"Om namah shivaya" and WIWW

Thoughts from my Wednesday and Thursday:

• Due to Hurricane/Tropical Storm Isaac, we have school closures all over Louisiana and I should be returning to work on Friday.  Is it bad that I secretly hope we don't have to?!
• I not so secretly hope that the storm damages are minor 
• More than anything, I don't want the storm to prevent flights from going out this weekend, specifically my flight on Saturday morning to Seattle to visit the sweet Lisa.  
• The roommates and I spent the morning being lazy, but we got our vinyasa flowing. 
• I plan on buying two drawer handles from Anthropologie. 

Speaking of yoga...you have to see this video.  Makes me laugh every time.  It's perfectly perfect.  

On a different note, yesterday was my ex-boyfriend's birthday.  It's difficult not thinking of someone who you used to share everything with and not being able to share this moment anymore.  Almost as if it shouldn't still mean something.  I definitely remembered and definitely thought about it...all day.  I didn't push myself to send an email until sometime after 10pm.  Why was it so hard to press send? 

Pressing send meant opening a line of communication again.  Not pressing it would be easy, it would be fully letting it go.  Or would it?  Would letting go be pressing send and pouring the kindness that was in my heart?  So I pressed it.  I didn't expect the immediate response I received.  And now, the question that lies is whether I'm ready to accept a friendship.  Every kind fiber that resonates inside me wants to say yes, but something is holding me back from welcoming that friendship again.  A huge part of it is that I haven't taken the time to truly feel all of the emotions from what once was.  Yes, I am in a great place in comparison to where I was in May.  Also, definitely much better than when I was in that relationship, but I still need to feel things I haven't felt.  A part of me is afraid that a friendship with him will mean going back to where I was.  

I fear being drained of my happiness, of my optimism, and of losing every part of me that I have begun to gain back in the last couple of months.  Whether my associations with what once was are partly or completely fair, I still have them, I still fear what a friendship with him would mean.  All I know is that I am vulnerable enough to admit that I don't think my heart is ready for that friendship right now.  

The house is really coming along! We are quite the desperate housewives. 

When teachers don't have to teach---Hurricane Isaac Party! 

Taco Tuesday

Namaste from our dining room

What I wore Wednesday - T-Shirt, running shorts, no makeup. 

We partied with the Biebs

Don't worry, I was wearing shorts underneath.  The winds were getting pretty rough here.

What we wear when we go out in a hurricane. 

Crumbling like pastries

Can we please take a hour minute to focus on how yummy (yes, I just said that) Danell Leyva is? I know, I know, you've probably read a thousand and one tweets about it from other people.  Or you've heard about him from anyone following the Olympics.  I, am not following persé, unless you count the pictures of Danell that I've been stalking.  Can I call you Danell, or should I say Mr. Leyva?  Better yet, how awesome would our names work together.  Mrs. Laura Leyva, we all like alliteration.  If only he was twenty-five years young instead of twenty...ahhh, a girl can drool dream.

Yum-O

My PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is back.  The trauma being last school year.  Okay, I'm being a tad bit dramatic here.  But, I seriously had nightmares about my students post-the last week of school for two weeks straight.  The dreams are back now that we are getting closer and closer to the new school year.

Enough of the lightheartedness, the truth is that I had a really difficult time last year.  I struggled to adjust to my new life in Louisiana.  I went through a huge transitional change.  I think I even lost a part of me last year.  I am not sure what to atribute that loss to.  Somehow, someway, I found myself again this summer.  I have remembered the things that make me happy such as: reading, blogging, talking to my best friends, traveling, being in Texas, my family, exercise, music, yoga.  

Teach For America was something that I wanted since I can remember (I had a teacher from the corps fifth & sixth grade).  I have also wanted to be a therapist for as long as I can remember, but Teach For America was a service I wanted to fulfill before graduate school.  Being accepted as a part of this prestigious program was one of the most exciting opportunities that ever came to me.  I was so dedicated to it's mission that I was willing to go anywhere, for me this service was about the children, their education, and social justice, not about where I did it.  I was placed in Southern Louisiana (but technically central).  I was in a very rural  Parish with about fifteen other corps members, one of which would be at my school.  I made the choice to live alone in a two bedroom apartment.  I was on my own, for the first time.  Truly on my own.  The "hub" city for my regional placement was Baton Rouge (a 2 hour drive from my rural placement).  I had a boyfriend at the time who had somewhat agreed to the long-distance relationship from Austin, Texas.  I say somewhat, because he never assured me that our relationship would last, I just took a leap hoping that he would believe in the relationship as I did.  

I do not think I have ever had as much anxiety and stress as I did during my first year in Louisiana.  A lot of this was due to teaching and the rest was due to my loneliness.  I look back being in the emotional state I am now and think about how much I cried last year.  I think I cried almost every day in September, and the crying decreased as the months went by and teaching got easier for me.  Last year was the most crying I'd ever done in my life.  Two of my best girlfriends came to visit me in October and it was so incredibly hard to let them go when they left (literally).  I cried, and cried, and cried.  I felt...unhappy.  My world was essentially focused on: teaching, teaching, teaching, certification meetings, my boyfriend, my boyfriend, making my boyfriend happy, and teaching again.  I completely forgot to have fun, make new friends, and fix what I didn't like.  

