looking back, finding the answers, and moving on

I've been working on the story.  Y'know, the one I've been "struggling" with the last couple of years.  Anyhow, in my research through drafts of things I've written as part of this story or in relation to the story, I came across these two pieces that I had forgotten about.  But, I believe I was meant to find them today.  Because, like I said, I had forgotten.  And thus, lately, I have been struggling.  But, in reading these, I was reminded.  And I found my answers.  Here they are:

Love The Place You're In
One of my favorite lines from a poem was written by Lynda Hull in "Magical Thinking."  She wrote, "It is common human longing to want utterly to vanish from one life and arrive transformed in another."  I think I was five when I first wished my life to freeze at a certain moment, and everything that occurred thereafter was just a long dream.  The moment was the day before my dog, Sugar, died.  We were playing in front of my grandfather's house - I was the circus master, and Sugar was the acrobatic dog that could walk on a big red ball across the driveway to the yard.  Everyday, for years, after she died, I wished and prayed that her death was just a horrible nightmare.  Perhaps it was then I learned to live my life in memories of the "good ol' days," or in dreaming about an unknown future.  Somehow, this habit of mine kept me from living in the present, and I went through the next twenty-nine years always wanting to live in some other time or some other place.

But, of course, each time I woke up, I was still right where I was when I went to bed.  In Los Angeles.  The city I hated and loved.  The city I had always wanted to leave, and somehow, could never turn my back on.  I realized that each time the city loosened its grip, I would push my way back in and hold on tighter than ever.  I couldn't walk away.  I couldn't let go.

I just came back from vacationing in Europe, where I traveled through Spain, France, and Italy.  While there, I tried to imagine how my life would have been if I had studied abroad during my last year at USC.  I still clearly remember the day I decided not to go to Spain for the Study Abroad Program.  For hours, I sat near the fountain facing Tommy Trojan, rationalizing in my head that it was the right decision because financially, I just couldn't afford it.  Truth: I didn't want to leave my at-that-time-boyfriend.  But when he started becoming mean, and things didn't work out, I resented him for the decision I made.  And when I met J, I regretted my decision even more, and my resentment grew stronger.  I wondered whether I would have met J had I gone, and maybe, things would have been different.  Somehow, it seemed that J and I had so many missed encounters - two wandering souls meant to find each other but never doing so, until that moment in the library.

But during my trip, as I walked through the streets of Sevilla, I realized that J and I weren't meant to meet then, and we are not meant to have a "now" much more a future.  We were just a moment in time, which is now only a memory.  When that realization came, I no longer wished to be at another place or time.  I no longer yearned for the past that held him.  And my need to run away seemed to have disappeared leaving an unfamiliar, but reassuring, sense of stability.  It was, then, I knew I loved the place I was in - on that street corner facing Universidad de Sevilla, the fact that I was there on vacation, and the fact that after two weeks, I would be going home ... to the City of Angels. 

I thought, sometimes, you just have to stand still on a street corner in a foreign city, and let the life you could have lived run through you.  Then, open your eyes to the life you are living, to the moment you're in on that same street corner, where each block in all four directions are just as unfamiliar.  I decided I wasn't going to let the moment pass me by again.  I only have this life to live.  I may only have this moment to see what's in that next corner because who knows what the next moment will bring.  The possibilities are endless, which adds to the beauty of it all.


Message from Barcelona, May 18, 2008
I probably should be doing something else rather than spending time in an Internet cafe, but it's raining outside and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to email my parents.  Also, I figured this is where "Maya and Dante"* started, so perhaps, this is where it should end.

During my flight to Madrid, where I spent my first three nights in Spain, I anticipated feeling nostalgic, and I feared that I was going to be overcome with "missing-J-syndrome."  I guess it was natural to feel such anticipation since I couldn't help but associate Spain (and a Europe trip in that matter) with memories of him, and with feelings of confusion about an unfamiliar future I was afraid to venture into.

But anyhow, this is not supposed to be about J.  Somehow, reminiscing about him, much more writing about memories we shared, always makes me feel that I'm somehow disrespecting his marriage, which I have no intention of doing.  So, this is about letting go.  Thus, that's why I decided to end the "Maya and Dante" blogs.  Without intending the story to unfold the way it did, it somehow just happened that the last post ends with Maya's own closure because through her story, I found my own closure, too.

I realized that I let J go a long time ago, and what I held on to all this time was the friendship we shared, and the comfort he always gave me.  When we've been hurt, it is only a natural tendency to hold on to what comforts us and what makes us feel better.  When we've been bruised too many times, it's only natural to want to keep close what eases our pain.  Thus, I needed to hold on to him to remind me not to gravitate to old habits of bad and unhealthy relationships.  Because it's easy to gravitate to what is familiar.  No matter how bad.  But J pulled me away from all of that, and it is the comfort he offered that I held on to.  I guess, I didn't trust that I could have the strength to pull myself away from another unhealthy relationship.  I guess, I didn't think I'd recognize when something was bad for me until it was too late.  But I realize now, I can do it on my own: walk away from things that are bad.  Without him to catch me when I fell.

So, I arrived in Madrid, and although the place was familiar with thoughts of him, I was different.  I didn't miss him.  I didn't feel lost and confused.  I don't know how I got to this state of just knowing, and no longer questioning.  But, somehow, I did.  And that, I know I did on my own.

For a long time, I wondered when J turned from the good-looking stranger I had a huge crush on to the friend who caused the end of life as I knew it.  But now, the answer to that doesn't matter so much.  All I need to know is that love happened.

... Most of the time, the answers to the questions that haunts us are really inside our hearts, and we'll find the answers if we only have the courage to look inside.  Love happens when we least expect it.  And that's the beauty of it all. 


*Maya and Dante was my original blog.  It's the story I've been working on.  A story I really finished four years ago.