I’m still here :)

Tags

expat, france, growing up, happiness, homeownership, hope, life, love, motherhood, thirties

Living a heart based life has not been easy, and my ego has fought me tooth and nail at every step.

I live just outside of Paris, in a flat i purchased a little more than a year ago.

I still have my corporate job which my MBA helped me get, and I find ongoing creative possibility in it.

We’re emerging from about two months of confinement, and they haven’t been easy ones.

But the most important news, the ones that should be shouted on the rooftops, is that I love someone more than I ever thought possible.

And after years of capitulation over whether I wanted to be a mother or not, the answer is yes, I desire it with all my soul. I want to be the mother of his child.

We are just at the beginning of our adventure together.

I had given up on love for years and had thought the best I could hope for was to get a high percentage of my desired checklist met in someone who thought the same about me. And then I found someone who made me look up from my ledger of accounts, and push the beaded abacus to the floor.

And with time I realized, he was everything I ever asked for and even more. We don’t live together at this time, but there’s nothing I wish for more than to wake up to him snoring next to me.

And as for baby, he is only a thought as yet, a dream, a yearning. But soon, I hope.

So this is what I have come to, the death of all my wandering, my running, my here-or-there.

This, I say.

NOW! my soul roars.

 

I love you, madly.

gros bisous

femmefrancofun

Fillefrancofun is not just a phase Part II

Tags

happiness, liberty, life, love, philosophy, self-help, single, twenty something

I don’t know if I will ever leave Paris, she says again to herself. I am happy here. Maybe I could be happy somewhere else.

But when I’m not happy here, I’m happy to be far far away. Paris is where I learned of my love of travel. Paris is where I figured out that my home is in the adventure. Paris is when my life stopped being about waiting for love and normalcy and realizing it’s all about me, here, this, now, and some conflicts will either fade or force the creation of a new self.

I had thought my desire to own a piece of Paris had faded, and then shifted to the suburbs, and then now I odn’t know.

And then I realized maybe I could go live in Dubai or something and then get paid $$$$$.

 

And then I realized maybe I can find a way to make the whole travel writer/adventure tourism thing work, maybe?

And then maybe the point is just to find happiness within.

 

Which might include madmitting you will never be normal and you do have ADD and it’s a real thing and a lot of grown up things are going to be hard, even if you are motivated and not depressed. And you will always feela bit extra and do more to try and cover it up and get depressed that you aren’t perfect or normal and life will be a glorious adventure or nothing at all.

Bu tyeah, I’ll be nearly 30 it’s hard to imagine taking care of a small person and all the routine that would go into it, I know I could do it, but I don’t know if I am willing to sacrifice everything for another person be it mqan or baby, so I”m not sven sure I want or deserve those things.

Although I’m pretty sure men don’t ask themselves that question.

 

I’ve caleldmyself a feminist my whole life, but I’ve only truly been one recently. I always thought finding the ONe would be a crowning achievement, and if I as on the right track he would find me, or if I was on the wrong track he would save me , or more than likely, he would be on the wrong track and I owuld save him. Bu tyeah, that’s not my current situation.

I am afraid of myself, of my explorer, of my rebel, of my ridiculously sle fassured impulsve charismatic crazy chick. Who can’t bear to live a lie and would nevertheless prefer it to a sterile truth.

The truth is , I am Lara Croft Tomb Raider. I am Diana princess of the Amazons and daughter of Hippoltya. and all of this has been an elaborate ruse by my soub and sometiems not ttso sub comnscious to be something I elt more confortable with and that others owuld find themselves mroe comfortable with.

Maybe I will be that journalist or that whatever who rolls around the world sometimes in iffy place going to share a truth with the world, not worrying if she meets Mr Right in time or has a kid.

Or maybe she does care btutr trusts the universe.

It’s hard, to trust theniverse.

But I do.

Fillefrancofun is not just a phase Part I

Tags

feminist, happy, life, love, travel, twenty something, woman

Today I watched Lara Croft Tomb Raider and Don’t worry he wont’ get far by foot. I realized that I am covering my pain and with it my gift with so many false identities.

Sure there is no fixed self and we are always changing, but despite the fact I’ve fallen out of love with Paris a lot recently, and my MBA self has been scoring points against my bohemian self, it’s my “gypsy” self that always wins. All I really want to do is be a gentlewoman explorer. I think that’s my real calling, and I’m afraid of it.

I’m afraid to be my real self with the world, to be so intimate as to take off my masks. I am afraid to wear my heart on my sleeve, and make love without labeling as either marriage or a one night stand. I’m afraid to live with “feeling,” to let my intuition, and not my fear and practicality and the voice of conventional wisdom win.

