My Short Circuit

I wrote this back in 2009 which explains my constant reference to MySpace. This was also written before I got a smart phone and before the existence of streaming services. I’m sharing because I find that it relates both directly and ironically to the themes of my blog; relationships and reality. 

 My Short Circuit

I’ve just spent about 2 months living with the bear minimum use of a computer. My laptop gave out when a tear in the cable sent mixed voltage signals into the logics board and I guess caused some kind of short circuit. Anyway, about a month ago a friend offered to try to fix it for me and while he’s been working on it in his spear time, I’ve been loosing my mind.

I’m alternating between a borrowed laptop; that I can’t go online with, my roommates computer; that I borrow to go online, and public computers; usually only available during office hours. Let’s just say that during these last few weeks, I have been increasingly suffering from mixed voltage signals in to my logics board, and it has definitely caused some kind of short circuit.

For me, it all started before I borrowed my friend’s laptop. I had grown accustomed to running to the computer when I had something to say and typing it into my journal entitled “To Myself”. If ever I found myself feeling something I couldn’t contain, I spilled it into the keyboard in a form of ruffled words mixed in with a few shits, fucks and what-the-hells, in an attempt to make sense of my emotions. Often times this attempt would come out in rhymes that some people would call poems, but I call them therapy. The point is, when reaching my boiling point I found myself running to an empty desk.

For a moment, I considered writing with a pen. But then I knew my thoughts would come way to fast for my hand to keep up, not to mention I wouldn’t be able to read my own handwriting on a dark and stormy night when I felt the need to over-analyze myself. I tried listening to music, but something inside me just couldn’t come out. I tried singing, or playing with the dog, but my frustration only grew deeper and I felt myself reaching the edge. When finally, I got my hands on a laptop a friend had the heart to let me borrow. Though the beautiful electronic machine didn’t work online, a part of my sanity was saved. My desk was no longer haunted by the absence of a dear companion.

The next mixed voltage signal to my logics board was my minimum use of the Internet. At first I didn’t mind this much. I’m not one who likes to spend hours online anyway. I get frustrated and restless, mostly because I seem to be destined to work on slow computers with slow connections. Anyway, at first I welcomed less time on the computer, and it gave me an even greater excuse not to check all my emails, not to have to answer them all, and not to have to be responsible about doing what needed to be done. “Oh gee, my Internet isn’t working, I guess I’ll just have to watch a movie.”

But, over time, as more and more To Do lists of “Things I couldn’t get done without a computer” piled up, I started to get anxious and stressed. I’d sneak into my roommate’s room while he was gone and use his Internet to get as much done as possible. But then when he got home he usually needed it and I got tired of knocking on his door, not to say hi to him but, to use his computer.

“Can I check my email?”, “Do you mind if I check my email real quick?”, “Hey, can I look up some directions on yahoo when you are done?”, “Hey, wanna look up this cute guy I met on MySpace? It will be fun!”

The rest of the time I sat in my room just thinking. Wondering what I could do or get done without a computer and finding myself not knowing how to live without it, finding myself essentially not having a life without it.

Soon enough, my roommate went out of town and I had free access to his computer. I thought finally my anxiety would be saved. Except, his computer caught a virus and was so slow it literally took about 10 minutes just to start up, another 2 minutes to load an internet page, and then about 30 seconds to a minute to go from page to page. I dealt with this crazy slow computer for a period of three days and came close to pulling my hair out. Trust me if I had hard liquor in the house I would have finished it by now. I owe the tiny bit of sanity I have left to another electronic devise, my television. Which leads me to today, the culmination of my short circuit. I was watching a BBC series titled The Human Face when it hit me… Most of my relationships are based on being able to go online!

How does this show I was watching have anything to do with living offline?

Well, the show is about how much we communicate with our face, and how much faces mean to us in regards to our relationships. There’s a part in the program where they speak of fame and the desire to be famous. A man makes the good point that when you live in a small town of 300 people, everybody knows who you are, whether you are the doctor, or the son of the baker, you have a role in that community and you are recognized for it when you walk down the street. But in a big city, like L.A. or N. Y., you are just another face in the crowd. People don’t know who you are, where you come from, what you love or what you hate. You are in some ways, nothing but an image. No wonder so many people feel invisible, their Self unrecognized and unseen. And how do we relieve this invisibility? By creating a sense of community… Online.

We have become accustomed to living in a cyber world. Never mind the people at the market who know that you come every Saturday to load up on fruits and veggies, or the people at work who know to buy you a non-fat latte if they happen to stop by Starbucks and you always pay them back, or the people at the dog park who may not know your name, but they always know your face and always say hi. Never mind them because they don’t know your inner most feelings that you post on your online blog, they don’t know your favorite books and films that you’ve clearly listed on your profile, and they don’t’ know your most recent status update. Our identity is based on the profile we create on MySpace or Facebook or the character we play on Wii or the eloquence of our emails that describes how we are in over-explained terms so as not to be misunderstood or perceived as rude. And no matter how illusionary our state of existence is in the cyber world, in so many ways it has become more real than our very physical self.

During my hours offline, I realized that there are very few people I feel comfortable calling on the phone to say “How’re you doing?” I realized that many of these people I have “relationships” with, see me face to face, in the flesh, maybe twice a year. And I realized that the loneliness I feel so often intensified when I couldn’t go online and relieve it by writing an email, or receiving a comment on MySpace, or at the very least posting a blog that may only be read by 1 or 2 people but it at least it gives me a temporary feeling of meaningful existence.

See, I’m not one who dares to call a friend to unload on them and tell them my problems. Why would I want to put them in that uncomfortable situation? Then they might feel like they need to solve my problems. All I need is someone to talk to, but most people would shy away at the sign of any intense emotion, myself included, so why bother?

