goodbye california

for now.

the suns of santa barbara {day 1}

i am in santa barbara visiting a family i have gotten to know over the past four years. we met when i taught the kids {and even the mom} at the art studio back when i first graduated from college. it's been a year of teaching and then three and a half of babysitting, including long visits with the parents at the end of each date night.

so here i am, helping them out in the transition between moving south to santa barbara and the start of school, when new things will take the place of all the old and loved ones left behind.

meanwhile, i got to spend the day with my special friend, their youngest daughter, where we chased waves and let the waves chase us, hear the crash of the island-broken surf on the beach and the pebbly warmth of sand and stones beneath my feet. driving home she simply said "i had a lot of fun today" which is high praise in her world. and later, while making fresh orange juice after hitting up the two trees in the backyard, the older sister said "you know? i think of you as family..."

it was a good day.

suns and buildings pt 2

tomorrow evening i will be in santa barbara, ca.

a-punk

it never fails to make me happy. thanks, vampire weekend, for your tasty bit of fluff.

suns and buildings

my heart is lighter today than it's been in weeks. life is good.

jealousy

let jealousy be your teacher. jealousy can lead you to the very places where you most need healing. it can be your guide into your own dark side and show you the way to total self-realization. jealousy can teach you to live in peace with yourself and with the whole world if you let it.

deborah anapol

the park

a well earned respite in the park after a good but long weekend.

we met

and she's wonderful.

finally

on her way over
a little anxious
last minute cleaning
what to wear
make up

the heart aches that i will like her
the heart worries i won't.

i am not bulletproof

preface to this blog entry:

due to the number of people checking in to make sure i'm okay, i actually am quite okay, as is az. we've been navigating tough territory as he slooowly moves toward a new relationship {with someone i would love to see him with}, but in a way that the resolution comes quickly to each of my moments of being overwhelmed by panic/grief/hopelessness {that essentially are due to my belief that i am worthless to him if someone else has value}. while my anxiety has been coming up on a daily basis, it has been met head on by the two of us to understand, and resolve them in the moment. for the most part {i can think of two exceptions} i haven't gone to sleep anything less than peaceful and secure in our mutual love and admiration even as it's evolving and changing. which is a really good thing.

...................

i wish i could write to you about what the past two weeks have been for me. pick apart and put to words everything that's happened and construct some sort of through line. a moral of the story. a happy ending. but i can't. not just yet.

and i wish i had recorded the hour long conversation i had with one of my oldest friends today as i cried in the bathtub and took her through each gritty, honest, and heartbroken detail of these weeks. but i didn't, so i have to rely on the simple sound bites that stand out in my memory. you don't have to know the answers, nathania. you don't have to know...you are strong...you have such amazing clarity on everything that's happening...and, perhaps most importantly: your life's work is to find out how to take all this compassion you have and learn to turn it inward.

i want to write it all out because i need to hold on to both stories for my own good, to remember all the strength and life i have discovered in myself during this time and the strength and life she spoke to and affirmed in me saying exactly the right things {not one word was astray} sometimes non-stop for minutes on end. it was the perfect conversation that could only happen with someone who has known me and loved me for that long.

but i can't tonight. it's late. i am tired. and this has been a solid few weeks of downright dirty self examination of my own worth. or rather, of my own belief in my lack of worth, and how that rears itself again and again in relationships between lovers and partners, and friends even. and, not excluding the most recent relationship that's coming to its close.

i would like to give you all the golden details of this man's honesty and courage, to see the right things and do them and to speak into my worth. repeatedly. as many times as i need to be reminded of it. and i want to present the parallels to the last ex i wrote here about, and how differently i get to live out a similar situation merely by being partnered with someone who truly cares and knows how exactly to handle that care and apologize for any mishandlings in the process.

but tonight, all i can manage are hazy vignettes indicating the larger story. i am worn. my heart is less heavy now than all day today, but i've cried more days than i haven't recently and i would like to lay the weight down tonight. so for now, here are some photos i took of him, my dear dear friend and lover of a year and a half. and one of the bravest and most honorable people i have ever met.

if only, darling, i could be in love with you,
and if only you could be in love with me.

it should also be noted that as i started taking photos of him tonight, radiohead's bulletproof started playing on my computer {set to shuffle}. as i am currently taking a little break from their music, i would normally walk over and hit skip, but it was just a little too perfect to ignore. here are the lyrics {and you can listen to it here}:

limb by limb and tooth by tooth
tearing up inside of me
every day every hour
i wish that i was bullet proof

wax me
mould me
heat the pins and stab them in
you have turned me into this
just wish that it was bullet proof

so pay the money and take a shot
leadfill the hole in me
i could burst a million bubbles
all surrogate and bullet proof

and bullet proof
and bullet proof
and bullet proof

the old apartment

the sunny day. the final clean. the closing of a chapter. this space was good to me as much as i hoped for better. and so was az.

finally

summer has arrived in seattle

first night home since thursday

and so much to process. shine a light inside and clear away all the ghosts.

much needed sun

first day

the photos i am taking with mark are big and white and soft, dreamy focus. i will send those when i have internet. till then, the phone will have to be my lens.

happy weekends.

and sahra, so happy to hear you are well.

almost free...

except there's a crapload more shopping and packing to do.....

thursday is the new friday

at least it is for me this week. heading into four days off, three of which will be spent on the peninsula on what will hopefully be a relaxing retreat.

in response to closure

a comment and response worth its own space {but reading the post below will put this into a little perspective first}:

from e:

Oh Nat, yes. I'm not sure if I can forgive him yet for being so cruel. Maybe when the real thing comes along, one who is not so hollow, one who is so wonderfully human and imperfect at that, but willing to share those pieces with you (instead of drive them between the two of you).