I don’t know if I will ever really be done living in Paris. Each time I get bored and think there’s nothing new left for me, the city shows me a different world which embraces me more tightly.  Just when I thought it was time to move out to the suburbs, and who knows, maybe I still will, I went to a club I actually enjoyed. And while I was dancing with one guy, another looked at me with what I thought was envy for my partner, but I realized as I was passing him in the cloakroom that it was actually me that he was sad to see me in the arms of another. Sometimes I feel my beauty like a radiant light.  I feel humility at the gift.

I have an intimate friend now, who knows all about me and my ADD and my messy room and many flaws, and he still loves me anyway. He’s not my boyfriend, and this is the experience that has taught me not to put too many labels on things. I don’t love him like I would hope to someday love my husband, but I am happy to be with him and I miss him when I don’t see him. And that my friends is a blessing.

I was filled with fervor to write  a post about meeting almost the French guy of my dreams, and then realizing I don’t want almost anything and I don’t actually want a boyfriend that badly, and I don’t want to organize my life around the hope of being a wife and mother and the hope that this will fulfill me.

Recently I’ve been going through what might be a phase of wishing I was a calm and controlled person and thinking if I changed my location that would fix me, or if I changed my field, or any number of other things.

The truth is that , adult life I think is always going to be hard for me. That’s just the way it is. And I’ve been trying to fit a circle into a square, and most of life is super square, and since I’m intelligent and have so much potential and everything I’ve always felt like I should be the squarest of squares, but as per a private reference between me and my friend about our teacher who would purposefully choose to cut out cloud shapes from construction paper making every one unique so she wouldn’t make a mistake. Mening we are all perfect as we are and God makes no mistakes like Lady Gaga says.

This isn’t just a phase. THis is the real me. I’m not going to wake up one day and finally be a good adult. My shit will not come together and then leave me in a much better situation. I do think I will get better at coping and managing.

Also i don’t think I’m going to stop liking or valuing travel, or that it will become less important to me than creating wealth or building my career. At least my current career, and any career I do should have travel and international stuff in it.

I”m ready to stop bullshitting myself and really take inventory. Instead of being disappointed at where I am now as opposed to wear I thought I should be and wanted to be at 30, look where I am.

I’m not killing it in the ways I thought I should be in the career or money department, but I do have a very good and steady job and even if I’m still finding myself professionally, I’ve learned a lot about myself and have really grown as a professional. I’ve visited 45 countries. I don’t have a boyfriend and I’m hopefully not going to get knocked up in the near future, but I have had a lot of wonderful men in my life, even if things didn’t work out in such a way that I got a ring on it. And being honest, there’s no one I truly knew well and wantedto p t aring on it. Bu tI’m convinced he’s out there.

 

 

 

 

Things I’ve tried to deny

Tags

commitment, couple, expat, fear, feminism, guilt, life, love, marriage, motherhood, relationships, shame, travel, twentysomething, who am i

When I think about becoming a mother, I think about losing everything I am and ever could be. I think about the loss of my freedom and my body. If I had to choose between never traveling again and never having a carefree day in my life, I don’t think I would choose to be a mother. Being a mother is different than being a father. You are on the hook in so many ways. I don’t think I need to have a child to give my life meaning. I think adventure, exploration, the search for truth might be the meaning of my life. I know I want to experience great love, but this is also something I may only want because of rumors I’ve heard about how great it is. To be perfectly honest I kind of love the way my life is now. I don’t need a steady partner, and I’m far from ready to be a mother. There is so much more world out there to see. I’ve been seeing the world in a frenzy thinking of the day I would have to make some choices based off biology and circumstance and in my mind, if I had a child I would have to give up traveling. Financially, that would be the case if it happened tomorrow, and that’s not something I want. I know that theoretically, hopefully, there would be someone there to bear the burden with me, but honestly, I have absolutely no interest in having a child if I don’t have the support of another parent. I am not someone who would use a donor or go to some other somewhat extreme to get pregnant without a life partner. I love babies, and I love children, but besides biological urge, it’s hard to picture myself doing the day in day out work of being a parent without regretting it. I have the image from my mom that being a mother is constant drudgery. And i don’t think sacrifice is the only meaning of life either. I’m not a martyr, and I don’t want to become one. I know that a fair amount of people manage to travel and do interesting stuff even while having multiple kids, but no matter what, your life is different and your resources of time, money, and energy, sometimes even health, are diverted from yourself necessarily, and you no longer get to be your own first priority. Maybe reproduction only works by ruse. If you had a completely fulfilled and happy life, why would you want to turn it upside down by having a child? Right now I can’t picture either having the kind of partner that would make me want to take that leap into the unknown. I guess another way of thinking is that everything you gain you do so for your children and it takes on new meaning, and I’m sure it does, but honestly I think it’s ok to just consume what you manifest yourself and leave a bit to nourish the world, right? I don’t tink I’m against having children, although I know I’m perfectly against having children with a partner. I don’t know if life has begun to or will one day begin to feel repetitive without having a child and having that greatest adventure of self sacrifice and love and responsibility, but at the moment I can’t contemplate having a cat or buying a car or even leasing an apartment for three years. I know if I had a kid, I would raise to the occassion and really love it. But I don’t think I will ever need it, and I don’t know if I will ever want it enough to disturb all that I’ve got going on now. My logical hunch is that having a kid never really makes sense in the long run, although I’m sure you do get to grow as a person in new ways. I doubt that having a kid is ever “worth it” for the mother if she’s already fulfilled in her life. And yet, I know a lot of women who seem pretty happy and still decide to have kids, so maybe there’s something about being with the right guy that changes things. I’m so enjoy my Aprodite and Artemis archetypes that being a mother feels like it would be sacrificing literally everything I am. I feel like I’ve got it in me, and my body is begging for it, but besides taking care of another person to avoid confronting life, the universe, and everything I’ve got going on within myself, I don’t see the point. Maybe this is the dirty little secret of feminism, and why European birth rates are so low. Or maybe there will be a day when love will win over reason, and somehow it won’t need to make sense anymore. But it would have to be a great love, and even greater trust.

