too tired to think of one.

So I realize I haven’t blogged in awhile and really there hasn’t been anything super newsy in my life these days.  I have been kind of hiding out and thinking a lot.  Wow, way to be super vague and emo, huh?  Anything newsy I can’t really share yet, but I have been enjoying time with friends and time in the sun.

Of course the Grey’s Anatomy Season Finale was ah-mazing and totally renewed my faith in the show.  Gosh.  I could gush on the deep meaning I get from simple television but I won’t bore you since you already know.  But seriously, God usually talks to me most via Grey’s. 

This song played during the show, and it totally sums up my emotional state right now:

…What I’m gonna live for, what I’m gonna die for, who ya gonna fight for, I can’t answer that…

Don’t freak out if the answer seems obvious to you, because I’m really still thinking it through.  Faith has somehow gotten jumbled into the business of church which has kind of jaded me and made me sad.  And confused.  And tired.  And I finally made the decision that freed me to say that officially.  And I now have the freedom to say, Legalize LA, is a really great step for so many friends of mine. 

And I now realize I so relate to Meredith Grey in terms of my boy life.  Every time a nice boy comes into my life I have to resist running the opposite direction as fast as I can.

But I really am enjoying being free as a bird in so many ways right now…

we can take a moment

we can take a moment…

holiness and wholeness.  is it any better if you fragment your life and pretend something’s not there?  some people of faith say so.  don’t ask don’t tell.  i disagree.

i resigned this week from a personal role i had worked hard to attain.  i chose to walk away because i don’t think it was what i was really made for.  it was a respected role.  it was scary to say no.  what if my life now garners little respect?  while i bowed out, i also now breathe more deeply?  while it was respected, i felt isolated to my true personhood.  i’m more and more just content to be me.

fighting out of isolation is brave.  at least that’s what i tell myself.  it is cowardly to isolate.  being alone and unseen is sometimes easier than asking for what you want.  i don’t want to be a ghost to my own existence.  whether i am brazen or ridiculously out of touch with reality, i’d still rather fight for what i really want than settle for a half life.

this week’s grey’s was particularly powerful.  about isolation.  bravery.  being unseen but brilliant.  being stupid but brave. being honest.

• meredith is not a hero in her own loneliness, she’s a coward for letting derek get away.  but she’s opening up the curtains to her soul and letting herself face the darkness.
• derek’s a coward for choosing subpar and knowing it.
• the whole don’t ask don’t tell arch.
• cristina is the unseen hand to burke’s brilliance and she’s finally letting herself feel it.
• callie and erica are obviously fragmenting which can’t be healthy.  you don’t make friends easily?  really, is that what it is?
• lexie is fearfully aware of being forgotten, if the deepest form of physical intimacy is forgettable what does that say about your wholeness in relationships?

still have something to lose

fear means you still have something to lose.-chief webber

there are no guarantees in life.  you can save a man and not save your marriage.  you can give someone your whole heart and they can walk away.  these are the kind of lessons i think you learn over and over in life.  perhaps because they are singlehandedly so painful that your psyche could not bear the full impact of them at once.  perhaps because as your spirit fights for life, these events threaten to kill it – and so you must keep gasping for air and you must not bear it all at once. 

life has me thinking and i think it’s still better to love someone, it’s still better to be afraid than dead.  it’s still better to love someone because it’s letting your light shine.  at least mopping up the blood after your heart is bruised or stabbed at least means you still have blood to give- life to live.  maybe this is all too emotionally morbid, maybe coming to terms with the darker side of life just means you can look it square in the face and then keep walking.

walking with blinders

May my eyes be wide open- I don’t want to walk around with blinders on.  I want to see people, really see them. 

forced intimacy

i admit it.  i am an emotional failure because i do not enjoy forced intimacy.  i can be shmaltzy most any day of the week except when called on to give an answer at the thanksgiving table to “what i am thankful for.”  so i have a rather large family (dad has 6 brothers) so our thanksgivings tend to be pretty big, i think.  this year was a little stretching, a tad uncomfortable, as my dad is getting remarried this summer which now means i have people he wants to include in our family that i am still getting used to.  no disrespect intended. 

it’s just that there are a handful of people i just adore from the get-go.  with these people come an ease, a freshness and a spark that i cannot explain.  if i bellylaugh with you or proactively initiate communication, you are one of those people. 

then there’s a darker side to me (channelling “dark and twisty meredith”) that is more ambivalent about other people.  it is not that i dislike them, i just take a while to open up to them.  some people find this to be a quandary as i am warm, outgoing and gregarious (aka “bright and shiny”) but also intensely private about my personal life.  go figure.  my dad getting remarried brings elements of grief, confusion and unmet needs–and this is not to say i don’t support his decision.  if what i’m saying is confusing, please comment me because i really am not intending to speak ill of any of the people involved.

stories of invisible nature.

Your dad’s a drunk.  I had to start cleaning up my dad when I was 7.  That’s when I turned into the grownup  of the family.  So you got to wait ’til you were 24.  Good for you.

It’s natural for children of trauma, outsiders and people who feel generally “freaky” to harden themselves.  It’s easier to build up walls and quarantine your heart than to constantly notice the differences between yourself and the world around you.  The comparisons can be crippling.  For some reason, in the meantime, everyone else is put on a pedestal.  Humans connect the seemingly scattered dots to conclude that everyone else’s lives are  perfect.  We lock up our heart and throw away the key.  We don’t want to feel different, so we figure loneliness is at least decent company. 

And then someone comes in who crumbles all walls and defenses and you realize that you’ve been too stubborn and too prideful.  We’re all a little bit “freaky”. 

