Get to

Over the past few years I have grown to believe that our attitude and perspective are what ultimately shape our realities.  Far gone are the days in which I wallow, allowing myself to become sick with sadness or grief especially when viewing the same scene from a different angle can change everything.

Not too long ago I was having a conversation with someone, mostly small talk.  He asked me something, something I think I’m asked every single day, but it was the way he asked that helped me realize something pretty profound.  “Do you get to work today?”

You see that.  In one single word, I suddenly felt privileged to go to work.  Yup. I felt privileged to throw on that dirty old shirt and apron and wait tables.  Its funny because most days its just something I have to do, but getting to leaves such an implication of gratitude.  Have to and get to.  Have to leaves you with a taste of obligation, its a chore.  Having to do anything makes it sound painful, as though it is against your will.  Get to… that is an opportunity.

Its been interesting to see how applicable this simple concept is, especially having gone through some turmoil recently. I have a tendency to blame myself when relationships don’t work out.  I’ve always had this knack for finding something I did wrong somewhere at some point.  This last one has had me rather perplexed. Now I can’t say that I was perfect, because I wasn’t nor will I ever be.  But for the first time in my life, in all my lost relationships, I was having a hard time figuring out where it was I went wrong.  Its been in this idea of ‘get to’ that has helped me see not necessarily where I went wrong, but maybe where he did.

I had always looked at him with the eyes of ‘get to.’  I get to see him today.  I get to text him.  I get to hear from him.  I get to spend time with him.  I get to kiss him.  For just a moment in time, I get to have him.

I like to believe that as least for a short time he looked at me with those same eyes, but as time went on things gradually began to change.  I have to text her.  I have to hang out with her tonight.  I have to talk to her.  I have to pay attention to her.  I have to tell her she’s pretty.

What once was a retreat, had suddenly become a cage, a release turned into a burden.  This one single solitary word, the ‘have’ in ‘have to’.  It shadows any light.  It transforms qualities into flaws.  It shades any ounce of hope and joy into a job, a workload and just one more thing to have to worry about.

I don’t blame him for us not working out.  I mean, maybe I do a little bit, but I think as elusive and frustrating as the sentiment that “time heals all wounds” can be, the same cliché that “timing is everything,” is equally yet annoyingly true.  Perhaps at a different time in his life or a different time in mine, we would have been more prepared for one another, in such a way that our time together would always be a reprieve from the trials of life and never an encumbrance.

I’m going to make it a goal for the next little while to replace all my have’s with get’s.  The fact of the matter is, is I don’t have to do anything… but I do I get to.

I get to go to the gym.  I get to eat healthy.  I get to work.  I get to make money.  I get to pay bills. I get to go out on dates. I get to, I get to, I get to...

I am an older sister

We’re about to get real mushy, just come along for the ride.

I am an older sister.  I have an older brother, but no older sister so I don’t really know what its like.  I’ve never really had a female figure like that to look up to and take cues from.  I do have a little sister, so for her, I am that older sister.  I’ve never really looked at myself like a role model for her though.

I can easily say that of my siblings I am by far the closest with my sister and I know she shares that same sentiment.  While there are a handful of things she and I have in common, I mean, bizarre things that most people shouldn’t have in common, on most levels we are completely different. I always laugh when someone says we look like sisters.  Let’s be honest, nothing about us physically is remotely similar, literally nothing.  Oh wait, I take that back.  We both have long torsos.  Yup, that must be the dead giveaway that we are related, those long Maki torsos.

All that aside the fact remains that we’ve always been pretty independent from one another.  She always had her art thing, I did the sports. She was more a relationship girl while I was more a date anyone and everyone kind of girl.  She the introvert, I the extrovert.  When she was really young we didn’t along at all, but here in these later years we’ve gotten pretty close.  Despite how close we are though we’ve always just kind of done our own thing and walked to the beat of our own drums.

Recently my dearest little sister got engaged.  This is happy news and I am incredibly happy at the man she found to spend her life with.  This news was bittersweet for me however, due in part to the fact that I am not married, nor am I engaged, nor am I even dating anyone.  Even though I’ve never really seen myself as the “big sister” figure, showing my sister the ropes or helping her through life’s different stages, I felt a sudden loss at the fact that she would be getting married before me.  At some point in time, somewhere written in my brain was this thought that it should happen to me first, because I’m older.  I should be able to offer her advice, do’s and don’ts, how to’s… but I can’t.