As for men, it’s true, I theoretically want to have kids some day, and more to the point for these days, I do think I want to be in a relationship. But again, why risk having someone break your heart, or even more painful, breaking theirs, if you can get along just fine on your own? If I struggle to imagine owning an apartment (mind you, an apartment and not a goddamn house with a lawn, etc to maintain) because I might have to give up a trip because something needed a repair, how hard is it to imagine genuinely sharing your life with another person, and how many goddamn vacation days you would spend visiting their family when you already don’t exactly begrudge but are a little stingy with the time you accord your own, because you would rather be off adventuring, most of the time?

The real thing that kind of made me start wondering if it would be worth it is thinking about having less passion potentially over time, no matter how creative and romantic you are (also look at what science says having kids does to your relationship), and if you already have respectful and happy relationships in your life, and deep friendships, and high quality lover (s), what can a man really add without taking away quite a whole lot? Would the benefit ever be worth the risk? I’m not afraid of going to quite a lot of countries a lot of tourists shy away from, but I am terrified of choosing the wrong person, and being hurt again, and probably even more terrified of doing the hurting. I want to know or at least have the strongest possible feeling it will work out and that it’s worth it come what may, but I don’t think you “just know” all that very often. And I have fooled myself into just thinking I “just knew” enough times that I know how little my mind can be trusted. Also how much do I actually want love versus just the validation of having someone? To what extent is it lazy to go with being a relationship as the main form of companionship versus cultivating others if in the end, you aren’t sure if you are biting off far more than you can chew?

I am not in a relationship not because I don’t love myself, but because I am terribly terribly afraid of them. I want to come close to the fire without burning myself. I am chicken of all chickenshit because I don’t want to take emotional risks. I may have been to my fair share of therapy, but I don’t want another person in my life to disappoint or hurt or be disapporoved of. I know my family loves me as I am, and they ahve come to accept my role as a wanderer, but damn.

The truth is that I have very rarely, and pretty much never without shame, really let myself be who I wanted to be. And having a man or baby seem like a perfect way to put a muzzle on my soul, toss it in a box, and throw away the key. Fuck you, Personal Legend, put a bun in the oven, get back in the kitchen and take off those shoes! Not to mention a house. The homeowner dream in lieu of the man/baby dream, whether it’s a McMansion in in the burbs or a Hausmanien dream in the City of Light, while it might seem appealing at times to have one’s own “home,” the sky is already all mine.  The road belongs to no one, and yet, by naming myself for the wanderer that I am, I claim every mile for me, and me for myself.

Is it really a new adventure to truly love someone? Is it really so much of a great new world to have a child? Is it childish and selfish not to jump on board for these commitments and the life experiences they offer? Is it silly to even think like that, and to realize you bear children for the human race or your community or to propagate your own genes, and any satisfaction you get is a side effect of that?

When the world loves you without asking for anything back, is it not silly to put your heart in fickle human hands?

Whetther I ever love a man or have a baby, I love myself, and I love this world. I need no other justification or joy.

I love my fire. Fire might consume nearly everything it touches, but it also brings light and heat to the world. I love my fire.

