Tao

This is my sixth round of holidays being single. I guess perhaps in 2017 I wasn't truly single and had someone to exchange Christmas gifts with, and last year I spent Christmas night with that same man, but the further away from all that I get the less comfortable I feel calling it a relationship. It really never got there.  Something I said not too long ago describes it well, we were never nothing, but never something either, just always an almost. It never really got off the ground because he never gave it that chance. For the majority of the past five years with that situation imploding and resurfacing it just always felt so circumstantial, and so unfinished. I have lamented to friends how I really never thought I was still going to be single 5 years after getting divorced but of course I am. How could I have ever been capable of truly connecting and letting anyone else in when I have allowed my heart to remain with someone that never chose me back. When things ended the first time in 2014 he told me not to give my heart up to someone who wouldn't cherish it and I truly had no clue that years later that would ultimately mean no longer giving it to him.

Once requited love is proving to be extremely difficult to let go of but it has been forcing me to spend so much time with myself, and learning my flaws in glaring ways. Living a heart centered life often causes me turmoil, but I'm not sure switching to a more logical way is the answer. Everything I've been learning this last year has pointed more to this idea of balance. To acknowledge the gray of it all and learn to be comfortable in it. To learn how to be more present in the now and not allow myself to spend so much time ruminating over the past and worrying about the future. I've never felt more present in my life than I did on my trip to Europe. I've never felt peace and calmness and genuine contentedness like I did during those magical three weeks. I'm still kinda pissed I allowed an interaction with that man the week I came back to result in me losing that feeling. That yet again I let my hurt from that cause me to descend into despair instead of staying in the high vibration of being satisfied with my life. I haven't seen him since that day and while there's parts of me that seem to be saddened by the idea that I may never see him again, the rest of me can feel how beneficial it has been to my mental health to finally have that space. I know I will continue to wonder if he is happy and wish the ending had turned out differently but I hope the day where I can say with conviction it worked out for the highest good of all involved reaches me soon. For a long time it has felt like my heart has been so sad that it has made the rest of me sick, almost as if I have been a shadow of what I could be.

I know a new year doesn't really mean that anything changes in any real sense, but I do feel like the energy of everyone changes. That everyone is just a little more hopeful than usual, believing that maybe this is the year, this is when things will be different, and so they're a little more open, and try a little harder. I think if you can harness that energy in a productive way and change habits that detract from your goals, than you really can make it be the year that it all changes because we truly are the architects of our own lives, and the change we wish to see in our outward world, begins in our inward world.

A Prayer

Triggers to memories are such an interesting thing. Certain smells, or songs that can take you right back to a specific time in your life. But then there's all sorts of things that we associate with the people in our lives, but you don't recognize them too deeply until they're no longer in your life, whether that be a past love, old friend, or a loved one that has died.

Full moons always make me think about the man most of me wishes to forget at this point. Five years ago he made me a mix CD, titled Harvest Moon with the classic Neil Young song among the sixteen songs. He also gave it to me on the night of the Harvest Moon and I stared at that bright huge moon while I sat in my car and listened the first time through. It's honestly still the most thoughtful and romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.

The part about moving forward that I hate the most is the tendency to try and rewrite the past as if it was all a lie. That because things aren't what I wish them to be now, that it must mean it was never what I thought it was. I really don't want to do that though, I'd much rather leave the memories to be the special moments that they were and believe that whatever happened then was real then no matter the outcome now. I still waiver between feeling hurt, angry, and shame. The first two are easy to understand, the last is harder to integrate. I don't fully know how to make myself believe I'm not an idiot for having sincerely believed I was made to love him. I really did though. I truly felt that all my life experiences and my general nature prepared me well to love him deeply and for what a life with him would be like. Perhaps I wasn't wrong entirely, just wrong about the timeframe.

I haven't prayed in a long long time, I tried to a little in a church during my trip, but it just felt like I was talking to myself. But earlier today while driving home from work I really did pray to the powers that be to just help me let go and move forward with my life. I told them I hoped should I ever see him again that I could hug him, that I could show that I'm truly happy that he's happy, that it's ok I wasn't his choice, that I still believe him to be a good man and will care for him always.  I know I'm a little far away from truly feeling that way, but it's genuinely where I hope to land in regards to this whole mess. I don't like harboring hurt or anger, they take up too much space.

I'm really trying this whole dating thing again and I'm meeting such wonderful people even amidst the abundance of shitty people, but the emotional side of me still feels so fucking closed off. Patience has never been my strong suit but oh I swear I'm trying to really give things a chance. I know there's someone out there worth choosing that will choose me too.

Leaps and Bounds

Decided to participate in this decades challenge even though a part of me is like well this is fucking dumb, it would really be better to do this in January and post something from 2010 January and then that first week of the new decade... which of course will probably fucking happen but I guess the fad just high lights the fact that a lot of people are looking forward to a new decade, perhaps the way I was looking forward to my own personal new decade. I went to therapy for the first time since July on Thursday. I had made the appointment the week before, and honestly I was so grateful I did because even though it was so nice to be in Pittsburgh, it also caused a lot of weird feelings to resurface.

I found myself being drawn into this Psychic Tarot shop and just let myself be in the moment and get a reading. She brought up the man I've been trying so hard to let go of, mentioning twin flames, and all this other shit that just got in my head when I really do feel like I've made progress in moving forward. This little interaction prompted me to check out social media and low and behold there was a brand new family photo and seeing it just broke me. I haven't cried that hard in a while and it was so deflating. Was nice that a friend that knows all the background told me his first thought was what a sham that all is, but I honestly just hope that he's happy.

This little decade challenge has made me think about just how much has happened in a year. While there's definitely a deep sadness still lurking, I went back to my blog from last November and right around this time I was in a much shittier place. I had let myself meet up with this man right after Halloween because I just missed him too damn much, but never told anyone in my life that I was doing it because frankly I knew they'd try to talk me out of it and I just had this overwhelming feeling of needing more time with him. A week later I went to a concert with my best friend and he got so drunk that he physically hurt me when I told him I wasn't buying him anymore drinks and then a little later in the night sexual assaulted me. When I tried to take his hands out of my pants and turn towards him to ask him what exactly he thought he was doing he just started to kiss me. We were right next to a security guard and even though I didn't want what was happening to be happening, my only thought was that if I make a scene he'll get in trouble and I don't want that. So it was as if I turned myself off and just let it happen. A week after this I was supposed to attend a Friendsgiving, the same one I have tonight, and I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't get my mind to stop looping on the thoughts that it would be so much easier if life was just done. But I called my sister, and I called my friend that was hosting, and between them they convinced me it would be good, and so I left my house and it was worth it.