I have felt rather stunted and incapable, lesser even.  There have been several times during this wedding planning process that I’ve withdrawn because I just don’t know what to do.  I don’t know how to handle being sad that she’s getting married and that I’m not even close.  I remember when she got engaged, I went into a dating frenzy, as if I could hurry up and find a husband before she got married.

At least dating someone gave me some comfort through all of this.  It was just nice not to feel so alone.  When that relationship didn’t pan out I felt myself pulling even further away from everything.  A week or so ago I remember I could hear my mom downstairs with her phone on speaker, hands a mess in some meatloaf.  On the other end was my sister, audibly crying, upset that she hadn’t picked the right wedding dress.  I felt sad for my sister, but I couldn’t help but feel envious.  There isn’t anything I wouldn’t give to trade the woes of my rejected and aching heart, for that of being apprehensive over a wedding dress.  I’d wear a paper sack down the aisle if it meant I could be married.

I’ve had a lot of mixed emotions lately and felt a lot of uncertainty about myself.  My mantra has always been to take things one day at a time and that’s how I’ve been handling everything, to the best of my ability each and every day as it comes.  Something happened the other night though that though that brought it all back and reminded what I really am, I am an older sister.

My sister and her fiancé are improvers and do a weekly show.  My mom has always been a big supporter, going out to the shows and sitting by herself at times.  I on the other hand, almost never go. While I love watching my sister and her fiancé on stage and enjoy the show, I find the other patrons in the audience to be just beyond my toleration level.  That and I tend to work a lot, preventing me from attending.  This last Friday they had their debut performance of their new improv troop and since I wasn’t working, nor did I have any dates lined up, I had no reason not to go.

Now my mom was there, which is common, and my dad was there, much less common, even my brother and sister-in-law came, which I don’t know how many times they had attended but if I had to guess it was probably about as often as myself.  All these family members showed up to offer their support… but I saw how my sister’s face lit up when she saw I was there.  She thanked my parents for being there but went on to express a genuine gratitude for my presence, it was unfounded for me.  Even after the show she thanked me for coming and on Facebook she thanked me some more.

It was then I realized that in spite of the fact that she is getting married before me, in spite of how much of a colossal failure I am at relationships, and in spite of how differently we approach life… she really does look up to me.  I am her big sister and that means something, regardless of my missteps and imperfections.

I saw a memes recently that was a picture of a dog and the caption, “be the kind of person your dog thinks you are.”  Well here and now I want to be the kind of person my sister thinks I am.  If she can look at me like that and think I’m something special, that I’m someone worth looking up to, than damn it, I had better be it.

Someone worth hoping for

Hope.  My arch nemesis.  We meet again.  All too often you have gotten the better of me, but now I think I’ve done it.  I have finally figured you out.

For years hope has lifted me up only to crush me in unimaginable ways.  It was this misguided mistress leading me down a path of ruin, while I blindly followed behind faithfully, favoring some sort of happy ending.  I blamed all my sorrows on hope, feigning that hope was wasted on the hopeless.  Well no more.  This week shall go down in history because I have finally learned that hope is not my enemy, hope is my friend.

The philosophy that happiness is not a set of circumstances, but rather a choice, isn’t a new concept.  My circumstance are what they are, I want someone I can’t have.  Its an age old tale in the book of Noelle.  Once again, am I going to make these unrelenting and unchangeable set of circumstances my prison? Or turn them into a palace?

If all these years of heartache have given me anything, it is an exuberant amount of will power and tenacity. I can be happy, I will be happy, and no one will stop me.  I’ve gotten really good at finding ways to stay positive and remain optimistic in the face of rejection.  I’m proud to say that I’ve transformed a lot of my prison cells.  Yet the biggest hurdle has always been hope.  

Its usually right around the time that I think I’ve gained control of the situation.  Its the instant when I finally think I’m strong enough to move on.  That is the precise moment when a glimmer of hope drifts into the darkest corner of my mind and has me believing, “hey, I don’t need to redecorate this prison cell, I can actually get out of this one and get what I want for a change.”  Next thing we know I’m back at square one.  I’m dreaming of him, wondering what I should say to him when I find the courage to text him, and planning our miraculous reconciliation.  Its a dangerous spiral towards a pit of anguish and despair.

