ESTRAGON
What am I to say?
VLADIMIR
Say, I am happy.
ESTRAGON
I am happy.
VLADIMIR
So am I.
ESTRAGON
So am I.
VLADIMIR
We are happy.
ESTRAGON
We are happy. (Silence.) What do we do now, now that we are happy?
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Hopes
- True, pure, healthy, communicative, boundary-setting, individual but together romantic love
- Singing in the rain
- Dancing through the pain
- It could be more true, wonderful, and beautiful than I ever could have imagined
- I am capable of speaking my truth
- I am capable of clear communication
- I am capable of expressing my frustrations
- I am capable of human interaction and socialization
- I can be in a relationship and still be independent
- I will survive the honeymoon phase
- I will still love you tomorrow
Fears
- I'm unloveable
- I'm loveable
- I'm incapable of true, kind, compassionate, understanding, healthy love
- I'm capable of true, kind, compassionate, understanding, healthy love, but I won't allow myself to true because I'm too scared of failing
- I'm a heart breaker
- I'm a heart broken
- I'll spend my life searching and never seeing
- I'm scared that my love is destructive, addictive, and selfish.
- I'm scared that I will ravish my partner and leave their bones to dry.
- I'm scared that I am not as kind or loving as I appear to be.
- I'm scared that I won't communicate, I won't set boundaries, I'll give in, I'll fall into co-dependence and become resentful instead of resilient.
- I'm scared that I'll leave you walking on eggshells.
- I'm scared of blaming you for my pain.
- I'm scared of depending on you for my happiness.
- I'm scared of failing.
- Hard.
- Of failing you.
- Of failing my expectations.
- Of failing at life.
- Of choices.
- Of getting in trouble.
- Of creating my own problems.
- Of being reckless.
- Of getting lost in you.
- Of losing all ambition.
- That I won't be able to balance my life with yours or my career with my love for you or somehow I'll never be able to move forward. Whatever that means.
- I'm scared that I'm so dehydrated from a lack of love that I won't be able to take sips of yours, and I'll die trying to consume you with my love.
- I'm afraid that I'm the bad guy.
- I'm afraid that this is all an illusion or a distraction or a way of getting attention or true love that I don't know how to handle because I've never had true love before.
- I'm afraid I confused flirtation for a meaningful connection.
- I'm afraid you'll say no.
Questions
- Why do we worry? What is the survival instinct there?
- What are endorphins? Why do they exist? Like, is it to relax us and recalibrate us after sprinting for our lives from a giant bear?
- If we used to live in pacts and pods, why do we try so hard to be alone today? Why is it valued in our society to be "on your own"? What is the survival instinct there?
- Why do I prioritize my future-self over my present self?
- What does work/life balance look like? Who's doing it? Is anybody doing it? How?
- Is there a workaholics anonymous and can I go and learn and get better?
- How do you take a day off and not feel like shit? Does it get easier when you have a consistent full-time job?
- Does anyone else fall in love as easily as I do? How do they deal with that? Is it really love or infatuation? And, either way, is it all a distraction? And if so, what am I distracting myself from? Myself? My problems? My pain? What problems? What pain?
- Why do I feel like I'm always living my life in fast forward setting? Where am I trying to go? What's the rush? What's the deadline? When does it end? When do I get to live right here, right now? I know the cost, what's the payoff?
- How do you set boundaries?
- How do you speak up for yourself?
- How do you end a cycle you've been in for 28 years?
- How do you get up and walk away?
- How do you not take responsibility for their feelings?
- How do you not rescue them?
- How do you focus on you?
- How do you sit with your thoughts?
- How do you pay yourself first?
- How do you not use YOLO or faith in the universe as a justification for blowing all the budgets?
- How do you discipline yourself?
- How do you just say no?
- How do you open yourself to love without losing yourself in the other person?
- How do you forgive yourself for holding you back so long? How do you recognize that as protection and say thank you, I forgive you, take my hand, let's go?
- What happens when you get the guy? Find the house? Get offered the job? What happens next? Will you ever be satisfied? Will you ever be capable of enjoying the journey or the destination?
- How do you give yourself to someone without losing your whole self?
- How do you give yourself to someone without letting them consume you and your world?
- Why is it so easy to tell someone else not to worry?
- Is the risk of heartbreak worth the reward? What is that reward? Love? Feeling loved?
- How does one trust in the universe?
- How do agnostic folks deal with trauma and pain?
- How do we be ourselves if we don't know who or what we are?
- What would we do if there was nothing to worry about?
- Is Bo Burnum okay?
- How do we open our eyes to the gifts all around us?
- How do we be present and grateful but also hopeful and ambitious?
- How do we connect to the perfection of this moment?
- What happens after the honeymoon phase?