My perfect little life?  Have you been paying attention at all?

We may feel invisible or altogether too visible.  So invisibility becomes our badge and we wear it proudly, albeit silently.  We assume the ones with the beautiful faces could never understand and are surprised when they do.  We’re almost a bit miffed to realize they understand more than we think, because now our badge of honor is removed and we’re all just the same, only they are prettier.

Guys like you who dont see girls like me.  We don’t exist for you.  We exist to do your homework and we exist to build your ego up.

And every now and then, the pretty ones see us and they reach across the abyss that we’ve created into our private pain and secluded spaces.

I’d have been honored, to take a girl like you to homecoming.

And in a way, maybe believing that we exist is even scarier than feeling invisible.  Because if we exist, we have choices to make.  And the risk is more frightening than a choiceless life.

the face of tv

Don’t let it be the season finale of all your favorite shows.  At this point, if things don’t get solved that’s going to be likely.  Let the writers earn fair residuals from internet and dvd viewing, like the actors earn.  This is the new face of American television.

If you’re confused on the point of the strike, here’s some information as relayed by your favorite primetime actors!  :)

spilling out

But my point is…Meredith. That moment where she tells Mark that Ellis never got Halloween together and didn’t approve of knocking on doors, begging for food… That moment explains so so so much to me about our lovely, broken Meredith. That her first experience trick or treating is taking an earless boy around the hospital to make his pro-bono surgery happen… I find it utterly heartbreaking. And I love that Mark points out to her that she fell pretty far from the Ellis tree. I think it was critically important to Meredith to hear those words, because the haunting Meredith is feeling, is the fear that she will die alone like her Mom did. Because Derek said he might find someone else before she’s ready. And she doesn’t know how to get ready. Cause she’s an emotional cripple who’s unwilling or unable to lay her ass down on a therapist’s couch for the many years it takes to work through issues like she has. Meredith’s version of therapy – her very best idea – is to bring her mom’s ashes to work. Y’know, in a strange way it makes sense – like, she understands that she’s been sticking her mom in the back of her closet, literally and metaphorically – and that if she doesn’t start to look at this stuff (i.e.: herself) she’s in danger of dying alone (i.e.; losing Derek forever.) Life is hard isn’t it? But I love and applaud Meredith’s ongoing willingness to try – as she explains to Derek when his hands are covered in mommy dust and he’s looking at her like maybe, just maybe he should escort her up to the psych ward, “This is me trying.” See, Derek comes from sanity, and a Mom who probably made him homemade Halloween costumes every year and chaperoned the school dances and things – so it’s hard for him to get, exactly how haunted Meredith is. Richard, though, gets it. Because Ellis haunts him, too. And my favorite scene, maybe ever, is the one in which Richard and Meredith put Ellis to rest in a surgical sink.

-Grey Matter, Blog of the Grey’s Anatomy Writers

This is turning out to be Grey’s Fridays.  I don’t want to do just another recap of the show because hello, there are plenty of sites you can go to to catch up.  And besides, you can always watch the episodes free on ABC.com.

But really, saying life is messy isn’t all that insightful.  Any idiot knows that.  But Meredith is realizing that the things you try hardest not to deal with always have a way of seeping out of your life’s cracks, right back in front of your face.  It’s like trying to shove an uncontained liquid into a closet.  Impossible.  I mean really.  Even those people with fancy container systems, those people who seem contained, compartmentalized, tightly wound or controlled.  Wait til life starts to crack.  Stuff will come spilling out.

Derek laid it on the line, and Meredith seems to get it.  In order to become ready, it requires doing the hard work of seeing all that’s standing in your way.  Love is not easy…love is a battlefield. :)

timing is everything

Meredith & Derek – Timing is Everything

…I think he finally sees and accepts Meredith for who she truly is — regardless of whether or not she’s able to give him what he wants in that moment.  He simply loves her.  In spite of everything that’s gone before and no matter what happens next.

-Grey Matter, Official Blog of the Grey’s Writers

Lately I’ve been realizing that timing is everything.  And part of loving someone well is recognizing timing.  It is obvious that just because I can or want to do something–it means the timing is right.  It would be foolish of me to think that relationships do not operate on the same element.  So, combine two individuals and you exponentially increase the element of timing.  And I want to be a person who loves well.  Patience is a lesson I’m learning.

In the course of Grey’s Anatomy, Derek is learning a hard lesson.  No matter how hard or much or fully he loves Meredith- she is simply not ready.  Differing life stages is no one’s fault.  Rushing things lead to the dissolve of Burke and Cristina.  If someone is not ready or cannot yet be ready, you cause greater damage to push things.  Nothing good seems to come from anything forced.  This is a painful lesson.  Do you wait, continue to love well, hope?  Sometimes this act is an act of obedience, a practice of patience, a virtue of some kind and other times it is desperation, blind logic and wishful thinking.  What is the difference?

To love simply, wholly, fully and well is perhaps the greatest challenge.  And to love when nothing can be returned or exchanged or offered is even more difficult.  Perhaps though, learning to be selfless is the reward. 

it’s like the heavens rained down…

I don’t even think you understand how visceral my excitement is, knowing that in just 2 weeks the wait will be over for season 4.  I mean really, aren’t you missing any of these faces?  I will miss Addison and I don’t think I’m gonna be into her new show (the pilot was pretty dull!)  It’s been a “mc-freakin’” long enough summer without one fix, and there was enough drama in season 3 that I kinda hope things just level out for a bit.  But it’s Grey’s, the soap-delish of medical dramas so there’s no way it will.  Summer television has been dull(ish) without the peeps-n-geeks.