The Day of Liberation is at hand

Tags

buddhism, dating, expat, feminism, happiness, love, motherhood, Paris, twenty something

Today I realized I could be perfectly happy without a husband or children.

I also realized that my peak experiences in life hadn’t come at work, even if I am quite grateful for my job that I like at least 60-70% percent of the time.

And i don’t need to leave Paris for ambitious reasons, I want to be here, I want to grow even deeper roots here, I want to bloom here, I want my fruit to be born here.

I’ve never felt so happy in my entire life, really that my life could be so free of conditions.

I feel genuine joy.

I do want to buy an apartment with my name on the deed, even if it’s no bigger than what I need for my own basic needs.

Happiness can be sort of unconditional, assuming some basic needs are met.

And they don’t have to be met in the way you expect.

I feel like I may not have performed as well as I might have for a consulting interview yesterday, but I did realize a lot about myself and what’s most important to me.

I’ve never felt so free,   I feel like the fourth and fifth and sixth walls have been broken and I’m living in a seventh dimension of expansive freedom.

I don’t need to be a wife and mother!

I don’t need a man and babies!

I don’t need a million dollars or a fancy title!

I don’t need to be the CEO or the greatest or the best!

I am myself, and that’s more than enough, and always has been.

Paris, je t’aime.

I am so happy right now, it feels like a dirty secret to not need all those things to be happy I always thought I should be pursuing frantically and diligently. But no, no need.

I don’t even need an apartment, but I want one.

I am a free spirit.

Let freedom ring!

 

Almost turning 30 might be one of the best things that have ever happened to me so far. Life has not turned out anything like I planned, and it’s absolutely fabulous!

I am richer than Midas, and my wealth is too big for just this world to contain.

 

I’m free, I’m free, I feel like the Genie in Aladinn when his cosmic powers can finally put to his own use.

Blessings be upon you, my friends.

Namaste.

Thanks for coming along on this ride.

Tags

dating, love, romance

It’s not everyday you get to have a genuine little crush on someone, and I am trying to be greatful for this unlooked for little flutter of warmth which has raised my standards and reminded me of what it means to be intimate.

Yes, it is the French lover sailor guy, the one that wasn’t at all what I was looking for, and I was afraid would mean settling if I were to go with its flow, becuse he didn’t check every box and yes, he’s on a ship far away a good portion of the year.

But truth be told, I am really kind of excited abou thim, because he is easy to be with, and I wonder if the reason I barricaded myself in an apartment to dirty to court suitors and didn’t open up to anyone else for a long time despite having such a clear picture what I wanted and trying hard to find it was that I didn’t know what I wanted until I received it.

I”m sure there are other people that could be for me, that would make love just as well and have many interests in common and with whom things would be easy.

But for the moment, I like him, and I will try to live with the mystery of that. I like him. I like him, I like him, and I do believe that he likes me too.

And that’s pretty nice for now.

 

Chasing ghosts, and the spiral of shame

Tags

fat, feminism, love, sex

So I got depressed in b school and kind of wasn’t my best self during that period, and then I went on to live life and even got what I wanted, but I still felt shitty and depressed abou tthe fact I went to b school and choices I made that led me to my current situation that was pretty good, and so I felt shitty and did more crappy  self destructive stuff, and now I feel shitty for the whole crappy self destructive thing, I don’t hate myself so much for going to business school, but now I hate myself so much for the self destructive stuff I struggle to stop doing the self destructive stuff.

A guy who wasn’t my first choice fell in love with me and I went along with it and got attached to him and only chose him by the time I was fully dependent, but then, maybe I did really love him for some time, because we were intimate and I don’t even mean sexually, but yes, because fo the intimacy I loved him even though he didn’t check every box and at some point he was a bit shitty to me but I let it go because I knew he was devoted to me and I still had his balls in a jar which he had given to me , without me even asking for them, although he was still a selfish shitty teenage guy in some ways. I hope someday I forgive and forget the day he told me he was ashamed to see me in a bathing suit in front of his friends and I think I might have still ahd sex with him that day.

Then I broke up with him and he went crazy I went crazy and I fell crazily in obsession with a guy who was really very little but bad news bears. So bad I don’t want to even think about it. That’s a saga I could sadly write a ton about but all I want to say is that it felt bad more often than it fel tgood and then everything the good was just neutral and the bad was very bad. He told me I dwarfed him and I had sex with him minutes later, among many other mean episodes of me wanting his validation and approval more than my own self respect, since I never had enough self worth anyway.