I am not attributing all of my struggles to my relationship, but I think a great part of it was due to it.  My relationship began to get rocky last October, and that was when my boyfriend broke up with me the first time.  I thought I had done something wrong and it was all my fault.  I then refocused so much more of my energy on that relationship.  On "fixing" it.  On loving better.  On being better for him.  I think that by attempting to "fix me" I began to break.  

Throughout all of this I attempted to maintain a "happy" front.  People like me don't show their emotions on their sleeve unless those emotions are full of rainbows and sunshine.  "I choose to be happy", I would say to myself.   The truth is that you can only choose to be happy so much, before you real emotions start seeping through.  By April of 2012 I was better in some ways, but I reached an emotional breakdown on my spring break when I went to see my boyfriend in Houston, Texas.  Somehow, I don't know how, but I the most rash decision I never thought I would be making.  I chose to leave my commitment with Teach For America. My boyfriend supported this decision.  The organization I had loved for so long, and dedicated so much of my time to, all of a sudden meant nothing.  I thought I felt happy (I could leave Louisiana after all!), but there was a huge uncertainty behind it.  A new job, a new place to live.  Immediately my boyfriend began to plan out my life for me by setting up possible jobs, and ideas, and connections, and people.  It was too much.  I think somewhere in the midst of it all I realized that Teach For America wasn't a mask I could take off.  I still felt empty.  

After talking to my Teach For America mentor about my decision and lots of thinking, I made the decision to fulfill my two year commitment and stay.  To this person, thank you for talking sense into me.  I know it's your job, but I needed someone to tell me the things you told me that day.  

I think you know what happened after that.  I finished the school year happy as a clam.  Among all of my uncertainties, I was certain of one thing: Teach For America.  My relationship went downhill as you may recall, and through all of the feelings, and emotionally draining conversations, I'm happy.  I feel like myself again.  Like I said, I'm not sure what to attribute the last year to, but I'm finally back.

Here I am.  Soon to be starting my second year of teaching, afraid as ever.  I hate to say it, but I have such ill-feelings associated with the state of Louisiana, because of last year.  So many of those feelings come back to me as I think about teaching again.  Behind all of the excitement that I am feeling and the positive thoughts I want to be having is fear.  I am afraid of having a horrible time.  I am scared of crying every day in September.  I don't want to pretend, I want to be the best teacher I can be for my students.  I want to have fun, and I want to build all of the relationships I didn't last year.  

My best advice I can give myself is to stop being afraid.  Bring back the positive thoughts and replace them with all that could go wrong.  (Okay, yeah I got it from pinterest, so what?)  I plan to be moving in with three fellow corps members across the street from four other lovely girls.  I hope the eight of us can have a tight knit community in our little rural parish.  I want to see friends in Baton Rouge more, travel often, and just love being me.  Here's to pushing fear aside, a year of minimal crying, untied stomach knots, and letting go.  Will you?

P.S.  Thank you to my sweet Leigh for sending me this, my inspiration for the title of this post.  

"Fear is the enemy of love"

This is written for you.  
For the person inside you who is scared.
I know who you are, and as you read this I hope that you know that I am aware of your fear.
That it belongs to you.
You are much too far for me to reach out and take it away, and even if I could, fear is not something I can grasp with my bare hands and tear apart.

I wish it was like that, though.  Easy to tear, like small fibers that shred to little pieces and can be aggressively destroyed.  But, it's not. It's much more complex than that, stronger than fibers, stronger than wood, and similar to those tiny weeds that keep popping up in the front yard.  Those obnoxious ones that ruin the aesthetically pleasing uniformity of the sidewalk.

You're not alone though, at least we now know that we harbor at least one of the same feelings.  Does it not kill you though, knowing that because we keep avoiding the obvious we are only nurturing this four letter word (and not the better of the two)?  We are giving it strength, making our minds think it is stronger than us.  After all the time that has passed between us...through boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends, new friends, here we are...

Here we are.  Fear has kept us captive, prisoners, lying to us.  It is winning and we are losing.  Losing something in the process, losing the ability to embrace the unknown.  It is keeping us from questioning the impossible.

Is this the greatest fear of your life, because it is the greatest in mine? It always has been, even when I've chosen to ignore it and let the years go by.  I only found that by ignoring it for years I only gave it shelter.  The fear kept me from simply speaking to you, I think it did the same to you too.

If our eyes could speak, than a thousand words would have been exchanged.  If our eyes could speak, fear would be defeated.  It may be difficult to face this fear alone, but we are two.  Together we can look fear in the eye, and choose to forget about what makes sense.  We can choose.

So tonight, I ask you, to choose.

It took one sentence to inspire this letter.