i’m really ready for it to be fall. i’m ready for rain, cold days, warm beverages and hibernation. i know that when halloween hits that the rest of the year is pretty much over. with thanksgiving and christmas i usually find myself on the other end, January 2, wondering what just happened for 2 months. lots of stuff always happens i can just never name anything specific. it’s always a blur.
i walked out of jada’s space sunday morning and the air was crisp, biting and cold. the sun was bright and shining as well. i took a walk around cole valley remembering that i used to spend a good chunk of time wandering these parts. haight street is the same with the exception of some new random stores that look like the old random stores and then there’s the whole foods that took over the decrepit cala foods last year.
i wandered into the whole foods. i needed to be somewhere safe. walking out of jada’s felt a bit like exiting the womb. i often feel safe and comforted by grocery stores. i love being surrounded by food. i don’t need to eat it. i just need to know that it’s there. you would think i had grown up poor and hungry but that’s totally not the case. there was always an abundance of food around. i guess there’s a huge feeling of security i feel with a full cupboard.
i’ve mixed feelings about whole foods but i wandered and bought some things anyway. dr. praegers veggie burgers, a coworker raves about them and i had never seen them anywhere so i put a box in my basket. amande almond milk yogurt which i also never see anywhere. protein bread. tulsi lemon tea. i managed to negotiate with myself and walk away from 3 different amazing looking flavors of scream sorbet (LEMON SHISO, PEOPLE!).
i checked out and put my groceries in my Bike to Work Day tote back from last year and felt very… hippie.
or i don’t even know the word for it anyone. you know. i’m one of those people. i’m vegan. i do yoga. i’m a massage practitioner. i buy and eat organic whenever possible. on occassion i have tofurkey guilt because i know how processed it is. i have a therapist. i just had a chi nei tsang appointment with a woman i would describe as an amazing healer. i’m reiki level 1 attuned.
this is the same girl who used to write, “hi internet, shhhh, don’t tell anyone but i’m eating popeye’s in front of the television watching america’s next top model and my shirt smells like whiskey and my pants smell like beer. i blame the lesbian grill closing at the mixx for my situation. if they didn’t close the grill i’d still be at the bar eating corndogs and drinking amstel light instead of shamefully eating fried chicken watching skinny girls try to climb elephants for photo shoots.”
i remember working hard, drinking lots and making lots of mistakes.
i don’t how or when it happened. i don’t remember if any one single event triggered it but all of a sudden i just stopped. i just got older. or wiser. or tired. truth be told, i’m really digging this being old thing.
growing up i always had this idea that i couldn’t wait to be a teenager because that’s when you figure out who you are and it’ll be awesome. then when i was a teenager i couldn’t wait to be in college because that’s when you become an adult and your life is all cool and great because you’ll know who you are and what you’re doing. then i hit my 30s and realized that i still don’t quite know who i am because it feels like it keeps changing.
and it currently still is changing.
i’ve wanted to try and find a way to put into words my experience at jada’s but i also sorta don’t. it’s rare, but there are times when something profound happens and for once i don’t want to tell the internet. even having dinner with friends later on that evening, close people i would normally tell this kind of stuff to, i didn’t want to talk about it. somethings you just need to keep and hold on to for yourself.
i find that i often don’t know what i need or even what i want. it was evident in my dentist appointment this past monday that i have problems. i had just gotten a crown placed and my dentist kept trying to do bite tests to see where the teeth were connecting and if it matched up. it’s already difficult for me because i have a slight overbite but when she kept asking me to bite down and bite normally i would bite down and then question if i had done it ‘normally’ or not or ‘normal enough’. she asked me to bite again and again and at a certain point she stopped.
“You’re biting down different every time,” she said.
it didn’t hit me until later that the moment someone asks me to do something ‘normally’ i panic because i don’t know how to gauge what the person asking thinks is ‘normal’ instead of asking myself to do what is normal for me. i’m instantly doing or trying to perceive what the person wants me to do and doing that instead of what feels normal to me.
i take a back seat to things because i don’t know and i don’t feel secure enough to know that what i’m doing is right. ugh.
it’s work. it’s a practice. being aware is not easy. it’s hard to move forward sometimes even if you know the direction is the right direction to go in. i want to be as authentic as i can be. i want to be able to bite down normally and know that it’s normal for me and not care what’s normal to anyone else. i want to know and be secure that the me in the right here and now is a good me to be and then i won’t have to think about what the me of the future will be like or what the me of last 35 years lacked and berate myself for it.