And then a semi decent, not even totally decent, immature for his age but slightly older than me guy liked me, and I turned him into a god because he checked every box and I liked his tats and his height and his eyes and I thought I could save him and he would love me forever. As it turns out, he did care for me but not enough, and i knew he wouldn’t from the very first moment, but I wanted ot believe anyway the same way I believed that a god had died for my sins and was a hero. I wanted him to be my hero. I wanted to be saved. I wanted to save him. I thought he would be the only one ever. I couldn’t believe anyone else would come around. I was loyal to a ghost. Finaly he blocked me in every way when years later, I told him I would come back to Ameirca. In the end, of course I didn’t.

And it’s hard to stop chasing ghosts. I fell in love with somebody, he was the wrong person and the timing wasn’t right even though we had a good exchange of intimacy together and he helped push me in good directions.

A guy who didn’t fit the bill of what I was looking for intervened around this time, and he was withtout a doubt the healthies trelationship I ever had. But that’s nto saying all that much. And to be honest, it was about the sex and comfort, I’m not sure how much of a real connection we had, although the chemistry was off the charts. I admire him, eh is a good guy, but he could have been a little better to me. I guess I felt like I didn’t truly deserve it. I don’t know if I pushed him away too. As usual, it was doomed from the start and I knew, yes, I knew, I would leave in 2 months and so did he, and no, neither of us but especially not him wanted to keep it going, even though technically i’m the one who broke up with him because I think I liked him more than he liked me, and I saw the relationship as more important. Fucker. He is a good guy, he always kept in touch a little bit. And now he has a girlfirned, and he doesn’t want me. And when I told him I wanted him, I was a little scared he would say yes. So funny scared ad sacred are nearly the same word. Bu tyeah, he has  agirlfirnd, and it was easy for him to be sainted at the time.

And recently, ther ewas a guy who maybe could ahve adored me, but you guessed it, not really available at all. Because he works in fucking  i don’t want ot tell you where since there’s not too many people that go there and yeah, even though he was nice and we went to a museum and had the most enthusiastically generous sex I”ve ever had, he is not here. And he doesn’t live heere when he is here. ANd I couldn’t get over the fact that after all of my adventures I might end up with someone who didn’t, at first glance, make me want to hop into bed with him, or make me immediatley bare my soul with him, just someone who made me feel comfortable and beautiful and maybe even a little loved and appreciated, but maybe that’s because he was not as “good” as some of the other guys. Although he is some kind of nobility, har har. I didn’t love him, not at the time, but when he was about to go away I wished I had the chance. And I had sex with him, well, just because I felt like it, not because I was partiuclarly hungry for him, bu tnow I look at his admittedly less godlike bod than some of the other guys I have slept with, and I wnat him, but he’s not here and will likely not be in the future, and I haven’t heard from him two weeks and don’t know when I will, and we weren’t in it for the love anyway.

Mabe he was just a gateway dude to realizing I truly want intimacy.

And recently there was some other dude that would have seemed quite satisfactory had I not had that previous experience. Nothing to write home about in any case, but just a chance to realize that it’s not that the person has abs or even is willing ot please that makes sex nice.

So here’s hoping I give myself a chance at meeting a guy who is present, wants the same things, and can give me that funny feeling in my tummy and earn a place in my heart.

I hope I give myself a chance to find out what real love is.

 

What does it mean to be a writer?

Tags

buddhism, career, life, love, sex, writing

A few months ago I finally bought an official wordpress domain and the thing to make an official site and I said I’m finally going to do that travel blog. But I havne’t done too much with it.

The past few months I’ve been looking pretty deep into my soul to ask what do I really want to do and who do I want to be and what’s being anyway, and do we even have immortal souls? Perhaps we don’t, at least not in the way we think, that there is some fixed immutable part of us. Instead, we are the flame, ever changing, only alive in dancing. I think this is an intuition I have had a long time.

I can think of thousands of things I want to learn and do with my time on earth. Perhaps I would like to spend a bit more time with my family. But oh, I want to explore.

And I know it’s in me to want to share everything that’s going on inside me, even if I don’t always have the guts to write about it.

The truth is, I’m afraid to be seen. To shine.

Afraid to lose, not just that last ten pounds I carried for so long, but now the extra thirty or maybe forty.

Afraid to let myself be more successful than I feel I have a right to be, what with my job not being so inherently noble or public service oriented as some others.

Afraid to let myself be loved, although that fear has softened recently. I’m not so afraid to give as I am to receive, but if you’ve given enough times to guys you knew you would never be able to receive from that does tend to spoil the fun.

Afraid to be too intimate with life, with my life. More than anything afraid to unpack my suitcases and say, “this is home, ” since, as Paulo Coelho says, “life is the train, not the station.”