I have decided to bring hope back from the dark side, because here in the light hope is going to help me out big time.  You ready for what Noelle learned this week?  Here it is.  I learned that the reason hope has bitten me in the ass so many times before is because I spent a lot of time hoping for the wrong things.  I would run into him at the unlikeliest of places and hail it as a sign from the heavens that we were meant to be together.  A week would be spent hoping that he would come to the same holy realization as me and come running back to me.  I would receive an unexpected text message to see how I was doing and I’m suddenly hurled back into the belief that he cares, he still cares, my lordy he still cares!  I love the quote that when hope is hungry, anything will feed it.  Small gestures are magnified and coincidences are labeled as fate.

But today is a new day, here in this day I will not hope for him to come back.  Hoping for him to come back to me will only result in heartache, disappointment, and alas even more rejection, because it just isn’t going to happen, no matter how much I hope for it to.  It would make about as much sense as hoping to win the lottery and dreaming of all the things you’ll buy with the money, when you don’t even have a lotto ticket.  Instead, I need to hope not for his return, but for his replacement.  Someone new, someone better, and someone who deserves my love is a much more realistic hope that I can hold onto.  It is a hope that can pull me out of this.  No longer will all this hope I have inside me be wasted on the wrong person. Hope is on my side now, hope is my friend, and she’s gonna help me find someone worth hoping for.

If I must

If I must be sad

Let it be short

Let it be gone by morning

If I must weep

Let it be soft

Let it be simple

Let not my body ache

If I must hurt

Let it sting lightly

Let me endure

Let me be brave

If I must miss him

Let it be brief

Let me move on

If I must let him go

Let me do so quickly

Let me find the strength

If must be broken

Let me find every piece

Let me fix me once more

If I must have love

If I must NEED love

Then just once, please once

please

Let me find it

Let me have it

Let me keep it

To whom it may concern... but not really

Tonight I took a stroll down memory lane. I’ve been unable to sleep tonight as this most recent of rejections has my heart under arrest, flitting about in my chest as if I drank a red bull then hopped into bed. Its annoying really, to be as tired as I am with a full day of work looming over head, and not a wink of sleep happening. In light of my previous blog I have taken on new coping mechanisms for heart ache, don’t worry, I tell myself every morning that I am 27 and I am brave (I think its actually working). But tonight I thought I would roll back and satiate my need to write but using one of my tried and true methods, the unsendable letter.

Ya ever get that inkling that you never quite got to say what you really meant? Or tell that person how you really felt? Well, I’m a self diagnosed crazy person, so more often than not my thoughts are better left to myself, but it helps me to get all the words out… so he get’s a letter, one that I never send. Sometimes two, three, even four letters, each one residing in my computer. Ha, if only these boys knew how tortured I was, but that’s not the point. The point is that in some small way, writing this letter helps bring me just a little bit of peace and a little bit closer to acceptance.

Tossing and turning until four in the morning, I finally decided that an unsendable letter was in order. I grabbed my Jurassic laptop from the desk and began spilling my heart out onto the screen. To my dismay this letter left me feeling rather unsatisfied. Maybe because the wounds are still so fresh, or maybe because I thought this one understood me and after writing my letter, it seems like he has grievously misunderstood me. Regardless of the why, the fact remained that I still felt rather lousy, but then something kind of neat happened…. Wait for it…

I went to save my unsendable letter and being as organized as I am, I would naturally have a file containing all the letters I wrote but never sent. Sometimes when in a melancholy mood I treat myself to a bowl full of misery. Perhaps I wanted to punish myself further tonight, but I was curious as to what some of those old letters contained as quite a few of them were written years and years ago. I opened one and began reading… the feelings I had written… the pain, the hopelessness, the anguish… all these feelings I felt all those years ago are the same exact ones I’m feeling now. Here is this past letter I had written for someone, about feelings I had felt very intensely at the time I wrote it, and yet here and now I feel completely fine about it. I don’t still miss them, although according to each of my letters I thought I would miss each one for eternity… but I don’t. The feeling of an epiphany never gets old folks. The saying that time heals all wounds could be the most useless statement when suffering heart ache, yet the most profoundly truthful saying with hindsight.

