that which I have been ignoring.

For most of my life I balanced my finances with a tight fist. It caused me a lot of pain being that way. Being “responsible” with my money never made more appear. It seemed that the more I tried to control it the worse it got. Survival mentality can kick you in the ass because then that is all you are ever doing, just getting by. So, about 5 years ago I decided to take up not caring once cent about my money. I never knew if I would make it each month, I just would. I found it to be refreshing letting go of the reigns. I spent money on anything and everything I wanted and it made me feel like I was living a rich persons life. Unfortunately, living this way has led me to have nothing and now I have to go back to penny pinching and god for bid, paying attention to money. This makes me uneasy, but I have no choice.

This all in or all out mentality has now taken over other areas of my life too. I want it, or I don’t. I am in love or repulsed. I am taking classes, staring a business, and looking into taking on another program, or I am paralyzed and laying on my bed watching shows. What does it take to achieve balance? My guess is discipline, being present, and relaxation.

The pendulum swinging back and forth for years yet never coming to a standstill in the center. I guess that’s the thing about pendulum’s they are always moving. At the Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park there is a pendulum that endlessly swings, proof that the earth is spinning. We need that reminder that we are indeed moving and changing all the time. Life exists orbiting around us with seemingly no control at times, but it is divine how we keep trying to sway in hopes that we will someday return back to the center.

Some magic switch has gone off inside me in my 30′s that says that I should have something. Anything. This is not me depressed, this is just me realizing that whatever I have been working for doesn’t exist. I am still not buying it and I have an empty room to prove it. I own nothing of any monetary value. Is this what I had hoped for?

What is it that I had wanted all along? A house, a couch, a person to sit on it with? I guess all this having nothing just means that I, once again, have an empty canvas to paint whatever I choose. It could be quite exciting. I am sure that anyone who has it everything we were supposed to at 30 might feel jealous that the sky is still the limit for me. No plans. No reflection of what should be. No idea what lies ahead. I have never been able to predict my life from one year to the next and, I suppose, I have always valued that. However, I could understand why people want stability, it’s just nothing I have ever had. Did I create that? How?

Maybe, this is what I have wanted all along. Emptiness. Nothingness.

On the other side of the fear of dying is the intense realization that we are alive, really alive. It is in those moments of contemplating death that I contemplate my life. I realize that nothing means anything. Mostly, I think what am I waiting for? I feel like I am constantly waiting for something else to happen. I have been waiting my whole life to live some life that isn’t mine. We always seem to be working towards something else and then when we get there we make up another thing to get. Really, what am I waiting for? Whose life am I trying to live?

In 2 days I turn 30 and all I want is to appreciate my life for what is has been, is, and will be. My life. The one I have to live with alone. I want to stop waiting for something great to happen and either create it, or rest in knowing that everything is just right as it is. I want to stop pretending that I am anybody other than who I am. I want to let go of self-doubt and be true to myself by bringing my best qualities forward. I want to know that if I die I will have done everything I could to be happy in each moment as it is.

Last night I stayed up because I could. No need to wake up on Fridays. I sat on my back porch, listened to music, and wrote a poem. It has been a long time since this has happened. Flash backs to skipping class to sit by my locker and write poetry. I have written many a poem in my life, but rarely do I actually think they are worth sharing. Nope, not today. How funny that writing a poem is more personal than publishing my thoughts on the inter-web.

Night time used to be my time. Now, bedtime. I want to get back to it. Music, writing, thinking, crying, feeling. When I am night-thinking, that’s what I will call it, I am in some ways really me. No one to talk with, pretend with. No pressure to do a damn thing, but sit and be with myself and how I really feel. It’s just not that often that I admit my true feelings to myself anymore. I spend some time glazing over in order to fit in. The truth is that I am sad sometimes. There are definitely things to be sad about. Not in a negative way. Just sad. I need time to allow myself to move into it now and again or what….resting in comfort.

Perhaps one day I will make my very own schedule. Then, I can night-think and write poetry all I want.

The other day I said something that I never thought I would “I just want to be happy.” I was shocked to hear such simple words float out of my mouth. Why I never! I realized that I have spent my whole life trying to juice out every hidden meaning in hopes that it would fill whatever voids I have been carrying around. I have been turning things sideways, upside-down, and backwards in order to figure out what the hell I am doing here. For a good portion of my life I have been a little dramatic, dark, and awkward. Well, now I am ready to let it all go. The crap, the drama, the pushing so hard, the fighting, the yelling. I will always be an intense, thoughtful person who likes to process, but I am looking forward to gearing those traits towards being grounded and happy. Does that even make any sense? Is that even possible?