I know I will never be a finished masterpiece. I alway swonder when the universe will pull the rug out from under me again, and I’ll end up in a career I never could have envisioned or on a country on the other side of the ocean. It makes it hard to plan too far in the future, and maybe that’s not a bad thing.

The past few years I’ve just been abusing myself for not being enough and for fucking some things up, but maybe they weren’t that big of a deal and whether I realize it or not, I think I have been investing in the right things, really.

Maybe I don’t actually want to buy a house for only myself to live in. Maybe my wings are my roots.

Maybe it’s not the lack of being settled that’s the problem, maybe it’s just the fact I keep on wishing I was like “other people” and trying in different self defeating ways to clip those wings I secretly love so much.

I think as a woman it’s a bit of a crime to love freedom so much, yet at the same time, it feels like self betrayal to want to give up even a bit of that to be a bit less alone.

And I’m not alone. My relationship with my family is getting better and better. I”m glad I didn’t listen to the psychologist. As the coach says, they are only trained to stop you from killing yourself. She talked me out of one form of misery, but she couldn’t teach me to love myself. Or to really know myself.

I want a child or two. I feel like it gets more and more obvious everyday. It seems like a crazy thing for me to want. I’m afraid I couldn’t deal with a cat. I’m afraid I would resent a child, because I am such a self centered person who wants (only) to learn and grow.

I want to publish a book.

I want to travel the world, and not always alone.

Maybe I want a gap year.

Maybe I want to be a digital nomad for a period.

I don’t think I really want van life. I don’t think it’s any more economical than backpacking in most parts of the world I’d really want to go.

If I had a man who would do all the driving and fixing, I would consider it.

And I really, really, really want a man. Like to a somewhat ridiculous extent.

I had a recent encounter that made me realize it’s not really sex, it’s intimacy that I truly crave.

Who the fuck am I?!?!?

I’m afraid of intimacy. To be known, to shine, and be shone upon.

I’m afraid of growing to love somebody that doesn’t fit the archetype I decided I wanted.

I’m afraid of growing to love someone, period. It would feel like less of a choice than the doomed half-love unreciprocated bullshit that has been my specialty.

It has been about three years since my ideal of love finally truly died. Then I re-met someone who I hadn’t taken seriously because he didn’t fit the archetype and hadn’t felt like “the ONe,” the last time, but he had a girlfirned and I don’t think it was ever meant to be.

Just recently I met someone who showed me that all the selfishness I put up with and supposed “dominance” I had craved in a man was just my own tomfoolery.  Probably something to do with the blocage against love and intimacy business. No one ever made me feel so human, and I know it’s an experience I will carry with me for a long time.

Too bad he is gone.

I wonder if someday he will be for me, but I am done playing that game.

And I know that if I truly wanted it, there would be some guy in Paris, where I live, for me. There just has to be.

So I am going on another date tomorrow.

I wonder if this last guy was just another one passing through that was meant to teach me something. That is the story I will tell myself for the moment.

I didn’t feel like I would fall in lov ewith him because he wasn’t my type and didn’t elicit the immediate gut level “want” that the others did, and I wondered if my body, brain, and ego could really do without that.

Bu tnow I want him I think, or just intimacy, or something like that.

It’s even changed my taste in smut.

I wonder what it would be like to really write something and try to make it good, and not just smatter on the page.

What would it be to really touch the blank page, and proclaim “I’m a Writer”

First of all, I wouldn’t do that. I hate those people. I don’t like people who self appoint themselves as writers and declare themselves gifted and who relegate their lives to the telling of tales rather than the making of them. I also distrust the idea of any kind of research or commentary on life for tha treason, becuase my american capitofascist indoctrination had it that those types are not worth taking seriously. And sometimes, I see why.

But the truth is, I never wanted to be a decision maker, and I never saw myself as a leader.

I saw myself as a side kick, or a record breaking smart kid, a scientist.

Not a general.

I once wanted to be the firs twoman president, and then in general I just wanted to do things girls weren’t supposed to do , like be an economist, even if I prefered words to numbers.

I’ve always hated that in myself. If I was a boy I would probably have been a West Point Cadet, or no, probably in the Air Force, that’s cooler, or Navy. Or a tech genius in Silicon Valley. Or an investment banker.

But here I am, and it’s time to own it.

 

Au revoir for now

Tags

being, buddhism, calling, christianity, existence, expat, journey, life, love, philosophy, process, seeker, transformation, travel

I’m not really sure why I’m not writing as much here. It could be that I am more busy and much less lonely, and it oculd also be that maybe I’m growing beyond fillefrancofun as I had claimed so many years ago soon after I started the blog.

