To trust? Or not to believe?

Do you remember the times where you felt all alone and like the only thing you have to grab onto is your own sanity? And you tell yourself over and over that what you have is enough? 

And then all of a sudden you find this group, this number of people who step up and somehow make all that nonsense sound right? Or if at least not right, something to bear. They were your friends, your support group, your family, your life. They are the ones who make you real. Who let you be sane, who you need to be you. Amazing...if it's words to describe.

After that I believe you need to find urself again, allow the you to prove itself again. And only then can you truly be balanced. At least this is where I think I need to be right now, I could be completely wrong. 

Happy Belated Thanksgiving & Raw Food Contemplations

My wonderful parents were great enough to buy me a spur of the moment ticket home for Thanksgiving so I have been enjoying a delightful few days basking in home love. It came at a good time and has def helped in healing. 

My mother has recently started eating raw and my sister has started tagging along on that journey. This meant that we had two types of thanksgiving dinner. One cooked by my 13 year old brother (traditional turkey, potatoes, stuffing) and than a "raw" meal that consisted of broccoli salad, raw mashed potatoes, raw stuffing and I think that's it. It was very interesting to be able to taste the differences between what we deem as normal food and these dishes made out of all nuts and sprouted grains. I believe that I would very much like to be able to eat the way my mother does because it is more along the lines of how I eat. 

I prefer to eat lots of small snacks throughout the day and not too much at once. I also, and prepare yourself here, ABHORE condiments. Yes that means mayo, ketchup, dressing, most dips and pretty much any other condiment that exists. I do understand this is odd but I hate them. Which I believe is why this raw thing speaks to me so much, it does not use any of those creepy consistency condiments. Unfortunately for me, eating raw if far too expensive and rather time consuming as well as hard to prepare for just yourself. But it is something that I am going to look into and try out. Because lots of what I ate this weekend was amazingly good! And truth be told, other than bread and cheese I don't particularly need other cooked food. Though please don't hold me to that because I can be fickle! lol. Until then I will enjoy a moderate balance and continue to figure out this whole crazy process that is food in our world. 

Until then, hope everyone had a grand Thanksgiving and break and that tomorrow is just as wonderful. 

Who am I?

Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz ...

You Are an Ingrid!
You are an Ingrid -- "I am unique"

Ingrids have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me
* Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
* Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.
* Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
* Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
* Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

What I Like About Being an Ingrid
* my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
* my ability to establish warm connections with people
* admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life
* my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
* being unique and being seen as unique by others
* having aesthetic sensibilities
* being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What's Hard About Being an Ingrid
* experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair
* feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
* feeling guilty when I disappoint people
* feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me
* expecting too much from myself and life
* fearing being abandoned
* obsessing over resentments
* longing for what I don't have

Ingrids as Children Often
* have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games
* are very sensitive
* feel that they don't fit in
* believe they are missing something that other people have
* attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.
* become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
* feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)

Ingrids as Parents
* help their children become who they really are
* support their children's creativity and originality
* are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings
* are sometimes overly critical or overly protective
* are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed.

If you would like to take the quiz...

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. - Carl Jung.

Ingrid seemed to have it going on....

It is what it is.

I haven’t told anyone about this blog.

I haven’t decided if this blog is what I need or want.

I lost my best friend yesterday. It’s surreal the feelings that are coursing through me since it happened. I go from wanting to sob, to feeling sick, to wanting to throw something, to freaking out. Moving, ansty, needing to explode and having no where to put it. The energy is like a ball of fire that I have no control over.

I can’t seem to grasp why people have to leave. I was friends with him before it was more, why can’t that come back. And yet I know it can’t. At least not for awhile, and it’s killing me. That plain and simple fact has always killed me. I have lost numerous people in my life because you just can’t translate them into the person you become as life goes on. I can’t call, talk, or email to the one person who was a constant in my life for over 4 years. The one person who taught me that by loving and respecting someone who wasn’t you could make you feel more fulfilled than every imaginable.

It’s funny but I still don’t know what people see in me most days. What makes them come back and continue being my friend. I could name quality upon quality of each of my friends and talk for hours about why they are wonderful. But for some reason I can’t turn that around on me, I don’t know why they stay. I have a fear of calling people on the phone, not being able to observe their faces, do they want to hear from me? Is it a pain that I’m calling? I was never actually 100% comfortable calling him all the time. It would depend on my mood and feelings.

