9:10 AM - Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2005
Ouch. Broke a nail today.
This is how I spent my Valentine's Day evening:
1.
I had dinner with my family at Angie and Brian's house. The kids and I had fun throwing pillows and blankets at each other, but I think they had more fun attacking me than anything. Then, after dinner, we spent a little bit of the time coloring in some coloring books my mom got them for a V-Day present.
2.
I made it home just in time to watch Everwood.
3.
Once the show was over, I started a long hot bath. I put a face mask on and sat in the bath reading the book I'm working on, Mapping The Edge by Sarah Dunant, until the water turned cold.
4.
I continued to read this excellent book outside of the bathtub after brushing my teeth and loving the feel of the skin on my face.
5.
Once I finished with a chapter, Ryan called. We had some quality conversation and Aqua Teen Hunger Force time.
6.
I ended the evening talking to Cory on the phone. The way he said some of the things he said I took sensitively, but he's a guy and he was tired from working two shifts in a row. And he actually spent more time on the phone with me than intended so.... I'm chalking it up to my female emotional side.
And that's how I spent my Valentine's Day.
I've been trying to take better care of myself. I mean, I'm actually going to floss my teeth and not just brush them. I've been drinking more agua and less pop (which I'm sure doesn't affect the sales of Coca-Cola drastically since I barely drank any pop anyhow). I'm trying to remember to wash my face every night instead of just every other night out of pure laziness on my part. And I've actually taken to wearing a bit of make-up to add some color to my lips, and make my albino-like skin look healthier.
Why am I doing this?
It's a good thing I asked myself this because I wanted to answer it. I'm doing this because I've decided it's time to love myself more. Now, you may assume I'm fixated on the death of my cat. I say that because sometimes I assume that about myself. However, it took the passing of my dearest companion to make me realize something I've always known deep down but never really faced the truth of.
What is this truth?
As I've said before, there are moments when I can't get the image of Ashley's dead body lying in the middle of the hallway out of my mind. And as I've said a million times before, the image is always of how lifeless her eyes were because they weren't focusing on anything anymore.
It made me think of the deaths of those that have died before Ashley, especially the ones of those I have loved immensely. The only other person I was near before they passed from life to death was my grandma (as I noted before as well), but I was so fixated on her overall appearance to really understand the meaning behind life vs. death that her passing was meant to teach me. I kept myself busy and therefore detached from the moment that was taking place. I switched myself to caregiver mode while the rest of my family wept and took in their last minutes with her together. And because of this, what I remember most is not the way her eyes unfocused or how her body stopped doing what it had always done naturally... but the dryness of her skin, the papery feel of her hands, her cracked and bloody lips, the tears she couldn't cry resting in her eyes, and the way she tried so hard to speak but couldn't utter the words to express herself.
So no. I never did fixate on Grandma's eyes and how lifeless they seemed. It took me years to remember her outside of a hospital bed not looking anything like a victim of some concentration camp. And now when I dream of her, she is full of life. She stands straight-up instead of hunched over. Her skin is as smooth as porcelain, and her eyes are lit up from the smile I see across her face. When I dream of Grandpa, he is much like this, too. He is young and vibrant with barely a wrinkle to his skin. I see them at a stage of their life I never knew them in, yet it's not them in any photo I have ever seen.. and it's nobody else but them.
Now, to get back to answering the question.......
The truth? Is it the truth? To me it is. I only express this answer for myself. The truth is that life is indefinite. We are constantly reminded of our mortality yet we often don't do anything about it. For those of us filled with wonderlust, we feel we aren't living enough. We ache to do more, to push ourselves beyond the limits of our existence. For those of us who are more content with living a basic standard lifestyle (whatever that may be), sometimes we receive more out of life because we expect less from life. And sometimes we are so caught up in living in this contentment that we wake up one day and wonder where our life went.
The other truth of the matter is that we own the body we arrived in up until the moment we leave it behind us. And this body is what carries us through from day to day. We're taught to hate it if it's not perfect. We find it a burden if we aren't satisfied with the one we were given. If we're born with a handicap, if we're born with disease, if we're born to be too skinny or born to be too fat, if we're born to be quite ugly or born to be beautiful, if we've neglected our bodies to become what society sees as "bad"....
Some people abuse their bodies. They cut themselves. They starve themselves. They overfeed themselves. They neglect their teeth and gums. They don't bathe and wash....
Some people abuse other people's bodies. They rape someone. They molest someone. They torture someone. They beat them up. They stereotype their figures and their looks. They define what is wrong and what is right as if there is no inbetween.
And from these truths that I have thought about, I have noticed that I have spent far too much time neglecting my body. I have spent far too much time caught up in an emotional mental war with myself that I've neglected to take ultimate care of the body that has carried me through this entire lifespan. It's always been there for me through the cuts and bruises whether they were placed there on purpose or accident, through the weight gains and weight loss... through the changes from a baby to a toddler to a child to a teenager to an adult... and it will be with me until I'm taken from it by death.
So why have I neglected it for so long?
One day I'm going to be just like Ashley. I'm going to leave this body behind, and it will be left in all it's glory for those who knew me through this body. Whether they touched my heart, whether they slipped for a moment into the depths of my mind, whether they experienced a shared emotion. It will always be this body that is most remembered when I am gone; if not for the words I've spoken and the thoughts and feelings I've expressed... then for the expressions I've shown across this face and the language I've spoken through my movements - which, by the way, come to us as naturally as breathing.
Is that deep enough for you?
Try this one out:
Humans need physical touch. From the beginning, it connects us to those around us. Children are apt to hold hands and give each other friendly hugs. But when we hit puberty, it's almost as if such friendliness with our peers is considered taboo. It used to be okay for two female friends to dance together at some dance or hold hands while walking down the street in public. Men were allowed to to hug one another, or slap each other on the ass or back.
What's become of our society that we can no longer express ourselves in such ways in order to connect to another human being? If we do these things, we're labeled gay - and for some reason sexual orientation is important to the masses. They don't want to be labeled gay as if homosexuality is some disease, when in reality it's just a fact of life. It's the whole star belly sneetch thing. Let's put some stars on you until we decide it's cool to have stars. Sexual orientation shouldn't even matter in the overall scheme of things, but for some reason our society loves to revolve itself around sex.
Why is sex so important in the adult world?
I think it's because it's one of the last remaining ways in America (considering the fact that other cultures are far different than us in our views of such lifestyles) where two human beings can physically connect with one another. It's obviously something we were born to enjoy, and if we can no longer give a friend a hug without assumptions being formed, hold hands in a connected friendship kind of way, or pat each other on the backs and what-not... what's left?
We can spend hours mentally connecting with someone. We can spend months becoming emotionally involved with them, but it's the people we come to romantically love that we seek to reach out to and touch. I'm not saying that we find it wrong to kiss a family member hello, to hug them affectionately when in need of some tender loving care, or anything like that. America just isn't an affectionate country. The American people have boundaries around them that keep them detached and isolated to a degree whereas other countries are more apt to be touchy-feely (in a non-molestation way, of course).
I could go on, but I need to break here and go to a meeting.
I sometimes think that I have problems finishing a story, or even beginning one for that matter, because I always want to write the ending first. But without the beginning, where would the ending come from? Then I assume I'm being too egotistical thinking that I know so much about life that I'm more apt to write the endings to some fiction novel then go through a character's experiences from the beginning. Or perhaps I'm not connecting with the character because I'm far too lazy to return to the beginning of an experience and relive what I want to write about?
I could go on and on like this, but I'm not getting anywhere mentally by doing so.
Time to head out and head home. It's now 5:30.