The letter I wrote tonight didn’t help me much. It was nice to get some things off my chest but what has really helped ease my caffeine powered heart are all those old letters. The proof that it actually does get better. Here I had written that it would never get better, that I would never find someone new, that I would never move on, and wouldn’t you know it, I moved on to five other heart breaks and subsequently wrote about those ones. I am sad, might be sad for a little while and that’s okay, because it will get better. Someone else will come along… he’ll probably break my heart too but we can worry about that one later.

I am 27 and I am brave

Breath in
Breath out

Don’t forget to breath…

I haven’t written in a while... like 9 months a while. I blame my computer, it freezes all the time and I pretty much want to throw it out the window. As I am laying here I thought to myself, why let this computer get me down? Why let it defeat me? I will not let this device conquer me! I will write when I damn well feel like writing, and right now I feel like writing.

Nothing unique is happening in my life. I live in the same house, I have the same job, and I have the same story, my heart is broken. What is unique is I am no longer 23. That‘s actually not new information, I haven‘t been 23 for nearly four years now. Here this very night, amidst this freshly broken heart of mine there was a moment that I screamed that I wished I was 23. Why 23? Years and years and years ago, back when I was in high school I had this dream that I would be married by 23, at the time it seemed like the perfect age. Then this crazy thing happened when I turned 22, I got baptized. Which to me meant I no longer had the stigma of being a “non-member” holding me back from this teenage dream of being married by 23. But 23 came and went, so did 24... And 25... And now 26. Yeah, still not married, not even close, not that I was close before this hurt my little heart strings, I mean, we hadn‘t dated for very long, but I‘m certainly less close tonight than I was a week ago. I cried for a minute, but after the initial sting of rejection wore off, my breathing slowed and returned to normal, I thought over this little outburst, and I’m actually pretty grateful that I’m not 23.

You see, 23 year old Noelle would have handled this little heartbreak situation very differently. She would start off by throwing a serious pity party. She would personally invite misery, doubt, and self loathing to throw up a chair and enjoy some refreshments. Twenty three would close the curtains, turn off all the lights and cry and cry and cry, believing the notion that maybe if she suffered long enough, this boy who broke her heart might come back. It’s a crazy thought process I know, 23 was a real whack job. Twenty three was prone to this self perpetuated suffering for weeks. Lots of angsty poetry and writing, really cry baby status updates on Facebook, basically she was a hot mess crying for attention and approval from any which way she could get it. Twenty three needed lots of validation and convincing that she was still worthwhile and desirable, in spite of the rejection from her beloved.

Each year between 23 year old Noelle and now, nearly 27, have taught me a lot. Twenty six has been rather fearful, more so than all the years before it. Apparently all those negative experiences in relationships have really got 26 backed into a corner like a frightened little child. Twenty six has been afraid to fail and not live up to personal expectation and the expectations of others. She’s been afraid to walk away from bad situations, feeling an overwhelming obligation to see things through to an end. The worst of it, 26 has been so afraid to trust people and let herself enjoy a good thing for fear of how much it may hurt when the good thing ends.

Well 26, no more I say. No more fear, because 27, she is brave. She will live and let live, love and let love. She will not cry for weeks because some boy was afraid to love her, she will fight for happiness. She will fight every day to be the happiest damn person in the room, even if it annoys everyone around her. Twenty seven, unlike all the years before her has let go of this unbridled need for approval. Twenty seven knows she is awesome and she will not be knocked down by some silly rejection. She will open the curtains, take the rejection and flip it the bird! Twenty seven doesn’t have time to waste being sad like 23 had, she’s only got time to be motivated and take on the world.

For the better part of the last few months I have been dreading turning 27, but now, I’m just going to start telling people I already am 27, because I already think she’s much cooler than 26, and 25, and 24, and especially that wussy 23. I am twenty seven and I am brave.

tonight I feel like crying

I haven't written in a long time.  I've been too busy trying to pretend I'm fine.  Here I thought I had turned a new leaf on my blog, writing nothing but happy anecdotes, but sometimes its just too tiring to be happy and brave all the time... so tonight I'm going to let myself cry and let myself be sad.  I think in light of the situation, its pretty justified... its about my one that got away.

.....