I ended things because I couldn’t continue in the path things were going. I ended them because I truly believe that by forcing myself to go back to just me I can come to terms with the chaos that is my mind right now. In hopes that I can figure out what is my crazyness versus what is for real. But by doing that I had let go of someone who was an entity of me, an appendage. And I’m literally going through withdrawal of this appendage.

I believe in my path. I have chosen this course. But I’m terrified of not being strong enough to finish it and of starting over.

Fear of Hurting, Him or Me

I’ve been debating making a big life choice in the coming week and I’m very lost at is I actually want to go through with it or not. It involves me going from a long and wonderful experience to being alone and by myself. And though at times I feel like it is 100% the right thing to, all of a sudden something will happen that will knock me down and make me feel like how could I ever debate doing something like that.
As you all know, I recently moved to Chicago and when I first decided to take the job and do the move I did not expect to stay with my college bf. I thought we would part ways come the end of the year and I could go off and have experiences. I’m a big believer in if it’s fate, we will end up together. Corny I know but it does help me let things go sometimes.

So obviously we didn’t split and today we are still going strong, but I am afraid that somewhere along the line I have lost who I am as a single, self-supported girl. And I think that happened because I never have actually been a single, self-supported girl. I was going over things in my mind earlier and I’ve realized that we have been together for a little over 3.5 years. And yet a year and a half of that has been us being separated, whether it was because of summertime and us going home, or IQP’s and MQP’s (college things), and now this, for a third of our entire relationship we have been experiencing and living through distance. So what I’m wondering now is are we clinging on to this distance because we are so used to it, it’s a part of what we have together and who we are together, or are we holding on because we actually do want to hold on. When we talked at the end of the year about breaking up and came close to it I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Nothing was right, I couldn’t think, and I knew that that was not what I wanted.

When I think it now, I feel melancholy. I think yes I’m sad but it might be nice to not have to feel guilty, or sad, or angry because we haven’t talked or I don’t know what he’s thinking or wondering if he’s mad at me. Distance sucks! Period. But then again am I melancholy only because I’ve spent the last month since I’ve seen him? Will I change my mind when I get there? Should I even wait till I see him to say this or should he know that I’m thinking of ending it now? I don’t know the protocol, I don’t know what would hurt less. I don’t know anything and that scares the hell out of me.

Dating?!?!?! I’ve never done that. Meeting guys out??!?!? I’ve never done that. I went slightly wild the beginning of freshman year and then I started this. I feel like I won’t know how to act or react or date or play the games? If it’s even possible I can play games.

And then the great question is…. Am I stupidly throwing away an amazing relationship, the relationship because I have 6 months more of distance staring me in the face? Or is finding out who I am as me more important? And will that allow me to really know what I want at the end of this year…because I look ahead 6 months and there’s blankness, nothingness, I can’t even see a landscape.

I usually rejoice in not knowing what’s coming but right now I feel like its……there.
So there is the typical meanderings of a 22 yo, I know you’ve all probably heard it before and I don’t think there’s a good answer out there. No one thing works for the same person….but sometimes just putting it out there sends something back, so for now that’s what I’m doing, as well as avoiding him.

Unexpected Sunday

So I spent Sunday as a chore day, trying to get everything done that I had been slacking on or pushing off etc. Usually this is pretty hard because I’ve gone out the night before and I love to sleep until like 1 in the afternoon and by the time I get up and feel motivated enough it’s usually dark already these days and then all I want to do is curl up on the couch and read or watch tv.

So anyway I didn’t go at it hard on Sat night and thus was able to get up fairly early (11:30 is early for me, lol) and get myself to the gym as well as found some time to grab a chai at Panera and hang out and read! Perfect Sunday activity in my mind. Once I got home from all that, feeling very good about myself because I had put a good amount of time in at the gym I started cleaning and baking etc. I also tried to do some laundry because I was very behind, but my apartment building only has one set of washer drier (for six units) and it was being used when I went down the first time. So I left my stuff there and decided to sit down with a book and wait for a bit.

Now not too sound ridiculous, but I had started reading the seventh Harry Potter that morning because I am out of books currently and haven’t made it to my favorite used bookstore, I’m trying to stay away from new books, so I grabbed Harry and went on my way completely not expecting to be 100% sucked in! Oh yea, I read and read and read, completely forgetting about my laundry or my other chores. The tv was even on and I could not tell you what was showing! I know I should turn it off but I really really enjoy the background noise….