As I spend my last days in my 20′s I shall really relish in them. Just for the next 23 days I am going to tell everyone what I think about everything. I am going to dominate all the conversations about all the things that I know, have learned, and experienced. I am going to meet new people and have them leaving thinking “wow she must be in her 20′s.” When people card me at the liquor store I am going to feverishly giggle and say I don’t have it and walk out. I am going to start some shit with some people and create some elaborate web of complicated lies. I am going to talk a lot about how I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I am going to change my hair a few times, get some tatoo’s, and gain weight ony to lose it rapidly from not eating. I will look in the mirror everyday and think about how I should lose weight, go to the gym like a mad women only to destroy it all by drinking and eating shit. I am going to drink like a fish and smoke a million cigarette’s. I am going to make all the decisions for other people because I know best and then I am going to change my mind about all of them. I am going to travel around a bit looking for my happiness in different towns and when I don’t find it, I will return saying that it was the place, not me. Every conversation I start will begin with some intense topic with something to do with self discovery.

On second thought…maybe I will start my 30′s early.

Let me spend a minute appreciating this occasion with positive words and happy thoughts. Gay pride-when the community of gay folks and our wonderful supporters celebrate what it means to fight through oppression and be who we really are despite it. This is when we honor the years that we felt so awkward unable to voice what it really was eating us inside. The turmoil of knowing that you are different and finding our way to be able to tell others that we know that we are different and don’t care. This is when we think back to how awful it felt to be hiding something so natural and wonderful. To the late nights spent awake wondering if anyone would ever accept you for who you are.

It is a celebration of values that sometimes seem to have disappeared, like fashion, sex, and looking good. It’s about living freely and celebrating that most of us will never live the life that we were taught we should. Fighting against our own homophobia and recognizing that the standard American dream is a farce and that the only life worth living is one that we remain true to ourselves. It’s about evaluating what is truly important and leaving the rest for the “normal” people.

Gay pride is to help bring together people for a few days of fun (except for that gay people manage to have fun pretty much all year) in order to support the struggle for rights and forget about all the hatred in the world. I like to pretend for this week while the rainbow flags line Market Street flying high that there is no one who has hate in their heart for people who are different. I forget that people say that being gay is a choice and toast anyone who has enough love to accept all people for who they are. I like to pretend that everyone I know accepts me because I am a good person and that it has nothing to do with my sexual preference overall.

Happy gay pride. Now if we could just get some rights!

I feel like I am on the other side of letting go certain people, but have become saddened by realizing it. It’s almost like I am now processing the fact that I have let go rather than actually needing to do it. There are a lot of wonderful people from my past that I love dearly. There are a lot of people who I wish I could have taken with me to each new life that I have created for myself, but I couldn’t and who knows if they would have even fit in.

Years have gone by repairing old relationships that seemed as if they would never stand the test of change and never unhinge from my heart. But, humans are pretty adaptable creatures. We protect ourselves when someone is lost and manage to let them go. Some people are better at it than others. Although I often play the part of an aloof, confident person who doesn’t care about what comes and goes, I am not. The truth is that I care more than most people and that is why I must protect myself all along the way.

So, I guess that is why I can recognize the moments that represent my ability to let go. Perhaps a memory gets triggered by a song playing in the background of the coffee shop, or the smell of a passerby’s cologne drudges up the person who used to wear it. In that moment I get a chance to ask myself if I have let go. occasionally, the answer is yes.

1. Quit smoking-mostly not completely. My smoking experience has vastly improved. I smoke maybe 5-7 cigarettes a week. I am no longer a regular smoker. I don’t smoke every day. I feel pretty good about it, but know that one day I will need to give it up completely.

2. Drink less-accomplished. I do not drink as much as I used to. It’s crazy how sometimes you accomplish a goal you set out to, some time passes, and you have miraculously accomplished it. I am in a good place with my relationship to the sauce. It doesn’t feel abusive, or forced. I drink when I want to. I know when to stop. I don’t have hangovers very much anymore, but not in the I am an alcoholic way, in the way that I know that I am stopping before it is going to hurt the next day.

3. Get a job I actually like and make money-partially. I got a job that I like. Choosing to be a nanny was definitely a conscious effort towards my happiness. I make more money than my previous job. My career is an ongoing goal because now I am in school to study what I actually want to do with my life and I am hoping that one day it makes a little more than decent living for me. Ok who am I kidding, I want to get rich.

4. Run a marathon-totally nixed from the goal list. I decided that I wanted to get my health in order, not destroy my body. I have been working out a whole lot and eating really well (the benefit of being in school for nutrition). I feel healthy and strong and that’s all that matters to me. Maybe one day I still will, but this is not the year. The goal was to be in the best shape of my life for 30 and I feel like I am pretty damn close.

5. Be disciplined-not really. I wanted to be disciplined enough to do things that I know would enrich my life, like hike, paint, meditate, sing, ect. I have done one painting since I set my goals, so I guess that is something, although I didn’t finish it yet. I still choose to be lazy rather than take a dance class, or do something else creative. I have done some mediation, but not a lot. I will keep working on this one till the day I die.

6. Develop meaningful friendships-yes. I think more than anything that when I decided to reinvest in San Francisco and stay, my perception changed. I do have meaningful friendships here, I just didn’t want to call them that because I had one foot out the door for 3 years. Those people are here, I just have to recognize and appreciate them.

It looks like I still have some work to do, but should also congratulate myself for moving forward.