Follow your yellow brick road

    "You, my friend, are a victim of disorganized thinking.  You are under the unfortunate impression that just because you run away you have no courage; you're confusing courage with wisdom."

We spend countless hours... days... even years... trying to find our own yellow brick road.  Teacher.  Lawyer.  Doctor.  Guidance Counselor.  We ace exams, complete internships and jump through hoops just to uncover a small brick in our road that will set the foundation for the rest of our lives.  We get to an age and stage in our lives where we begin questioning everything we once knew.  How did I get here?  What's next?  Am I really happy?  The Quarter-Life Crisis, as some calls it.  We constantly seek answers.  We constantly look for the next big thing.  We constantly turn our heads, peek through doors and search for that moment in our lives where everything just fits together.  And eventually - day after day, brick after brick - we lay the foundation for our own yellow brick road, and we begin to follow it.  We begin to see the twists and turns that we face as we continue walking down that road - illness, job loss, death of a loved one, a bad breakup.  With each turn, it gets harder and harder to stay on the road.  The turns become more sharp and more frequent, challenging us in every way possible.  Stamina.  Strength.  Endurance.  That's what it's about.  If you turn too late, you'll veer off course.  When you're lost in life, it's harder to find your way back.  

As you continue to work your way down that yellow brick road, you seek answers from people.  Strangers who don't know the answers.  Friends who don't have the courage to tell you when it hurts.  Family who may not have the heart to love you through all of your decisions.  But despite their flaws - and yours - you take those people with you, whether physically or emotionally, and you continue down your yellow brick road, determined to find out where it leads you.

Finally, you reach the end.  You face the toughest battle of your life, your own Wicked Witch: yourself.  Accepting yourself for who you are.  Believing in yourself when no one else will.  Loving every inch of yourself because you realize just how much you're worth and knowing what you deserve.  Finding courage and strength in yourself to conquer your dreams and fight for what you want.  And when you conquer that final battle, you finally see the rainbow.  It was there all along, just hidden behind the dark clouds, stormy days, and hard-fought-battles.

(via)

"Hearts will never be practical until they can become unbreakable."

* all quotes from The Wizard of Oz

it's about accepting and owning the many pieces of your life

(via)

I sat there, talking about Elizabeth Gilbert, Jennifer Lancaster, David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs.  

"I just can't find my voice." I said, "all of those authors talk about the detailed intimacies of their lives like it's no big deal."

"And why do you think that is?" she asked me.

I thought about it for a second.  "I don't know."

"What do all of those writers have in common?" she asked.  

The questions were getting a little annoying, but I know she was trying to get me to see the bigger picture.

"Me.  Because I read their books."  I smiled.  As she let out a laugh, I knew that probably wasn't the answer she was looking for.  

And then it hit me.  

It's about owning and accepting your life.  

...Accepting your past in order to get to your brighter future...

...Owning the mistakes you've made, the lessons you've learned and the experiences you've witnessed first-hand when you tell your story...

I've never been good with the whole acceptance thing.  Unless it's money or alcohol related.

Why yes, I will graciously accept that crisp $100 bill that I see poking out of your zipper wallet so you can buy me a drink.

See?  Easy acceptance.  

But accepting the dark and scary stuff?  It's too hard.  

TWSS.

As much as people tell me how brave and strong of a woman I am, I am embarrassed about my past.  The reality is, people look at me differently - whether in a good way or a bad way - and I hate that.  I hate being that girl with a broken past.  I know it's something I should be proud of, but I can't get myself to that point yet.  I can't accept how my life has turned out.  Which leads to the failure of owning it.  Which also leads to the failure of completing my memoir.

I've been working on my memoir a lot lately and I realized that I can't find my "voice" until I own my past.  David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs are such great writers and they write about the intimate details of their life because they have accepted and owned up to it.   

I want to get there, I just don't know how.

Where's "there?"

You know, there.  That point in life where you are completely comfortable.  You don't cringe when you have to recapture those tragic moments of your life.  You don't feel embarrassed when the only reply you get is, "I'm sorry." or "That sucks."  You don't feel judged or criticized.  You just feel... you.

I know getting there is a long, slow process.  It takes understanding and accepting the smaller things (like accepting the act of suicide before volunteering with suicide prevention) to accept the bigger things.  It's difficult to accept certain things in life that you feel you could have changed.  Or even prevented.  At 12 years old, I feel like I could have done or said something to change my father's decision.  I felt like I should have done something, even though none of us had any idea something was wrong with him.

Acceptance and ownership could be the missing pieces of my happiness, but at least I know I'm on the right track of getting there.  And one day, I'll be able to own my story.  And my memoir.

on big decisions

Follow your heart and not your mind; your heart feels things your mind cannot see.

It's easy to give advice, but hard to take it.

For the last several months I have been thinking about some big decisions; decisions that have the potential to be life-changing in some way.  Decisions that are so big, they're scary.  But I don't think I'm scared to make those big decisions.  I'm scared about the aftermath.  I'm scared about making the wrong decision.