Maybe then. But this isn't my blog, its yours. And I'm sooo glad this closure has come.

my response:

ede, my lovely ede, my champion and best friend. thank you for that one word in your response: cruel. it scoops up all his actions and pins them neatly into one clean syllable. somehow i find it satisfying to have someone else find him "cruel" as well, in a way i can't explain. i guess because there are still a few dying echoes of my own belief i somehow deserved how he treated me.

i wish i could say i wouldn't be upset if i saw him in person tomorrow, or even, perhaps a year from now. but hopefully the other side of my own wedding {to that far worthier person i haven't met yet}, along with our own adventures and first kids will let me no longer worry about how some man once dropped me like a hot potato. but honestly, at this moment, i do have the last dredges of hurt. the part of me that still wishes for him to come to me with that apology he knows deep down he still owes me.

but all of this is really so small in comparison to having my own faith in myself restored. faith in my ability to make sense of people and emotions. i'm not a genius at it, but i do have a sense about things and an intuition i have come to trust. and that is what he destroyed. by doing one thing, yet always saying he was motivated by another, he completely shattered my ability to make heads or tails of what happened and shook the trust i had in my intuition. and now the picture makes sense, and my inner senses and i are fully reunited and forgiveness is no longer an issue so much.

bigger things are happening.

closure

i have a confession to make. one that many of the social networking generation is guilty of:

i, nathania tenwolde, confess that every couple of months, in a fit of restlessness or boredom, i'd google my ex.

and not just any ex, but the big ex, and really, the only one that matters in terms of ex-ness {all the rest of the ones worth mentioning i am proud to say are still great friends}. and even after a rather dull pull on the first, and second, and fifth googles or facebook searches, i still found myself prodding at the bruise, looking for something long after i have stopped looking for or even wanting anything from him.

and last night, somewhere around midnight, i finally found it. it wasn't the recently updated relationship status that confirmed what he told me a year ago, but rather the anniversary date of his relationship with his current girlfriend, which was something he never EVER could come clean on. because, you see, that anniversary date lands during the time we were still together. in fact, just a mere day or so after we ended our last clear and connected phone call with the standard, and at least on my part authentic, i love you's.

what's more, that was the weekend everything fell apart and he changed pretty much overnight {after not returning any emails or phone calls for a few days--later justified because he had been traveling}. and in the unnecessarily long and drawn out disintegration of the relationship, he did absolutely everything but admit to what had really happened. i even asked point blank: did you sleep with someone. to which he responded {after a one...two...beat pause}. "no." that was a long pause before you answered. {slight pause} "what do you mean?" i mean, if you asked ME if i had slept with someone, i wouldn't have to pause and think of the answer. i could just say, no.

a year later he still threw out some rigmarole about this reason and that reason that it didn't work out, but even then i saw how clearly they were sad little excuses that danced to a tired little tune trying to distract me from the real reason that was hulking silently in the corner. something i could always sense, but wasn't allowed to see.

but i closed that book long ago and walked on, in large part knowing i should be happy i didn't end up with him but haunted by my own inability to understand exactly what had gone so wrong. as much as i knew that no one makes such an abrupt shift without something changing, particularly if that something is in the shape of a female in the bed next to you and more effortlessly enjoyed than the one a hemisphere away, but i couldn't be sure i wasn't fabricating his guilt at my own need to make some sense out of it all.

so after a good night's rest i woke up today finally free of the burden i had carried for two and a half years. free of guilt for the ugly, drawn out nature of the break-up, free of the frustrations of not being able to trust my own instincts about what had happened, free of any remaining daydreams about ending up together. because while all he had to do was say i've met someone else {with maybe even an "i'm sorry for cheating on you" thrown in there for good measure}, i blamed myself for holding on too tightly, for trying too hard, for being too needy, etc {trust me the list goes on too far}...now i can finally give him back his fair share, both for the infidelity and for the lies afterward. and whatever you can say about attraction, you have a choice to move forward with it or a choice to be loyal, even if loyalty is extended merely to the point of ending things openly and honorably, neither of which was done here.*

shortly after finding out the one thing i've been looking for, i was able to cheerfully block him on facebook and be fine with never hearing his name again for the rest of my life.

free at last, free at last. god, almighty, i am free at last.

--------
an eloquent example of the situation as illustrated in the movie closer:

dan: i fell in love with her, alice.
alice: oh, as if you had no choice? there's a moment, there's always a moment, "i can do this, i can give into this, or i can resist it", and i don't know when your moment was, but i bet you there was one.

the color of my relief

i put a heavy burden down today. one that i have been carrying
unnecessarily for two and a half years. more later, but this is a
start for you.

fire suns

sahra, i know you know more than you want to about sunsets near forest
fires, but here is my less than spectacular photo of a spectacular
evening sun turned bright red from some forest fires happening.