It took me nearly two months to be able to tell my friend what had happened because he didn't remember. The next three months would result in talking to the man nearly every day, seeing him the week after Thanksgiving and then saying it can't happen again, but then caving and seeing him on Christmas, and then once the new year started, definitely talking everyday and meeting up at least once a week. All this time I told no one about him, and I was still dating other people, trying so hard to accept that he didn't want to be in a relationship with me, even though what we were doing certainly had a lot of elements of that, and even though on Valentines Day he told me he loved me too. I'm not sure what I thought was going to happen, I'm not sure if part of me hoped that if he could just remember all the good of us, he'd want me back?  Eventually I met someone I thought was worth it, someone I genuinely wanted to try and be in a relationship with, so for once I was the one who ended things, but it didn't matter. I still ended up feeling like I had lost him all over again and I'm sure that played a large role into why I could never feel anything for the man I started to date this past February. I kept hoping it would change... but it didn't and honestly mostly mutually, we ended things near the end of April.

So its been since April that I have tried to actually be with someone and I felt so fucking jaded and tried hard to say goodbye to the man before I went on my trip. I just so badly had this idea that coming back from that was going to be a new chapter, a better one and I needed to do what I could to wrap up these loose ends. He didn't take me up on my offer to have a goodbye and I just tried to accept that being dead to each other was for the best. When I got back from my trip I had the strongest belief that things were not done, that at some point in the future this will circle back around, but not for a while, not until a lot of things were sorted out. Having that feeling didn't make it any easier to find out he was trying again to work things out with someone else and yet again it feels like I have allowed my hurt about this situation with him, to damper the happiness I feel for everything else in my life...

I tried the apps again, but then quickly lost interest and focused on my test but the test is done, and I'm sincerely trying to be open to the idea that I can find love again. Finally met up with a guy last night after two weeks of chatting, and it was a lot of fun, but he's not over his ex. He thinks he is, but I know better...for now it'll be fun to have someone that asks about the nothings of my day, but it's not going to develop into more and I'm not sure I feel any which way about that.

"I wish I was the moon" feels like my theme song as of late and that's not really feeling like a good sign, but I know without a doubt, where I am today, is leaps and bounds ahead of where I was at last year and I have so much faith that this time next year I will again be leaps and bounds ahead of where I am now.

Death does not discriminate...

Death gives no fucks if you're old or young, if you're rich or poor, if you're ivy league educated, what you identify as, what the color of your skin is, or whatever higher power you prescribe to. It's the one true equalizer and today at 58 years old, my Aunt died. My cousins are 21 and 28 and they lost their mother today and there are no words that feel worthy to say that express how much my heart hurts for them. She has been sick since the beginning of the summer, but had started to get better and they moved her from West Virginia to John's Hopkins a month ago. I've been trying to fit in a visit since, but between a family wedding on my mom's side and studying for the PE, I never managed to do so...

Wednesday of this week she was so weak she needed to be intubated to be able to breathe and then eventually paralyzed and heavily sedated while being pumped with so many different fluids and medicines. By the time I got there with my mother and twin yesterday, she no longer looked like herself at all. We had planned to be there for only a few hours, but it turned into spending the whole day in the hospital, intermittently crying and laughing as the family reminisced and clung to any hope that she was going to pull through.

I wanted to stay, I didn't want to leave, but my twin had work today, and I needed to continue studying... It feels so fucking ridiculous to be worried about a test when my cousins just lost their mom and it was impossible to focus on finishing my practice exam after my mother got the word that my Aunt had indeed passed. I felt so guilty yesterday when I had the thought that I hope the funeral doesn't coincide with the day of my exam. When I voiced this to my sister as we sat at the base of a giant Jesus statue she told me not to do that to myself, that life still goes on. It would be so nice if we could hit pause when shit falls apart, but we cannot.

My cousin just kept saying how much she wished she could have one more conversation with her Mom and I can't even bare to let myself try to imagine what that feels like. This week started off with a good friend's mental health imploding and at the moment it is unclear when they will regain clarity.  Even if it isn't death, sometimes it's illness, or other life circumstances, but you just never really know when the last time with someone you care about,  where you can say how you feel and they will understand or be receptive to it, will truly be.

With work still being too busy and stressful, these horrific tragedies to people close to me and this damn test next week, I've wished more than ever I had someone to come home to. Someone to tell me it's all going to be ok. It's a bummer when you have good news and want to share it with a person who is no longer in your life, but it just adds to the devastation when you realize their arms are what your tired sad frame craves.

It was hard to get up today, I felt like I'd been hit by a truck and I can't even imagine how my cousins feel, or my dad and his siblings, or my sister, who lives close to my cousin and has truly been a rock star since my Aunt was moved to Maryland. When I finally got up and decided to make myself food I kept remembering how the technicians last night at the hospital told us stories about my Aunt just craving pizza. I decided I'd make a pizza with my mother's favorite toppings, onions, peppers, and mushrooms. It felt productive to make myself a meal, and as I cried while I chopped the veggies, it felt like a homage to my Aunt.

I saw this saying about grief that I can't remember all of, but the gist was that grief is just all the love you still have to give that no longer has its desired destination. So in essence the deepness of your pain is just how much you truly loved them and in some sense you can choose to also be in awe of just how lucky you were to have loved that deeply.

What does it mean to heal?

I was reading something the other day that talked about how focusing on letting go is the wrong move, that letting go is actually a by-product of healing and that's where you need to focus your energy. But healing emotional wounds is so different from physical ones... it's hard to clearly identify the extent and the "place" of the wound. I can't flex my muscles or press with my fingers to figure out where it still hurts...

I've been trying to research more things about what it means to "heal" and a lot of what I'm finding is that part of it is really sitting with your emotions and understanding where they stem from at their core, not just the surface level of what triggered them. I think for me personally so much of my pain from the loss of someone I loved deeply activates a childhood wound of not feeling important, of not being chosen. That wound was triggered so many times across my childhood by my parents, but also my twin...and then as I began my romantic life the men I've been in serious relationships with haven't really helped heal it, but have only made it worse.

When I think about the current situation though, the overwhelming feeling is disappointment. I think I let myself get too attached to the idea I had finally found what I've been looking for. The hardest part of now is feeling how much love I still have and yet I have to keep it to myself.  It's hard still worrying about their happiness and I really do wish there was an on/off switch for that.  I'm a big believer that just because something doesn't work out the way you hoped, doesn't mean it wasn't worth it, or that it wasn't exactly what you needed in that moment, cuz would you have wanted it if it wasn't? I like that phrase that everything is either a lesson or a blessing and only time will tell which. Even though there are times when I'm too far down the black hole of sadness I have trouble believing they were ever genuine with me, for the most part I know no matter how hurtful the roller coaster of that experience has been over the last five years, it without a doubt high lighted for me how very right I was to leave my marriage, how very right I was that while life is hard, love is easy when it's right.

