complexities and apparent contradictions

I find it near impossible most days to fully comprehend all that life is, all that relationships are, all that even one human is. It's so hard to fully grasp at any given moment all the joy and all the pain and all that just is, that even one person can cause, let alone a lifetime of people and events.

there are so many things, so often contracidtory things, that make up a person and what they mean to you.

I find myself today on a poetry website I helped run nearly a decade ago with my would be long-term girlfriend. I stopped regularlly visiting the website in 2003 due to the craziness of my life and problems with my girlfriend. We broke up in 2008 after 7years together. And I've been struggling to understand and come to terms with the relationship as a whole. It had it's moments of being extremely abusive (even physically) and there was a lot wrong with it. Many upon hearing of some of the horrors cannot understand how I could ever love such a person, some of that is my own skewed memories, but some of it lies in the condraticions that lie within people.  It was not all bad, not even by a long shot, but does the good outweigh the bad or visa versa?

it's so hard to sit here and read the poems that made me fall in love with the poet, to see the kindness and love in her soul, to know she was capable of such beauty and grace, and to hold all of that in mind when remembering the pain and misery I felt in direct contact with this same person. It's hard to hold the whole picture of a person.

She really helped me so much in certain areas of my life and yet set me back in several other areas of my life. Holding the wholeness of her, the years together, everything, leaves my heart near bursting. I don't know what to do, or say, or even feel. I want to cry and laugh and scream. I don't know where the fault lies, probably somewhere between us.

and yet here in the silence all I feel in the end is love. I know we should not be together again for I fear we at times bring out the worst in each other, but I wish her all the best. I hope all that is good in her continues to grow and all the negative fades. Part of me will always wonder where i'd be if she hadn't walked into my life, but for now I will take it all, good and bad, and use it to push myself to be better.

And I will make the effort in everything to see the whole of people because it's unfair on some level to not

friends

sometimes we need our friends to save us from ourselves. sometimes we need them to understand we need to make our own mistakes. but most of all we just need them to be there whether rejoicing in our victories or helping us pick ourselves back up after our defeats, because if nothing else there is a lot of power in knowing we're not alone.

I am so lucky to have had and continue to have such great friends. I've been blessed with having friends that cared about me and loved me as I was for the last 19 years or so. While some have come and gone, and other relationships have shifted and new ones have formed, it has been a constant that there has been at least one person in my life that has been there.

And in some weird way they have given me a gift that is more valuable than anything thing else I can think of. I now love myself. In some way through being themselves, in loving me and not only letting me, but wanting me to love them, I have learned to love myself. Somehow this fleeting basic need that I had been missing has been found. And it's not because they love me that I love myself, it's not dependant on someone else anymore, it's through the love between us that I realized my own inherant worth.

in truly loving someone, one cannot disreguard the value of something they care about. If it has no other value to you, it matters simply because it matters to them. That's how it first started. If I matter to someone who really matters to me, then on some level I must matter to myself. And then add to that, that here are people who I adore just as they are preceived flaws and all who love me for who I am flaws and all. I trust their judgement on so much, why do I not believe them where my own worth comes in. Through their love of both me and themselves I began to see my own value, not just the things I value in them that are in me, but also believe that they are not being fooled and do in fact see and love me as I am. They showed me how to love myself, but now it has become I love myself even if their view of me has changed. They have shed light on the me I refused to see., and now that I see it, it cannot be unseen

Through the support of friends and their being there I have learned how to take care of myself. They are invaluable, life is so so much better with them there, but now I feel I have the strength to live even if there were to come a day when I did not have the support I want. They have taught me to be my own friend instead of the enemy I had always been. I'm grateful

I know not why there is such a melancholy feeling attached to the remembrance of past happiness, except that we fear that the future can have nothing so bright as the past.
Julia Ward Howe

grateful

I am so abundantly grateful to my friends. and I believe outwardly to the ones in my day to day life. Although I feel I've usually made the effort to be a good friend, as could as I was capable of at the time, to most of my friends since the beginning, I feel I have let too much time and space pass between some of them.

I know things change, people change, relationships become closer or more distant. This is enevitable. But there are a handful of people who at one point or another were huge parts of my life and whom I still love very dearly, but the relationship has faded, in some cases to near non-existance. This makes me sad. I know it's the nature of things, but I miss them and can't help but realize my part in it. I have not always put in the effort to maintain these relationships. and now I fear too much has passed, too much time, too much space, too much growth and change. I know it will never be the same, not really asking that it be, I just wish that each of you knew that I still deeply care about each of you and want to be part of your life on some level. I would still help you anyway I could if you asked, without hesitation (I think most of you know that) I miss feeling like I could really call you close friends because you are near and dear to my heart, but feel I cannot because there is too much of your life I do not know.

I think perhaps I have not treated you all with the gratefulness I feel. I fear I have been too distant with my love and too quick to take for granted your being willing to be there.

I guess my main point is I love you and hope you know that even when it hasn't been said enough...

sleep

I really have not been getting enough sleep, which I know can be detremental especially in the long run, but I'm really enjoying myself. I need to work on balance. But I'm not sorry for anything I've done instead of sleep, just wish the day were a little longer so I could play as much as I want, sleep as much as I need and get up for school the next morning. But who am I kidding.... in all honesty more time wouldn't really change anything I'd squander it too. More sleep would be nice, and will happen more, most likely, as the seasons shift to winter.

we are the product of our lessons learned, but the lessons learned are not always correct.

we are all very scarred beings, injured time after time, fragile, but resilient. the wounds heal over if we let them and though are not of untouched 'perfection' they do have a beauty all their own. There is a depth, a character, an honesty to them that can be magnificent if there is matching growth.

we can learn and grow from the things that happen in our lives, will ourselves into becoming better beings. (although this definition changes, I believe it to mean able to deal, to love even when not easy) or we can shrivel and close up and become more afraid and bitter and/or live to make the same mistake over and over. It's funny how the same wound can do either to us.

I long to not be afraid, to love deeply but not have to inflict unnecessary pain on myself or others, to change the things I can and accept what I can't and learn the difference

dialetic

It's funny to live in the moment, to know there is nothing beyond it, but also be aware that it will not last and everything is beyond it. everything is nothing and nothing is everything.... ah the dialetic of life.