- How do you find the patience to build a relationship slowly with someone when a majority of your relationships have taken 28 years to build?
- How do you get out of your head?
- How do you exit a thought spiral like a wrong classroom or a flaming airplane?
- How do you show up for yourself when you wish someone else would?
- How do you stop spending every moment waiting for someone else to recognize and rescue you?
- How do you rescue yourself?
- How do you enjoy life as it is? Alone?
- How do you live in peace?
- What does peace look like?
- Are we capable of peace?
- Or is peace too boring for us?
Visions
Waiting for me,
Leaning on the car,
Like a high school sweetheart,
To pick me up and take me somewhere unexpected
And I'm not crazy
But this situation is
This overthinking
This jealousy
Hating her
Hating you
Hating me for hating you
So full of rage
So full of pain
Desperately grasping for nothing
Wishing I could melt into a puddle on the floor and evaporate into thin air
Form into a rain cloud and wash over the shore somewhere over the rainbow, off the coast of Maine
Where am I?
Why am I here?
Why do I have to learn these lessons?
Why now?
Why does it have to be so difficult?
So painful?
How can you hurt someone so much and have no idea?
Make it easy, Lord
Make it painless
Make it fast
But I feel like it has to last
I have to feel it
I have to feel it to heal it
My value is within
I am valuable even if he doesn't love me
or hug me
or smile
I am valuable even if I can't sing or dance
(Which I can, of course, but)
I am valuable even if I'm not cast
I am valuable even if I don't get x job
I am valuable even if I have to take a break
I am valuable
I am enough
I am doing the best I can with the resources I have
I am love
Letter to a future self
I love you so much.
I am so proud of you.
Thank you for everything you do,
you have done,
and you are doing right now.
To heal us.
To free us.
To break through the glass.
In the past, you might have gotten down on the floor,
but here, you are searching for more,
you are trying to make some sense
trying to grow
trying to grow into yourself
trying to put self-hatred on the shelf
You are trying to grow through your comfort zone
To be okay with being alone
And I love you for that
I love that you're jealous because it shows me you care
It shows me you are capable of love
It shows me you are capable of feeling
It shows me you are alive
It shows me you are real
It shows me you are a human being and not a robot
It shows me you are passionate
It shows me how deeply you love yourself and others and how much you expect from the world and partners and yourself
And I am so proud of you for walking away and refusing to torture yourself
And I am proud of you for taking a deep breath and redirecting your thoughts
You can walk away
You are allowed to step away
You are allowed to have a break
You are allowed to go your own way
To be your own person
What a blessing this time is.
This day.
What a blessing that you are writing through this
What a blessing that you have someone to talk with
What a blessing that you keep keeping on
And you know what?
I love you.
I love you so much.
And tonight we will get sleep and that will be so helpful.
And we can nap and meditate or do yoga if we want.
Or not.
Or we can just sit in a chair and close our eyes.
And that's okay.
I love you.
Please do whatever it is you need to do to take care of you.
Right now.
Not future you.
Not future me.
You.
As you are.
Today.
What do you need?
What do you want?
What pressures are you putting on yourself that you can let go of?
How can you let someone else help you?
Is everything actually okay?
I love you
I love you
I love you
I love you
And know it might be hard
Know it might suck
It will probably suck
it will probably be frustrating
You'll probably get jealous
This will probably happen again
But you don't need to focus on this
Focus on you
Focus on what you need to do
Each day you wakeup, you have a choice,
Are you going to sit in silence or raise your voice?
Choose joy.
Choose self-care.
Choose us.
Take care.
We're in this together.
It's okay to share.
So hold me and hug me and know I'm still there.
Whenever you're tongue tied or caught unawares.
You aren't alone.
Together we're home.
It really is okay.
So what do you want? Out of this day?
What do you hope to take away?
What can you control?
What can you do?
Focus on us.
Focus on you.
Today I am grateful for
- Friendship
- Fresh grapes
- First Folio
- Shakespeare and the way it pops in your mouth
- Plans
- Letting go of the uncontrollable
- Holding on to yourself, your dreams, your light, your being
- Being
- I woke up today
- Pride
- Safety and security
- Identity
- Self-awareness
- Clarity
- The moon
- The smell of chlorine soaking into my every pore
- Sleep
- Understanding
- Peace
- Joy
- Relax the face, drop the shoulders, release the jaw, unclench the toes
- Hum
- Opportunity
- Unexpected checks
- Workshops
- Classes
- Trainings
- Development
- FFTs
- Trying
- Trying again
- "Fail better." - Samuel Beckett
- "It's all going to be okay because it's been okay and it will continue to be okay. Even when it was not okay. You were okay. And even when you weren't okay, you got through it. You are strong. You are resilient. You are okay." - aea