I'm sure there will still be many random days ahead where I miss them so much it hurts, but those days are getting further and further apart and that's enough for now. There's no set time frame for healing and I should do a better job at accepting that and be a little nicer to myself when I feel so pathetic for still wishing things had turned out differently. I had never felt so seen and understood, and nothing has come close, so of course it's hard to let go of that, but I keep hearing my buddy's words, if it happened once, it can happen again. 

Feeling off...

I've been feeling out of place lately and I'm not entirely sure what exactly is triggering it or if it's just a mess of things or some inner knowing that understands my life is ready to shift again, to move forward in some profound way. I've been working late hours and pulling away from my social things. Some of that is because I'm trying to take studying for my PE seriously this time and knowing that it's easier to have that time for studying if I'm not doing my sports and if I don't even know about the fun things I could be doing. But I've also pulled away because I've been so wrapped up in sadness the last few weeks. For the last two years that last week of August was accompanied with the rekindling of the on again off again mess I've given too much of my life to the last five years. It has been bitter sweet that history hasn't repeated itself. Most of me knows it's for the best and that maybe this means I finally get to truly move forward, but there's still way too much of me that is feeling the loss all over again.

It's a shitty process getting your heart to accept reality...five years has been feeling like such a milestone, and one where I definitely didn't think I'd still be single.  In the last eight weeks, at least one friend has gotten engaged every week and it's not that I'm not thrilled for these people, cuz I am, it's just that it feels like my singledom is being thrown in my face more than usual. I'm sure it hasn't helped that I had to give an interview yesterday for my ex-husband applying for a national security level job. Some stranger basically asked me to recount our love story and how we used to spend our time together and then summarize my take on his character and suitability for the job. It was a really weird and strange experience and I felt myself jumping out of my skin as I paced back and forth on the front porch of the old converted Victorian house my office is in. Luckily I had lunch plans with one of my oldest friends and her 11 week old baby and her parents as well. Something about holding a baby that makes everything better. But at the same time as I sat and ate with them, I couldn't help but feel the distance that has grown over the last five years. I used to consider them another set of parents, and her, one of my very best friends. Reminded me again of the charge I've given myself over this next decade, to repair the friendships I let wane as I figured my shit out after getting divorced and immersing myself in a new life with grad school and frisbee. At the moment though I feel disjointed from the frisbee world too. I've been a bit of a hermit since moving into my own place, but I think it was necessary. I feel like I've been doing so much reflection the last year, really evaluating what's important to me and the direction I want my life to go in.

I feel good about work, I feel optimistic about my twin and helping him get to a good place, we talked about moving in together next year and I really think that will be a good thing for both of us. I'm feeling less negative about dating, but certainly not positive, perhaps skeptical is the word? Potentially have a first date tomorrow, but staying home sounds more appealing at the moment... it has been a long week. I came back from my birthday trip so on board and ok with my now, I just want to find a way back to that headspace, instead of this one where I'm looking forward to not now...that headspace of waiting for the mystical better future.  Liz Independence is next weekend, two more weddings are on the horizon, things are gonna ramp up with studying and then after the test the holiday craze will start.  Hopefully 2019 wraps up quickly and without any drama.  I have a good feeling about 2020 and I hope my gut is right.

Death is a Bitch

Right now I'm ridiculously busy at work I haven't had much time to think in the last few weeks, and honestly I'm a bit grateful for that, especially on a day like today. I'm usually super low on this day because it's a day five years ago I still consider to be the worst day of my life. Most of me hopes it continues to be that, but I'm sure there are harder ones ahead and hopefully I'll continue to bring stability and structure to my life so that when those days come, while they may feel devastating, I'm hopeful they won't destroy me. I quite literally have never felt more defeated by life than I did at the end of this day.

They say bad things come in threes and I have to agree. The day started off with a flooded basement due to a broken hot water heater resulting in me having to drop the dog off at day care, run to my folks for a shower, and get to work a little before noon when I had a major deadline that day. It was already going to be a shit day, it was the first time I was going to see my ex-husband since leaving him. We were supposed to be meeting at my therapist's office to have a mediation session, discuss steps forward and what not. Well I was trying to wrap things up at work and ended up asking my ex to grab the dog for me and that I would meet him at my townhouse to drop the dog off and then head to the session together. We let the dog in, I quickly put his food in his bowl, and I remember asking him how long of a walk he'd been on cuz he was panting, but my ex waved off my concern telling me we were going to be late. So off we go to the most heart-breaking, excruciatingly frustrating  therapy session of my entire life. Even then, even when there was no point, he never took responsibility for  how things played out. It was still all on me, all my fault, it was me who had something wrong with them that I just couldn't be happy, and then he had the audacity to try and hold my hand on the car ride back. I don't think that man was ever grounded in reality.

We get back to the townhouse and I immediately notice the pup hasn't eaten any of his food when usually he eats like I've never fed him. Again I ask how long of a walk he took him on cuz he's passed out, but as I get closer I realize he's not passed out. His tongue is bright purple hanging out of his mouth and there's a weird foam coming out and its around his head. I start to scream for my ex to call for help that something is wrong as I try to figure out if my puppy is still breathing. Eventually all I can mutter is the word "no" over and over again between the uncontrollable sobs until my ex forcibly pulls me away and tells me there's nothing to be done, that he's called my mother and it's time for me to go upstairs. He takes me upstairs to my room as I'm still crying and we embrace and fall to the ground together cuz we literally have just lost our baby, but he completely misreads the situation and starts to take my dress off which causes me to slap his hands away, and he refers to himself as my husband that he can help me change, and I tell him you may be legally, but you are nothing to me anymore get the fuck out of my room. While I'm changing upstairs his best friend gets there and I hear them rummaging around downstairs and then eventually my mom arrives. She heads straight up stairs and while I've still been crying, seeing her makes me completely breakdown. We head downstairs and my ex and his friend have taken the dog and all of his things from my townhouse and headed to the Vet.  I start whimpering to my mother about how I have to go back to work, that I haven't finished what I was working on, that it was important. She tells me I'm not going there alone, and drives me to my office, comes in with me and reads a book in an empty cubicle. Finally she takes me home to her house, and a little after midnight makes me a BLT sandwich since I never ate dinner.

To this day I have no idea what happened to my pup...my ex didn't have them perform an autopsy and had him cremated and let his parents keep the ashes which I didn't find out until months later. That pup had been the source of many headaches across the year I had him, but most were really due to in-laws who didn't listen when it came to how to care for him, or a husband who wouldn't be firm with his mother because he didn't want to hurt her feelings. When we had been at the height of our fights, many including the dog, my ex told me to find him a new home, that clearly it was too much for me (as per usual, finding a way to make me feel like it was all my fault) and so I had sincerely looked into that. But eventually I had kicked my non-paying sister in law out of the townhouse, distanced myself from his family, and eventually left him, and when it was just me and the dog, well shit man, things were way better and I remember sitting on my couch with the dog on my lap writing in my journal at the time, and being so surprised at all that had changed, but here he still was and how grateful I was.