Once I was finally able to pull my mind back from the idea that Harry was chasing Lord Voldemort BY HIMSELF I ran down to the basement to throw my laundry in. Of course whoever was doing it before me had not removed their clothes so I was forced to do it for them. I HATE doing that, I feel sort of dirty doing it because I wouldn’t want people touching my clothes, but seriously people there are 4 other units trying to wash their clothes as well, please stay on top of your loads! So I took their stuff out and threw mine in and went about my way.

Then when I came down to switch it was snowing out! Yes everyone, the first snow of the year has hit me. And it was gorgeous! They were the tiny little perfectly white flakes that just seem to drift and swirl around you making you feel as if you are in a movie where the fairy is coming at you in a glow of white! And then we have this gorgeous tree over our back patio and it has dropped loads of bright orange, red, and yellow leaves all over our patio and steps so that they created this blanket of vibrant and intense fall colors. And finally we have a lights that aren’t harsh or fluorescent but give off slightly yellow glow.
There I was with this light flowing down around me lighting up the tiny little snowflakes and standing on a carpet of fall and it felt so peaceful. I didn’t think for a second that I was standing between two apartment buildings, with numerous people in them on the side of a busy street but I could have been back at my childhood home standing out on our porch with no one around. It was amazing and completely made my night!

And then I went back up and finished Harry, yes he defeated Voldemort, married Ginny, and all was right in the WIzarding world. Did I expect to find the first snowfall and finish a rather long book all in one day that morning when I woke up with my frigid nose in my 54 degree apartment? I certainly did not, but it was a wonderful surprise and leaves me feeling ready to conquer this week at work.

Hope everyone out there had as peaceful and calming day as I did.

Title of This Blog

Water in any form has always had special meaning for me. Most of my greatest memories as a child occured while I was in a body of water with friends and family. Movement in water has always felt smooth and carefree, as if nothing can touch me. Even during my hardest practices or races I knew everything would be.

As I've said it doesn't matter in what form water comes to me in. As a lake and freshwater, ocean and salty, waterfalls, rain, or even drinking water. If I sit down and watch and allow that fluidity of water to soothe me everything falls away. I believe this is because no matter what happens to water it keeps moving and making it's way along its path. If it reaches a rock it figures out a way to move around that obstacle. It can wear things down and beat out it's own path or it can follow along in an already created one. It seems to have the lessons of life learned and is happy in it's position.

I guess what you can say is that I'm jealous of water, lol but in truth I think it just provides me with a model. I am forever changing and molding and I crave that change. In eighth grade I decided I didn't want to be in my school anymore and so I convinved my mom to help me apply to the local private school 5 minutes down the road. After 4 years I made a decision to continue to college, and though that is an expected decision these days, one still does need to choose a area of medium. Then after 4 years at college I made quite possibly the biggest decision in my life and I moved to Chicago.

Luckily I was able to convince a highschool friend to move out with me and a couple friends from college made the move as well, but it still feels sometimes like I am alone. Alone in a city that I have fallen in love with. One of the reasons I chose my college was because it was in a city, though granted not much of one, and anything was better than the small town in NH I was used to. Now here in Chicago I am learning that it is hard to be without your best friends and making your way with a very boring job. But beyond all of that I am very proud with myself in how I have become self sufficient and I feel right in this city. I walk around, traversing the streets that go from neighborhoody with trees lining the sidewalks to a busy bustling road. I can take a bus for 10 minutes and be back by water! A glorious thrilling incredible body of water. My walk to work goes right over a section of the Chicago river. Morning and night I feel a sense of calm wash over me as I cross the unique bridges that stud the city.

I am beginning this blog because I have recently started reading others that have begun when they have moved to a different city and I read their posts and can 100% relate with what they are saying. And all of a sudden I realized that instead of maybe continuously trying to make the bf understand what I feel or weighing my roomate down I can put it down here. I do realize that I am 4 months into this journey already, but the summer was such a whirlwind anyway that I don't think I actually realized what was happening in my life until about a month ago. And only now do I feel the need to lay it out somewhere. Maybe in the hopes that others might get consolation knowing they aren't the only ones out there experiencing this, maybe so that I can come back and reread these posts when I move to my next city! cause I do love traveling.

I don't promise to post every day, I don't promise to post every week. I find writing very theraputic when I want that type of release and I hate it when I force myself. So this will probably be a place where lots of posts go up at a time and then a hiatus is taken. Don't worry, I will for sure let you all know if I decide to stop or leave at any time. Until then, lets go!