I think a lot of my demons have vanished into a puff of smoke, and while I definitely am in the experience othe Buddhists call “groundlessness” as in, I’m nto really sure which way is up and I have no f not no but not so many fixed beliefs and hangups,

I think with Buddhism I have found what I was looking for, and in France I’ve gotten a somewhat blank canvas to decide who I want to be.

I also think a lot of my healing is done. The scars are disappearing, and there’s a new person here I didn’t know before

A girl who likes mountains, surfing, and deadlifts;

A shrewd non-self hating business woman who doesn’t hide behind self contempt and fake moral outrage over the global capitalist system;

A woman who accepts her past, warts and all;

A single lady, and kind of fucking proud of it;

A person who is giving her gifts to the world, and in healing herself, helps others find their path

A self transformation junkie always searching for the final door who realized at long last that the path doesn’t end and once you are on the journey, you never real come back, or cross the finish line

A seeker who has learned to live, not comfortably, but bravely, in the questions and no longer obsessed with a response

A native daughter of middle class Catholic central NJ who is now a certified wanderer, a global citizen, and who has seen too many tribes to take her own seriously anymore

Someone who has lost her identity too many times to count, plans to lose it again and again, and has learned to find peace and comfort in that

There will be no settling, no final destination, no moment where  I click my heels together to go home. There will be no person, no love who justifies my existence or who comforts me in my existential woe. There is not even a spirit in the sky of a God who hears my cries, nor a dumb materialist universe without poetry either. There is cause and effect, the infinite wisdom of the compassionate heart, the free play of space, and that’s all there is. And to know it, and accept it, is enough. No nothing will ever comfort my sad ego need to know everything, to be in control, to be the center of the universe, to have something outside of myself save me and make sense of everything.

 

Self responsibility is about more than paying your bils on time, and it’s more than taking a leap of faith and accepting the consequences. Self responsability means accepting that even you yourself are a construct, a product of the mind, and that training that mind to do no harm is your highest duty.

Yes, to live a full life on earth, even if joy is suffering, to have a full human existence, sparing the less pleasant bits as much as possible, that is something to aspire to as well.

And maybe they are one and the same, the punk rock post colonialist explorer and the blissed out monk neither taking the world too seriously but aware of beauty, inside and out.

This blog was about France, and mostly about Paris. It was about my renaissance as a thinking human being, coming of age in the cradle of post modernism, finding my passion and still being depressed, healing the wounds from feeling different and unworthy, not pleasing enough, and most of all, getting over the existential fear in not believing dogma, but rather trusting one’s own experience.

The sacred is a glorious human invention, and it exists as much as anything. As love, as romance, as glory and grandeur. But like any form of meaning, it does not exist from any objective viewpoint. It exists because we choose to believe in it.

We search for God, but instead we find the seeds, the raw material beauty in a pit filled with offal. We look at the stars, at Van Gogh’s starry night, and we know we are here, and that’s it, and know we are neither alone nor is the mystery and grandeur of the universe something that comes in a box. God cannot be separate from His Creation- as we created God he created us.

Yes this world is an illusion, and full of pain and suffering and maddening impermanence, but i is the free play of space, and so are we. And I love it, in open hearted surrender, knowing my heart will be broken again and again, that the ground will shift beneath my feet, that every castle is built on sand, that one desire will always succeed another- I will keep climbing mountains just because they are there and I want to know what’s on the other side, I will keep spinning the globe and going to wear my finger points, that once every calling is answered, every Grail Quest is completed, another will spring up like a mushroom in its place. I will russle up the courage to create even though today’s creation might seem like crap tomorrow and will never in any case match all that I imagined.

I surrender to the creative process of life, the joy of connection, and the bliss of the journey.

 

Namaste and thank you for following me.

 

 

The monster that isn’t in the closet

Tags

choices, coaching, dieting, exercise, expat life, fat, fitness, growing up, love, parents, relationships

so I’ve been pretty afraid to try my best at things, because that has often been linked to rebound eating, hunger, bingeing and overdoing whatever behavior it was that I was trying to curb when my inner self destruction, mean girl, inner critic, what have you, Demon of Low Self-Worth appears on the scene and ruins whatever I was trying to create.

This feels deceptively like a very authentic part of me, like something that is fighting for the real Megan to come through, to be loved for her faults/with her faults in a way. It is deceptively human, and humanizing. I think, I deserve to be loved for not being perfect, I deserve to not be perfect, and I deserve to indulge myself. loving becomes indulging and is more about giving in to impulses, especially when they are ill-considered and unlikely to actualy satisfy true need.