Losing an animal that you love, is really fucking hard because while the loss of family is often devastating as well, often times it's not a person you actually live with, and see day in and day out. That fatty fur ball drove across the country with me and was a constant in my life during a year of immense growth and his absence was overpowering at times. While I often miss him, for the most part I can recognize the blessing in disguise that was his passing, because it really did grant me a clean slate. There is nothing tying me to that chapter of my life and I am forever grateful for that. I really don't think I would have accomplished all that I have these last five years if I'd still been a dog mom.

The Dance

I decided when I got back from my trip that I was going to be more intentional with trying to date. I got back on my OkC profile and recently downloaded Hinge. Have actually gone on two dates which is exciting but I've been quickly reminded that dating can often bring anxiety with it. Overall my typical experience over the last five years has basically been 69% of dudes make it sexual right off the bat and basically become their own cock block... 30% decide they're in love with me after a first date and want too much too quickly and it freaks me out, and then 1% I'm genuinely into but either they haven't actually been emotionally available or they just aren't into me. It's really a demoralizing process...

There's always this dance of how blunt and honest to be early on, how much attention to give, how much to expect, while at the same time not wanting to waste my time or someone else's but still being hopeful of a connection. Not knowing how honest to be about going on dates with others if you've started to see someone but it's not a committed thing yet. I don't like lying but how much do you really owe someone you barely know? But it's also the whole not wanting them to think you're no longer interested, cuz that's not necessarily the case it just seems so silly to me these days, to jump all in on something and shut down everything else, but at the same time can you give someone a fair shot if you're distracted by others? The way it tends to happen every time I've decided to date again is that I'll get like five guys I've been on more than two dates with and I slowly decide who I want to spend more time with, then end up with one, we start to date, and so far by about the third month, it becomes clear there's no future...

Sometimes it's been a mutual realization, which is nice, no hard feelings. Other times it's been really painful to tell someone I've grown to care about and I know cares about me that I'm never going to love them in the way that they want me too. What I learned in my marriage though is that it's really important to recognize that sometimes we can love someone for how much they love us, but not actually love them for who they are...getting married before I actually knew myself or what's truly important to me was my biggest mistake, but I think the things I learned from that relationship are invaluable as well as all the other things I've picked up throughout the rest of my twenties.

I think it's not a bad idea to try and list out some of the key things I've learned, a nice way to recenter myself as I begin evaluating the people that I'm meeting...

1. Wanting to be friends regardless of a romantic interest is a great indicator that you respect someone and think highly of them. All good things to have when the goal is a lasting and healthy relationship because generally you'll have shared interests you can explore together and strengthen your bond.

2. Recognize that when you bring someone into your life, you're opening yourself up to their circle as well. If you can't be yourself around their chosen family, that doesn't bode well for longevity because that can often indicate there is a key factor of your partner that doesn't align with you.

3. A partner that has a full life in their own right that their content with is someone who has done the inner work to be self sustaining. While we all experience lows and need to rely on our network, someone who hasn't figured out how to be happy on their own will consistently drain you, and that's not sustainable. It is impossible for one person to meet all of your emotional needs. No one deserves to have that expected of them.

4. If you would never ask this person for life advice, you don't view them as an equal and if a partnership is your goal, you gotta feel like you're on the same level.

5. Having a complimentary sense of humor is SUPER important. Being able to laugh together is key to surviving the hard that inevitably lands on your doorstep.

6. Sharing similar morals and values not only impacts what you deem important i.e. typically how you'll agree where to spend your money, your time, and your energy, if you choose to have children, you have to be on the same page to provide those kids with stability and consistency.

7. Someone who is close with their family shows they believe family is important. But it's also important they've established healthy boundaries and there isn't a codependency because you will never come between those kinds of relationships and oftentimes that means you will have intrusive in-laws that will not respect your own rules for your life with your SO or raising your potential children.

8. If you find yourself saying "things will be better when this changes" make sure you're not holding out for someone to change, because unless they want to, people for the most part do not change. There's a difference between remaining optimistic through a difficult circumstance that is temporary, and continually excusing a behavior that clearly doesn't sit well with you.

9. No one is perfect, we are all human and we all make mistakes, all enduring relationships require forgiveness. However if someone says sorry yet doesn't learn from the experience and repeats the hurtful behavior, they're not actually sorry. The adage of "actions speak louder than words" holds true.

10. Love languages and communication styles are important to understand in all relationships but particularly romantic ones. No one is a mind reader, being able to clearly state your needs and your feelings is important. Also understanding that your partner may not receive love the same way you do is imperative in making sure your efforts at showing you care are effective.

11. Comparison is the death of joy which goes hand in hand with my current phrase of obsession "expectations are the blueprints for disappointment".  This doesn't mean you don't have standards, it just means you cannot create expectations based on someone else's life you see the high light reel of on social media because that isn't reality. Having expectations that aren't grounded in reality will always lead to disappointment and cause your partner to feel like no matter what they do, they can never make you happy and that's a lose lose for everyone.

I think these days I have a good idea of the type of person I'm holding out for, but I know the core of it all, is that I'm just after true mutuality. I hope I luck into that soon, it's been a long time since I've had a person to dream about the future with.

It's Enough

It's crazy two months ago today I was just starting my trip. This summer is going by so quickly and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm not even sure how I feel right now to be honest. It was a pretty great weekend, movie night with one of my best friends and planning a camping trip for labor day weekend, then Saturday with my other best friend who was in town from Denver, and then Sunday with my twin and sister. We got pedicures, saw Lion King, went to my twin's  comedy show and ended the night with ice cream. Yet somehow today after a conversation that lead me to defend someone's character that has hurt me deeply...I spent the rest of the day in a weepy nostalgic state. I had such a hard time shaking it.

It really sucks missing someone you thoroughly enjoyed talking to...I keep wondering how much longer will I feel like this, how much longer will I miss someone that I no longer have any confidence that I ever really knew them. But perhaps that's the key to letting go... acknowledge that I miss an idea. I met up with a dude I'd met during grad school recently, it was really great to see him, we had a lot of fun, but the whole thing made me emotional and luckily we have enough of a friendship I found myself being brutally honest about my state of mind. I was almost thinking out loud when I told him it felt like I was so stuck on this situation because when it first started nearly five years ago now, it was the first time in my life where I had this feeling of home and being safe and how not experiencing that growing up, I'm sure that was super impactful. I told him I've been trying to ignore the parts of me that believe I'll never feel like this with anyone else by telling myself just because it was the first time, doesn't mean it will be the last time. And he responded "well yeah, if it happened once it can happen again", and I think I sincerely needed to hear that because I hadn't previously thought about it that way.

