Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Short and tiny.

I am having such a great reading week so far. Thank you to my husband and my blogger Secret Santa friend.

The Other Language by Francesca Marciano


There is something to be revered about the successful short story writer - I am convinced it's a mix of part art, part science, part innate talent. Many of the characters were better developed, with more personal depth achieved in a few pages, than entire chapters from some novels out there. From a never-before worn, yet endlessly adored Chanel dress to learning a new language to sharing an intimate experience with thousands as one, I am a big believer in books finding their way to you when you need them the most. This one was exactly it. 

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories (Vol. 1 & 2) by Joseph Gordon-Levitt


As if any of us had another reason to love on JGL, he mentally architects this creative concept series and then collaboratively engineers it into fruition with the beautiful, brilliant, poignant works of anon writers and artists everywhere. I just sat there, in wonder. 


Monday, December 29, 2014

Day 5 - Your dreams

I remembered today, while we're still in National Letter Writing month:

I completely fell off the bandwagon with my 30-day letter writing challenge. For years now.

This was an incomplete, private entry from earlier this year, when I got laid off 14 days into the new year. I am coming up on my third month at my new job soon, and when the senior marketing coordinator piped up, What? You've only been here for two months?, It was exactly what I was thinking. 

What a difference a change of season makes.


Dear Dreams,

This isn't exactly how I wanted to start off 2015, unemployed and unsure of where life is taking me. It being the year I turn 30 and all later this fall, I thought I was finally going to settle in and put my tumultuous twenties behind me. Mainly because I am so ready to turn this page already. 

And yet here I am, struggling with feelings of inadequacy and acute anxiety this week, trying, trying, trying, trying to snap out of this depressive fog I've mentally created and enveloped myself in.

There have been moments throughout these last few days where I am overwhelmingly grateful that we don't have a child to care for while I am job-searching, wondering what's next. I know it's a process - and yet this in-between place. It feels dark and scary and lonely, making it hard for me to think about my dreams. 

My dreams. They seem like a luxury now, a defense mechanism I am hanging on to in order to forget about what's at hand, the reality that my share of our household income will be next to zero after this month.




Let it go


How do you let go of a friendship that once invigorated you but no longer feeds you?

Do you try to hold on?

Should you?

A complete life.


And so the year is coming to an end, soon, and as if on cue, a scheduled recurring habit, I always feel a tinge of nostalgia. 

These last few years have been some of the best ones of my life, and in spite of my social circles shrinking from year to year, and my days becoming less complicated, I have never felt more full, more whole. 

2014 was the culmination of so many dreams come true. He carried me through the door into our first home together. I walked across the graduation stage as they called my name. I wore a crown of flowers in my hair and danced with childhood friends until I could no longer feel my body, just the music and laughter. 

There are days where I wish I could store every single memory to adore them, over and over again. And yet I know their beauty resides in the moment, in the being, that is fleeting, evading.  

Sunday, December 28, 2014

It'll always feel like the first Christmas

Our first Christmas together, five years ago, he had built for me a small nightstand, white in color, imperfect in its construction, an English version of Le Petit Prince carefully stacked between other titles while my cousins gifted me the original version, in French, that same year. 

I have had four different addresses recorded to my name since then and gasped out loud at his suggestion of donating the item, made with love from his two hands, when we moved in our new home the first week of this soon-to-be past year. 

Hands that continue to build and fix and make this home more his and mine and ours together. That is his love language to me while I am still trying to find out my own for him. 

And while we sat there, buried in blankets with no heat in the house, him caressing me while I grasped on to a vintage book he managed to track down for me, both of us breathing quietly, staring at the Christmas lights illuminating our faces and bodies across the living room, he said things to me that made the illusion of time between then and now oscillate between five hours and five decades all at once. 

All is well because we understand each other. All is well because we have each other.

Monday, December 1, 2014

Day 4 - Your sibling (or closest relative)

Dear Brothers,

There are three of you so to be fair, I won't play favorites. At least openly. Heh.

Thanksgiving just passed and while I was a terrible daughter, not calling our father to wish him happy birthday until four days later, I'm not half as bad of a sister if I told you I am thankful for each of you and love you.

All this to say: It's kind of comical, yet totally logical, for me to realize that I feel -- that I am -- so much closer to each of you than to our own parents, combined.

We've had our disagreements and arguments, but we've always been in the same boat -- whether it was sailing or sinking, we taught each other to swim and held on to each other when we drowned. We saved each other and continue to do so -- through tears, through laughter, throughout the years, together.

And while I've frequently found myself envying other people's relationships with their mothers or fathers, I've never once wished for, nor thought about having, any other brothers but you.

(Except, of course, having a sister. But that doesn't count.)

I'm glad that I have been the kind of sibling you can turn to in your times of sadness as much as your times of happiness.

If I don't become a mother in this lifetime, I'll still die smiling, holding on to all of our memories together as sister and brothers.

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