I'm trying to sort it all out.  I've spent this week trying to do just that.  It hasn't been easy.  With 2009 drawing to a close, I need to step to the plate and make some things happen in 2010. 

I need to figure out what I want.

Easier said than done.

"sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same..."

this post brought to you by:

moments

(via)

"Life isn't always easy.  OK, it's rarely easy.  We all face some pretty big "ouch" moments just by being here and it's not always easy to cope.  And, more often than not, it's the painful moments that catch us by surprise."

Yesterday was one of those days.  This week is one of those weeks.  A part of me wants to scream, but another part of me wants to break down and cry.  I can feel the depression sinking in and I'm trying so hard to fight it.

I miss my parents.  I miss them every day, but for some reason today - and all of this week - I have missed them even more.  I miss that unconditional love and support parents give their children.  I miss big family holidays together.  I miss the moments, the laughter, the love.  I try not to let this be a crutch in my life but I have days - moments - when I deeply and genuinely miss them.

I am trying to find the "good" in all of this, but I am not sure what good comes out of a child losing both of her parents at such a young age.  I feel like I have missed out on so much because I have spent the last six years trying to get my life together.  I'm still not together and I'm not sure I'll ever be.

Sophia Loren said it best: "Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now." 

I know that I'm a stronger person for having lived through this so early in my life.  I know that I'm a better person because I realize not to take anything for granted anymore.  I know that by living through that, I can live through anything.  But sometimes I just want a day - a moment - to be consumed in the sadness of it all.  Sometimes you have to sink to the bottom before you can rise to the top.

"There are moments in your life that make you and set the course of who you're going to be.  Sometimes they're little, subtle moments.  Sometimes they're big moments you never saw coming.  No one asks for their life to change - but it does.  It's what you do afterwards that counts.  That's when you find out who you really are."

- Whistler -

“Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.”

We all make mistakes.  We trust our judgment, our intuition.  We follow our heart, our desires, our irrational, illogical side that guides us to make decisions that may be considered mistakes.

Sometimes we can get away with the mistakes we made.  They stay in our heads, turning around for days, months or even years.  But they are ours and ours alone.  Sometimes we admit to our mistakes.  We try to make it right.  We can’t stand the thought of carrying that weight around so we suck it up and admit to our mistakes.  We are only human. We do things that hurt other people, whether we did it intentionally or not.  We try to minimize that pain, and sometimes by minimizing the pain to ourselves, we hurt others even more.
We say something we shouldn’t to someone we shouldn’t.  We do things we wish we could take back.  We stay awake at night, wondering how to make things right, wondering if we should tell the truth, wondering why it happened, wondering if it’s going to happen again.  We get tricked into thinking that the right thing … is sometimes the biggest mistake.

Mistakes lead to guilt.  Or fear.  Or the absence of guilt or fear, and the wondering of why.  But if nothing else, each mistake we have made along the way have led us to who we are today.  Each wrong turn, each bad decision, each choice we’ve made has served to make each one of us the person we are right now, in this very moment.

******

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life.  I’m not perfect and I’ll be the first to tell you.  I’ve done things I regret and I’ve hurt people I never thought I could hurt.  I’ve lost friends over stupid battles and I’ve lost family over things I couldn’t control.

I grew up in a white family in a white neighborhood.  People who meet me naturally assume my parents and brothers are asian and I hate that.  People automatically assume I’m chinese just because I’m an asian decent.  I hate that even more.  Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.

I’m stubborn and selfish at times because I was a brat as a child.  I went through a phase of thinking the world revolved around me.  But then I grew up and realized that there’s so much more to this world … and often times it’s better to give than receive.  You can’t always get what you want.

I’m very critical and hard on myself.  I hate defeat.  I hate losing.  I hate being viewed as a failure.  Growing up, I felt like my parents viewed me as “the child that wasn’t good enough.”  I felt like I couldn’t compete with my brothers.  Ever.  They always had my parents eye and I was also in the distance, just trying to keep up.  I craved my parents attention and felt like I never got enough of it … even though I got more than I deserved.

I’m so scared of getting older because I’m scared it will lead to making more mistakes and bad decisions.  I go through moments when I hate change.  This is one of them.  Everything changes as you get older.

Right before my mother passed away, we got into a huge fight.  The days she spent in the hospital were the days I spent wanting to take back every hateful word I had ever said to her.  I spent every day blaming myself for her death because I never got the chance to say “I’m sorry” or “I love you.”  To this day, it’s been my biggest regret.  I took the love and appreciation of my mother for granted and it was the biggest mistake I could have ever made.

I’m a perfectionist, although you would probably never know it.  I crave perfection.  It all started my senior year of high school when I took a ceramics class.  It was probably the worst idea ever because everything I made needed to be absolutely perfect.  With every glazed bowl I made my perfection grew more intensely.

I’m not your average girl and I don’t live an average 20-something life.  I’m just trying to survive in this crazy, mixed-up world.  And if I make mistakes, well then so be it.

Maybe mistakes are what make our fate … without them what would shape our lives?