It can be so hard to be optimistic and hopeful when you're hurting, but I know I'm trying and perhaps that's enough.

Bad habit...

I'm sitting in a park close to work to eat my lunch and I can't stop thinking about the question that plagued me for most of yesterday and definitely made it hard to sleep... Why is it so hard sometimes to say sorry, especially for the big things where you very clearly are in the wrong? Why is it so hard to just fucking say,

"I fucked up, I seriously wronged you and I'm sorry. I let you become an afterthought and betrayed your trust in me to be a person who has your best interests at heart. I hope you can forgive me.  I know it will take time to forgive me if you can at all, and if there's anything I can do to make it up to you, please let me know. "

What is so fucking hard about that? But it is... it'd been a while since I had that gut feeling of "oh fuck, I misstepped, that wasn't okay". I tried to downplay it, come up with all sorts of reasons as to why it wasn't that big a deal, while maybe it was even deserved, that I no longer owed that person anything. But even if the argument of it being deserved had valid points, I firmly know two wrongs never make a right. Yet I was still trying to justify my lack of culpability...even our laws say that crimes that were not premeditated are less serious, so does that count when you betray someone's right to privacy even if it's been your life too?

I wasn't even going to own up to what I'd done, I didn't have to, there was very little chance it'd ever come to light and I definitely knew if I did, it'd probably change the way this person viewed me forever. But even when I decided they deserved to know, I minimized it for what it was, downplayed it and interjected my justifications instead of just fucking saying I was sorry.

In the ensuing exchange they called me calculating and manipulative and that I have no self discipline and I can't stop zeroing in on that because I know that there's truth to that. Even if I didn't have malicious intentions with anything I had done... There were still always desired outcomes, my own agenda, sometimes even at their expense. My dad used to always call out how manipulative I was as a child, something that always made me feel so terrible about myself... I remember growing up knowing I was the bad kid in our family, nice wasn't a word used to describe me, and I know I spent a lot of my adolescents trying to shed that. I wanted to be nice, I wanted to be helpful, I wanted to be good.

Currently it is hard to feel like I am any of those things, but I know this is only a temporary feeling, but a necessary one. One to stew in and decide what needs to change, and how will I do that. How do I accurately assess hidden motives when I believe "I'm just being honest". I definitely believe honesty is paramount in all relationships, but only when it's asked for... Sharing your feelings when someone doesn't want to hear them is selfish and I think that is what has taken me way too long to understand.

I scheduled a therapy session this morning for later this week and I'm looking forward to it. I have no desire to just beat myself up, I want help identifying roots to why I lack self discipline on many fronts...but specifically in the department of understanding that not everyone is an open book like me and that even when someone doesn't explicitly ask me not to share something about their life, there really is this underlying understanding of privacy that I have violated on numerous occasions for multiple people.  It usually hasn't been a super big thing, but this last time, it definitely was and this is not a trait or a habit I want to posess anymore.

Expectations

My thoughts feel jumbled... more often than not I have something swirling in my head for a bit before I have the need to write, but occasionally I just can't seem to land on any of the things going on in there to actually work through them and I have found sitting down to write helps me to process and just work through it, so here I am. I've spent a lot of time with my twin the last few days moving him to Philly. I've been so worried about him for the last few years honestly, but more so recently. He has started being more honest about his state of mind, but has also started pulling away again. It was difficult to not be close and to feel a little bit helpless when wanting to help him, to make things just a little bit easier. We talked a lot the last few days about how different our lives have turned out to be and conversations about how he was treated differently for being a boy, but also for being a sensitive effeminate boy. What I gathered over the last few days is that my twin has spent most of his life being told to dislike who he is because it didn't conform, and lo behold he's now a grown ass adult who doesn't like himself and it impacts his ability to be a functioning adult capable of making decisions because he doesn't trust his own judgement. Even little, inconsequential decisions can cause him to freeze up.  I'm so hopeful this move will be the clean slate he deserves to start this new decade on a positive note, to let go of all his limiting beliefs about himself and the prospects for his life and that it could be so much more. It's become apparent he has been so very close to giving up entirely on so many occasions across this last decade and right now I just feel grateful he fucking made it to 30. I feel grateful that maybe I have the chance to help get him to a place of truly wanting to be here, and to be here as him, fully functioning him, not dulled out self medicated on whatever the fuck him.

It's taken the last five years for us to recognize that circumstances of our childhood, and then being at such different places along the "typical life path" after college, resulted in us losing the closeness we once shared, but that it never truly was something either of us wanted. Even though unlike identical twins, it's very fucking obvious we're different people, we definitely still experienced being treated like a packaged deal. In some cases, it didn't really have a negative impact... but in other times it definitely high lighted things. I loved playing baseball, it was easier to only have one activity for both of us to do, but it was also my first experience realizing being a girl would sometimes limit me from doing something I wanted to do. There were a decent number of other little girls the first two years, then it really dwindled, and my last year in the league, I was the only girl. I started off being third base cause I had an arm, to eventually being moved to Left, which when you're a kid, not too many people are hitting out there... but at least if they did, it was going there, then eventually I was put in Right. It's not like the little boys treated me any differently, I honestly have zero recollection of ever being teased or not talked to or included by any of my teammates, it was the male coaches that little by little decided I shouldn't be there. In sixth grade I switched to softball but hated it because you couldn't steal bases and for the most part to me that meant stealing away half the fun.  This was also the same time that kids started making their own lists for their birthday parties, and while my twin and I were definitely still close friends with each other, we didn't share the same friends at school, and while typically a kid wouldn't always be able to know they weren't invited to a party, my brother lived with me, a social outgoing chatterbox that got invited to everything. I know my mom thought what she was doing was protecting my brother from hurt feelings, but making a rule that I wasn't allowed to go to boy girl parties if he wasn't invited just created a situation that pitted us against each other and made him feel pitied when kids invited him after the fact so I could go. So he wouldn't accept, and in the end neither of us got to go, until I started lying so that I could...I sincerely believe overly strict parents just create sneaky kids that hide their lives from you.  Like it has never made sense to me adults that automatically expect respect, even though they don't give it...