Like sure, have that hamburger. If you give yourself what you want, you will be happy and authentic. If you do something you don’t want to  get a result you claim to want, you are a cold bitch Machiellian, so eat the goddamn sandwich or next time i will get you with a dozen cookies two sandwiches and a bread bowl.

I have long, lonve feared this part of me. Because this part of me is what gave me limits, and comfort.

But i didn’t want to let it go, it felt too much like home. Not that my family isn’t proud of me in their way, but they are people who have built their lives with trying to be happy with what they have and mostly focusing on relationships, friendly and in their marraiges.

so what I am doing is completely authentic , to leave, and not even for a relationship, which also wouldn’t have been tolerated from me since my role in the family these days is badass independent woman adventurer- is she selfish or just fearless?

does she even really love us?

She only sees us once or twice a year but she always finds the money to travel.  When we’re gone, then she’ll regret it but i wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

But i’m a dutiiful daughter and that didn’t happen to me, guess there was some perks of staying at home.

No wonder she can’t find a man if she’s always traveling and never stays in one place. SHe cares too much about her career.  Acually she doesn’t care enough, all she cares about is travel, and what is that but an escape- where is she escaping to, isn’t France enough?

 

She was always the strange one anyway- that’s why she fits in so well with the frogs.

It makes me sad that i think people do sometimes thin this way about me, and even more sad that I can particularly

remember the instances of some of the above coming out of someone I respects male. Ouch, that hurt.

No wonder I don’t want to go back, and I”m not sure if I want to go home for Christmas.

But I do because I love them and they love me, and a lot of this is just my inner critic talking- who they did in fact help create, much as they will say I always had that “drive” and they didn’t expect anything great out of me.

But they did, I think, and this life while fun to tell the neighbors about is not what they expected. Oh well, sucks for tehme.

 

As for me,  know I do well enough in the making people jealous of my life contest.

Because I don’t give a fuck anymore.

My childhood babysitter says I’m not the little girl she used to take to the library- now I’m out traveling the world. I”m ure no one would have seen me doing it, least of all me.

I feel like I’m speaking out of turn, too much about me, too much about what’s importat to me than what category I fit into, and if I’ve checked the boxes, and if there can be some schaden frude about the fact that I, while living a prety authentic life ahat I really enjoy, have not crossed off all the milestones yet

 

ANd I will sometime. That I feel pretty confident abou , because it is a part of what I desire. A part.

Maybe f I was a full time traveller I wouldn’t like it as much.

 

I am happy that i’ve been going on quests of my own now, rathe rthan just oging to see something that didnt know what I wanted.

 

But anyway, back to the demon.

The demon is the tempestuous God outstairs who bangs the broom on their celing to disturb me when I”m having sex, or a moments peace.

That’s just how it is.

But no more.

There is no more reason to be afraid of the demon than there is to be afraid of the monster in the closet.

But you will continue to be afraid of the monster in the closet unless you can see that it’s not real.

Like the creatures in M N Shaymalan’s the Village.

When you are loved by people, and truly taken care of, it helps light back up the star within you. And I’m not talking about validation, I’m talking about love, the kind of love that can be tough and adjust you back on your right path. The love of a coach or teacher, not a sycophant, not a positive affirmations specialist, not that person taht doesn’t respect or care for you enough to tell the truth. More than likely this person will witness both good and bad things about you, and will reassure you you that you are only human and it’s ok, and you are still worthy of effort and love.

And little by little, your spark will be reignited, and you will start to be shiny.

And only by your own lifht, which it might take months and years to grow, will you see that there never has been anything in the closet–

That when you came out of the closet of your own making, of your limitations others false beliefs and iill intetions imposed on you, the revenge of the weak amongst the strong, the resentment that causes you to write a song like Jenny from the Block because your success threatens everyone around you, especially if they have helped you on your path. It stings, and if they are not entirely happy with the life they lived and they lacked the courage to live the one they wanted, which more or less might resemble yours.

And love is making love in the light of a dying fire, of being together in a rough corrugated metal shack, two souls in the middle of no where, just feelign each other.

And love is when you have to trat yourself better than you have ever treated yourself, because someone believes in you and has invested in you.

And you know, because of them, that you really deserve it. And you don’t do it for them, you really truly do it for you. And that’s a reason.

You stop wanting to change the world adn start wanting to live your life. You stop grasping for control and want freedom more than power.

And that my friends’ is how to tame the green eyed monsters, inside and out, wherever they may be.

 

Pssst turn on the light.

PS and maybe it’s all called into being by dualism, and the beleif there has to be an eternal battle of dark and night, live and sun. And es, all is well.

 

Best,

MJ