I walked away. He gave me a choice, it was him or this new guy. At the time it all made so much sense.  In all honesty it seemed like I didn’t really have a choice, it felt like fate had stepped in and decided for me. Now months and months and months after the fact, I’m still suffering from losing him.

I work in a restaurant that plays country music. Most days I am fine.  My mind is too preoccupied with tables orders and salads and drinks. I don’t have much time to stand around listening to the white noise coming from the juke box. But Thursdays are absolute torture. I hostess on Thursdays, so I stand up there at the hostess stand, more or less forced to listen to songs that I’m certain were written for the soul purpose of prolonging my suffering. Every song reminds me of him… songs that he once played for me, dedicated to me… they play on repeat. Some lyrics remind me how foolish I was for letting him go while others paint a bleak picture, knowing I’ll never really get over him.

I know our love wasn’t perfect and we never could quite seem to find ourselves on the same page, more than anything I don’t think I was ready to be loved like that. It was frightening because I felt so responsible for his happiness. I always felt some sort of pressure because of it… so I would leave. I would go out in search of something and then I would always return to him, but this time I cannot return. I left him for someone that presented all the qualities I thought he lacked, the qualities I thought I needed. In that sense, I am glad that I left because I learned that the things I thought I needed were absolutely useless to me. What I needed is what I had had all along, I was just too naïve to see it.

My pride kept me from crawling back… I told myself that it was too much, that I made too big of a mistake and he would never take me back for it. I took a break from dating for a few months, I felt that maybe I needed to clear my head and just let things happen for a change… but then nothing happened. No knight in shining armor waltzed into my life to rescue me and sitting around by myself left me longing for him more and more. So then I began dating again, any male with a pulse.. That’s pretty much been my motto since the new year. Some weeks I felt like I needed a secretary to take care of my schedule.

A week or so ago I was at work one night. When I got off I noticed I had a missed call from him. I was so excited and scared, I didn’t know why he would call but I didn’t care, he had called me finally. It had given me hope. I had text him a few times since the new year, but he ignored them, I had thought that maybe the number I had for him was no longer his, but sure enough, there his number was as a missed call on my phone. I hurriedly text him to inquire about the call and for the first time in months did he respond, but to my dismay it was a cruel joke at the hands of a mutual friend… at least he was talking to me. It had been nothing but silence for so long that I’d almost forgotten what it was like to talk to him, albeit text messages.

Since that little prank I’ve been sick, not really knowing what to do… I asked him for closure and he dismissed it… but today I asked him outright. I needed to know if my hopes for a reconcile were childish and unrealistic. I needed to hear him tell me that we would never get back together again. When I had left all those months ago he had told me that he would never say never… that has left me with far too much hope that maybe things can go back, that maybe we could give it just one more try. When I text him today I didn’t want him to say never… never would mean the end of all my hope… but hearing never from him, and knowing for certain would be a far lesser pain than sitting here in limbo, blindly hoping for something that would never happen.

For a moment after sending the text I thought maybe, just maybe he still loved me, even just a little bit, enough to listen to me and tell me so… but no.  Like I had dreaded, he told me never.

A part of me wonders if he still reads my blog… if he does I would want him to know how much I love him and that I never stopped loving him. I would want him to know that I needed to leave so I could know for certain about he and I, so I could know how great we really were for each other. I would want him to know that it wasn’t until I was with someone else that I realized how much I had put him through, that I couldn’t really appreciate how much he truly loved me until I met with someone who was indifferent towards me because of my flaws… the flaws that he had embraced. I needed to learn those things to make my love for him as powerful as it is today. I don’t know what would have happened to he and I if I had chosen him all that time ago. If I had to wager a guess, I don’t know that we would have survived anyway. I had an unfounded love for him at the time, but it was always laced with a pinch of doubt and a hint of uncertainty, by now we probably would have broken up anyway…

… so I learned what I needed to. I finally learned how to love him as deeply and profoundly as he loved me. As much as it hurts me, I am grateful for the journey that he and I took together. For every single up and down. He was with me through some of the darkest hours of my life and I would hope he knows how eternally grateful I am for that. I am grateful to know that my heart is capable of loving someone this much, in spite of how painful it is. My only hope is that the pain begins to dull and I can start to really heal. He told me never, that we wont work, and that I should move on. I told him I would never stop loving him, and I meant it.  I love him still and always will.