In the end I think my thoughts have been zeroing in on this acknowledgment that somewhere along the line, my brother didn't learn how to regulate his emotions the same way that my sister and I did and I can't help but wonder how much of that has purely to do with the fact that he's a boy. So many of the things I've been reading and researching the last year or two have been about emotions, and what they really are in our bodies. Like I found it fascinating to learn that all emotions are linked to hormones, either a specific one, or a combo of them, and your body releases these hormones after receiving certain external and internal cues like quickened heart rate or perceived threats, and if all of a sudden you have too much of that hormone in your system, it literally tries to clear it by making you cry. Obviously as a woman, I learned early on just how impactful hormones can be to your emotions and your clarity, I am very susceptible to PMS, and it's something wild to watch yourself over react to something while inside you is like "damn why you getting all upset?", and then the relief when a few days later the biological aspect happens and you get this nice confirmation of "Oh thank god, I'm not that crazy". Like guys never get that experience, that utterly true acknowledgement that we are not our emotions or our thoughts, that they're literally just responses to external input that are heavily impacted by the chemistry happening inside us. And that chemistry is fickle as fuck, and lots of things can force it out of whack that both men and women experience on the daily. Lack of sleep, poor eating habits, stress from work or family or financial woes, all this shit impacts your internal chemistry. I'm not saying that our thoughts and emotions aren't real, they 100% are and ALWAYS deserve to be acknowledged, I'm just saying that they are not always reliable or accurately reflect the reality of a situation. Which is why I think it's super important to try your best to hold out on discussing a conflict with anyone in your life until after the initial emotional reaction runs its course. Obviously this is much easier said than done, but gets easier with practice, and I definitely know I still really struggle with this right before my period but I'm getting better at acknowledging it and apologizing after the fact if I need to.

Right now I feel like I do owe someone an apology for getting swept up in my anger and judging their decisions about their life because they didn't choose what I hoped they would. In such a back and forth situation, I don't think my anger was unfounded, but my judgement wasn't fair. Sometimes I think we have to remember that we can have ideas about what we think would be good for someone we love, but at the end of the day you have to trust that they know what's best for them. I don't think this applies to abusive situations, but for the most part, if someone seems genuinely happy even though things are different from what you had personally hoped for them, well then you just gotta try your best to be happy for them. In a romantic situation, I think it's really hard to not then run through your memories and wonder if any of it was real when someone doesn't choose you back. I think it's really hard to not begin to believe that just a few months ago when they told you that they loved you too, that they must have been lying. I think the real challenge is realizing that while we want the past to mean something in the present, it often doesn't, but that doesn't erase the past, it doesn't mean they didn't mean what they said when they said it, it just might mean that unfortunately you have different definitions of love. And again I keep circling back to that phrase, "Expectations are the blueprints for disappointment". Being in love with a version of someone from the past, or in love with a potential, isn't the same as being in love with who they currently are...So does that mean the love you feel isn't real? I'm not sure, I think it's definitely still love in a sense, but I'm not sure it means it's anything that should be impacting the choices you make for your own life. Love doesn't have an on/off switch unfortunately, and there are parts of me that genuinely believe that once you let someone into your heart, they're there for life, but you certainly can choose to stop feeding that love, and eventually the amount of space that person takes up in there will dwindle, and you'll have figured out how to make room for someone who wants to be there.

Lately I keep wavering between being so excited about my life and the future and then suddenly almost without warning feeling like I'm right back where I was, devastated over losing someone. Someone I had a genuine friendship with and I thought understood me and the things I had been through and sincerely wanted  and loved me back. However the fact that these "sad sads" are starting to feel more annoying than anything else feels like a really good sign. I think what remains hard is when I get the urge to know what he thinks about something, like the latest season of Black Mirror or whatever other stupid shit I've somehow connected to him in my brain. When you've been talking to the same person everyday for a couple of months and then it just stops, I think it will just always be hard to stop that internal moment where you have the desire to share the good and bad with them.  I really do think time is the only true answer to that one, cuz just finding someone else when you're not quite over it, will never be anything more than a distraction, and will never be fair to that other person. I think perhaps what has kept me in the loop of this never gonna be a happy ending situation is that the longest stretch of constant communication was 5 months, and I wasn't even local at the time...I guess to me it will probably always feel like we never really tried. However I think I have to admit to myself that the opportunity to try has come and gone and he didn't take it, and that should be my answer.

Shortly after I left my ex-husband I wrote this, and I still believe this and I'm trying my hardest to believe something like this is still waiting for me.

"When you decide you want to spend your life with someone you're saying that's the face I want to wake up to everyday, those are the eyes I want to lose myself in, that is the smile I want to make my heart swell, those are the hands I want to comfort me, that is the laugh I want to hear when I need it most, that is the mind I want to try my best to understand, that is the soul I want to create new life with. You are picking someone to share the burdens and joys with. You have to adore them so that when they eventually annoy you, all they have to do is smile and the annoyance is gone. You have to be able to have fun with them or else the hardships of life will become what's front and center. You have to be able to be unapologetically yourself when you're with them because across a lifetime together, it's impossible to always be what you think they want. "

Transformations

Dang and just like that two weeks have gone by since I was in Madrid. I really can't believe the trip is now something I'm no longer looking forward to...but on to the next trip. I think what I learned above all was that what you experience in life is so much more dependent on your internal perspective than any thing else. If you believe that all of it is pointless and none of it matters, well than that's how it's going to feel. But if you believe that every moment you get is  a gift worth being grateful for, well than that's how it's going to feel. It's super easy to feel grateful about where you're at in life when you're on vacation with beautiful scenery all around you. It's much harder when you're stuck in traffic or late at night when your thoughts can't stop looping on a person you miss. I've been trying to be more mindful about allowing myself to dwell in the negatives and as soon as I recognize I'm entertaining that realm of "woe is me" to instead find anything, even a really small thing to be grateful for. The more I do it the easier it gets and the things I find myself getting stupid happy about have now even made me laugh just adding to the happy,  it's kind of ridiculous, but in the best way possible.

Like last night when I got home from an awesome softball win, I realized someone else must have been just as annoyed as I was that they removed the trash can right in front of my door when they updated them to solar powered composting and a separate recycling. The closest one for a few months has been across the street. But low and behold I walk around from the back lot to see a brand new one right in front of my door and exclaimed out loud with my hands in the air "Whaaaat??! I have a trash can again!?" Who gets genuinely excited about a trash can??! I started to laugh at myself and was still giggling as I picked up Lady for our usual greeting.

Yesterday was a great day to be honest, I mean it started off finding out I got a raise "for continually working above and beyond expectations" so can't beat that. Then after work I was able to have some one on one time with an old co-worker turned dear friend who is largely responsible for me having a job that I love. It was really nice to genuinely catch up and I was finally super honest about everything I've been going through the last few years after they shared some of their own struggles.  For a long time I felt beholden to protect, to keep a lot of it to myself because much of what I was privy to wasn't public, but it's been my life too and I'm so done with secrets.

Even though a softball win will always be a favorite of mine, my true favorite part of yesterday was that it took until the late afternoon for me to realize that the 1st was once a day that meant a whole lot to me. It took Facebook memories for me to realize it was 11 years since my first date with my ex-husband. I'm still floored I forgot, I've got an impeccable memory, especially for dates, and Sunday night my only thought about the next day was how much I liked that the first was coinciding with a Monday. I gave that man six years of my life and now, unless directly prompted, I never think about him and I'm not sure I thought that would happen.

It honestly made me so jazzed to realize that something that substantial to my life really has started to become a blip. It made me think that this current heartache caused by a situation, I can't even fucking call it a relationship, that was on again off again and honestly never anything substantial should really be a piece of cake to let go of. It made me think, well fuck if I really just give myself the chance to forget instead of always holding out hope, always being so quick to forgive, always so willing to try, that I'm gonna be able to move forward from this much more quickly than I ever thought.

For the longest time I just couldn't stand the thought of giving up, and people close to me would say I need to let go, but giving up and letting go used to always seem synonymous to me.  But I think I finally feel the difference. Giving up is what happens when you stop trying for something when there's still something to fight for, there's still another willing party. Letting go is acknowledging that there stopped being something to fight for, that you found yourself in a one-sided situation.

I let myself believe that just because this man made me feel things I'd never experienced before that nothing else would ultimately make me happy because I'd always be comparing to that. When I have a bad day, it's definitely hard to not believe that to be true, but on good days I can remember that just because someone is the first person to make you feel truly seen and understood doesn't mean they'll be the last.

Dating is harder now, because I know what I'm looking for and have no patience for those who don't.  This past weekend I bailed on two different dates because finally I'm in this head space of knowing if I'm tired of meaningless I have to stop accepting it into my life. If I'm not super pumped and excited about a date well than it's not worth my energy, because my time and energy is the most important commodity I have and I'm done knowingly wasting it.

Thirty feels good is all I can say. Was able to make it to my frisbee game tonight when I no longer had to attend a night meeting and we won! Saw a bunch of faces I hadn't seen in a while and even though I had to run through the down pour to my car, I was smiling the whole way. I love that community and even though I know I've stepped back from my group of friends in the last year, I've found a way to start truly getting involved in the organization and volunteering my time and it feels really good.

Right now I am super pumped to help my twin move this weekend and just feel it in my bones that being able to have regular contact with him and repairing that bond is going to be transformative.

What a ride

Today was a fucking rollercoaster. It was one of those days where my heart felt heavy and I could feel sadness lurking but I was in no mood to confront it... Everything I'm working on right now at work is super interesting to me and engaging and it feels so good to be back and I just want to be present, but as soon as I got into my car to drive home it was like the permission to let it pass through had been granted and I ugly cried on my commute home. I guess I really hadn't realized how much hope I still had for a certain version of the future and my tears weren't just sadness but anger. Anger at myself for recently lashing out at him because even though I do have anger towards him, I know that what I'm going through right now, this one's all on me, this is me causing my own heartbreak holding on to something that was never really much of anything substantial in the first place. Perhaps it's easier to hold on to situations like that sometimes, when so much of it has remained in the realm of the "what ifs"... it's easier to have this imagined version of how it could be when you have nothing real to ground yourself with.

I've never been good at letting go or giving up on people...but perhaps it's not the worst quality. Heartbroken me 11 years ago to the day actually now that I think about it cried herself to sleep and begged for relief and literally the next day had her first conversation with my ex-husband. And the boy I had been crying over is now a person I know I could count on if I really needed them and we regularly make plans to catch up and hang out and check in with each other, I mean we just had dinner last night. I would have never guessed we'd find ourselves in the space we're in now, but it means a whole lot to me to be able to have a meal with my first love and know we're genuinely out here rooting for each other's success and happiness.

So much has changed though since those naive days where I believed he'd be my one and only, but thank goodness some things haven't. When I got home I threw on sneakers and grabbed some left over sugar cookies my mother made for my birthday dinner party and headed to the hospital to meet the first born of a woman I've known since I was six years old. It's a wild thing to sit there and hold this beautiful tiny baby and look at your friend and her parents, faces you've known for almost as long as you have memories, and begin to catch glimpses of those faces in the little one in your arms. I think my favorite part though was watching my friend watch her husband interact with their baby and just seeing the love and adoration. It filled my sad heart right up and I'm so glad I was able to go.

The worst part about not being completely ok with the fact that I don't have a significant other is when that doubt I'll ever find what I'm looking for presents itself as jealousy when all I want is to be happy for my loved ones. I felt it last year when my sister's boyfriend joined the holiday celebrations but was so happy to notice that feeling wasn't there this year, and I felt it a bit when my friend sent a beautiful photo of her husband just staring at their baby earlier this week, but I didn't feel it tonight. I hope that means I'm growing, I hope that means I'm reaching a place where I really am just fine living this solo life of mine, well aside from Lady who started licking my hand as I typed that lol.

It's hard to admit to yourself you should have already let go of and gotten over something but I guess sometimes a hopeless dream feels safer than no dream... In this moment I'm not even really sure what I thought would eventually happen, that finally they'd magically see all the potential that I see and then there would be some magical grand gesture moment and then all of the hard of the situation would be absolved? I think perhaps there are some people you never stop caring about but that doesn't mean they still should have a seat at your table... That sometimes avoidance is your only option to give your heart a chance to forget and a shot at healing and there's nothing cowardly about needing that boundary. There was always this notion of a possible friendship, "that if I really cared, I could manage that".  But I can't manage it even though parts of me sincerely wish I could, and I just need to finally and firmly accept this truth. Maybe in the distant future I'll be able to have a meal with this man and catch up and be able to genuinely wish him well, but that time certainly isn't now.

I think I need to do a better job at cutting myself some slack, that while yes nearly five years is a stupidly long time to be holding out for something, I cannot forget I was given hope on multiple occasions across the years and the longest stretch of zero communication may only be about 6 months. It takes longer than that to let go when they once told you they believed you were who they should have been looking for all along and you couldn't help but feel the same way.

I can still swim...

Well the last few days have been quite the whirlwind between going back to work, happy hours, birthday dinner parties, frisbee tryouts, fresh new cut, and a concert. It really is awesome to be home though and to have already managed to see so many of my favorite faces. I think above all, the trip gave me a new found appreciation for my life. I think this video is a good snap of how much I love my Lady and my life at the moment.

I'm obsessed with my hair.

Last night I saw Dido with a girl from high school I hadn't seen in maybe a decade but we had a great time and it was fun to catch up and learn we had a lot to talk about. She may not have gotten married and divorced, but was in something for 10 years, so she very much understands that feeling of having to reset and reimagine your future and how lonely that can sometimes be especially as your entire peer group has already coupled up and has moved on to babies. I ended up saying something to her off the cuff that I think I honestly needed to hear as well, funny how that can happen in life... But I said if you really think about it, most relationships end for two key reasons. Either they think someone else out there could love them better, or they think someone could love you better than they can (and obviously vice versa, but this was in the context of having lost someone you didn't want to...) Bottom line it's that lack of true mutuality, and at the end of the day wouldn't you rather be on even footing with someone, so if a discrepancy is revealed it's most definitely for the best to move forward.

It definitely sucks though to feel like you have been nothing more than a band aid for someone's ego, especially when you formed real feelings for them, but I think we've all been on the other side of that situation. We all know you often care deeply about someone even though you never get to the part of being in love with them. Hopefully as you work through this iterative process of finding a suitable partner you get more honest and upfront in the very beginning with yourself and others and you don't wind up in a situation where one party or the other winds up horribly lead on. At a good college friend's wedding recently during a slow dance I said to a buddy of mine who was also dateless that I think one of the easiest ways to quickly determine if someone is a good match for you is to ask yourself if you'd go to them for life advice. Because the people we look to for advice are those we respect and trust and if you don't feel that way about your significant other, well IMO that's not a very healthy or fulfilling relationship.

I felt pretty jaded about relationships before my trip because early on this year I thought I'd finally met someone with potential who was a genuinely good person and we shared many interests. But other than really liking him and thinking highly of him, I didn't feel much of anything, and it made me wonder well fuck if that's how I am now even with someone as great as that, perhaps I've closed myself off more than I thought. But I think the trip made me realize I really just hadn't let go of a future I really wanted. I think that saying about how holding on to the past keeps us from the present is very accurate. It can be hard to see what you deserve when you've decided what you want.  I think all the things that are meant for us, especially relationships, don't come from convincing and forcing. I think the best things happen when you just accept the ebb and flow of your life knowing you're gonna keep floating down the river no matter if someone else is in your boat or not. That while maybe you move faster and are a bit more stable through rough waters with another paddling, you're still gonna make it through on your own just fine, and if you fall out, well luckily you can swim.

Day 20, 21, & 22 - Madrid

It's hard to believe this is my last night of this trip. My flight tomorrow is in the evening so I will have the opportunity to do a bit more exploring before having to head to the airport. It's been really nice being with my Dad and Linda. While it's great to have the freedom to do whatever you want whenever, making all the decisions all of the time does get a bit taxing. I've enjoyed going with the flow of their suggestions for sure. However my favorite part so far about having travel companions is the extra food I get to try 😍.

So yesterday after I got in and checked in, we went out for food and a little bit of walking.

Dad hooked me up with a nice room, had initially booked a room in a hostel.

This place for dinner was SMALL and the height of the tables wasn't particularly suited for tall people...

Had to try the local cider, it was very good.

The food here was great. Tuna on peppers.

Ham croquettes, these were basically creamy mashed potatoes. So delicious.

Salted peppers.

Just cheese on bread, cuz why not.

Mushroom with a bit of ham in the middle.

After dinner we did some walking and stopped in this Market that we decided would be good for lunch the next day. Can you imagine how big the whole fish was???!

Old school mail slots. Not a great picture of their size, but these were pretty big.

They had this massive book fair going on in the park, it went on for miles.

The room came with a robe and had a tub! I really need to make sure when I'm ready to move on from my little studio my next place has a tub, baths are fantastic.

So today we did a free walking tour of some of the older parts of Madrid and our tour guide Angel was great. He has a bachelor's in history that he obtained in Scotland, so his English, has a Scottish accent mixed with a Spanish one when it came to the R's, it was actually rather enjoyable to listen to. He's currently in the early phases of becoming a police officer. He has three years of studying and physical tests he has to pass before being admitted to the academy. Then he'll have 9 months of formal training, then a probationary period for a year, then in it for life if he so chooses. What a stark difference...the tour was super informative and I definitely learned a lot, but was so engrossed I didn't really take too many photos.

Quick and delicious breakfast before we headed to the meet up point for the tour.

I loved the story behind this statue, it was for the king of Spain that referred to himself as the king of the planet because at the time, Spain's empire was expansive and between inheritances and territories they really did control something on all the continents. So this guy wanted to have a statue that had never existed before. A statue in "motion" like this, didn't exist prior, and the sculpture failed many times with it eventually buckling and breaking. So he sought the help of Galileo, and together they designed it for all the weight to be in the tail to work as an anchor and counter balance and made the rest of it hollow. Eventually sculptors would use rebar to reinforce elements like this. Additionally, since this was to be a public statue, the King had the artist redo his face at least 5 times before he was satisfied. The sculptor had to keep cutting off the head and redoing it and coming back lol.

Unfortunately this market ended up being over priced and the food wasn't anything impressive, but it was cool to walk around.

After lunch we headed back to the hotel for a siesta and then to the Prado which is free from 6-8 in the summer. This was very much worth waiting in the long line to get in. Really enjoyed the pieces we saw here and highly recommend a visit. After a long day of walking we were all very ready for dinner, and found this gem of a place with delicious Sangria and every plate of food we ordered was top notch.

They had legs of meat like this ALL over Madrid.

Burrata, sun dried tomatoes, olives, spinach and honey. I will 100% attempt to make this at home.

Fried eggplant and an Alfredo like cheese dip.

SHRIMP!

Flan, it was really good.

I was definitely pooped by the end of this day. I really should have packed buuuut left it for this morning.

So for my last day of exploring we checked out the Cathedral and the crypt. The view of the palace from the cathedral was worth the 6€ honestly, and the crypt was free and absolutely gorgeous.

When we got to the top of the dome, we had a little snack of these cream filled pastries that were so delicious.

I didn't end up taking any photos in the crypt but there was some seriously impressive tile work down there. We also noticed very recent graves and wondered just how expensive it was to be buried there. From here we headed to lunch and I got to have some Paella with seafood and we believe my main dish was swordfish. However Linda's meatballs were the best.

After being stuff from lunch we walked to the botanical gardens, which were also free and just enjoyed the shade. The sun in Madrid is FIERCE.

Welp I'm at the airport now waiting to board, hard to believe I'd ever feel this way, but I'm ready for vacation to be over, I'm ready to be home and get back to my life that while I always knew was a good one, I'm just a little bit more in love with it after this experience. The rest of this week will be hectic but I honestly wouldn't expect anything less from me. First day back at work tomorrow, a happy hour on Thursday for my best friend who is moving 😭, birthday dinner on Friday with grad school friends and a few other close friends followed with dancing, Saturday I'm seeing Dido (it's not often you realize you share an experience with an artist and their songs truly speak to you, but I truly feel this way with her) and I gotta figure out who's joining me, and then Sunday dinner with my folks. I'm glad I can sleep on flights, I'm going to need all the rest I can get.