Instead, I talk to my computer. My computer comforts me with no judgment, no misunderstanding and no need for confrontation. The cyber world creates a safety net, a place where I can hide behind the happy picture I’ve chosen as my default pic. Write an email, talk about your day and your successes and make sure to include a smiley face so everyone knows that everything is fine. Then go about your day, telling yourself that people out there know you, because you are online.

During the 4 weeks I have spent mostly disconnected, I was exactly that. Disconnected from a part of myself, a part of my identity, and most of all a part of me that needs to be fulfilled, but is only placated by going online, like a drug.

My short circuit? Realizing that the closest relationship I have in my life, is my computer. I mean, who do you think I’m talking to now?

 

Karma is a Bitch

In my last blog I divulged my fascination, some would say obsession, with love. How it’s my greatest interest in life and what I think about and care about most. And yet, alongside this passion rides my long-standing frustration with wanting a healthy and authentic romantic relationship, and somehow, never being able to find one.

Wait, you don’t understand, I know everybody wants love and everybody wants to have a great relationship, BUT… I’m 29 years old and I have had all of ONE long-term committed relationship in my life, which lasted a whopping 11 months. (NOTE: Since this blog was written I am now 33 years old, and I have added to this a 1 year and a 2.5 year long relationships. Yay!)

Ever since my parents got a divorce and I experienced what I would call “inauthentic love” between them, I have been determined to change the cosmic course of my fate. Perhaps the love that I know, that I experienced and grew up with was only partially genuine. Perhaps it was not the best example of a healthy and fulfilling relationship, but by golly I know there is something better out there and I sure as heck am determined to find it. I want to do a better job than my parents did.  I don’t want to marry for the wrong reasons, I don’t want to throw my psychological issues on someone and expect them to pay for them and I don’t want a relationship because I’m afraid to be alone. That’s not real love, and I want real love.

So I’ve spent my life prepping and grooming myself for real love. Knowing and believing that it exists and that I can do better than my parents. Yet somehow I keep bumping into the same patters. The guys I want don’t want me, I don’t want the the ones that do want me, and when I finally want one who wants me, he’s emotionally unavailable (or moving away). Really?

Here I am, a hopeless romantic (emphasis on the hopeless part) somehow unable to meet my prince. It wasn’t that long ago that I found myself telling my friend Latisha that it feels like I have some sort of cosmic shield that keeps me from having any kind of fulfilling, stable, lasting romantic relationship. I’ve come to the point where there’s only so much responsibility I can take for my failure to launch before I just begin to feel inherently crippled. Why is it that what I dream of most, seems the hardest for me to attain? Is it just my fucking Karma?

Just as I was starting to feel sorry for myself I got to thinking about Beethoven. How he lost his hearing at the height of his career, and yet, he kept composing music. Then I saw a movie about the famous painter Renoir, and how in his old age he had rheumatoid arthritis in his hands. I pictured myself as a sort of Rapunzel with a buzz cut. Stuck in the tower of the love I know (which is false), longing for the grounded and real love I believe in (which is true). Oh the irony, I thought. Karma is a bitch!

But what is Karma really? And are we stuck with it? I’ve had the opportunity to explore this concept further in my yoga training:

Karma is, in a sense, the set of tools we carry physically, mentally and spiritually, to unfold our purpose or life destiny. The cards we were dealt, our fate, both our fortune and our obstacles. Karma is the combination of light and dark shadows that we inhabit on our journey through life and on our path toward self-realization.

Some believe we choose our own Karma before we enter a human life form. We custom build the Karma that best suits the growth of our soul. Others believe Karma is just handed down to us as a set of circumstances that we must inevitably contend with. Perhaps it’s a bit of both.

Whatever the case, we often feel that Karma is an external and uncontrollable force that we have no choice but to fall victim to; It’s our cross to bear, our dragon to sleigh, our fear to conquer. In a sense that is true. But ultimately I believe the power of Karma lies only in how much we identify with it.

I’m stuck in a tower of doom, far away from the love I long for, and this is my karma. Though I have a fairly successful career, when it comes to love, I’m useless. My fucking hair won’t grow, or it’s growing so slowly I can’t even tell if I’m making any progress!

On my office wall I wrote out my greatest dream:

“I have a dream… To love somebody, not because I need to, not because it gives my life meaning, not because it shades my past wounds, but because I WANT to, I WILL to. A love that doesn’t need to be loved in return, a love greater than myself, a love that cannot be taken away”.

Sounds like a tall order doesn’t it? But wasn’t Beethoven’s symphony number 9 a tall order? Wasn’t Renoir’s attempt to replicate the beauty of a woman’s body on canvas a tall order? What about Michaelangelo’s “David”? He started out with a big chuck of marble and as he said, just had to “chisel away the superfluous material.”

Then it hit me… For Beethoven to lose his hearing as a musician must have in some ways only made him more attuned to the vibrations and feeling of music. It is said that he would put his ear to the ground so that he could “feel” the music. Though he considered suicide (Eek), eventually he decided to continue living for his art (Phew). It could even be said that his suffering enabled his talent to covey even more truthful and emotionally raw music.

Renoir is rumored to have said about painting with arthritis: “The pain passes, but the beauty remains”.

What sticks with me the most about these men and their Karma is that despite their disabilities they continued to work toward something greater, they didn’t give up. They chose to forge ahead despite their Karma. And perhaps even because of their Karma they were able to truly appreciate the effect and beauty of art, knowing that the truth it projected could change the world and ultimately outlast them.

Much like The Wizard of Oz, Karma is just a man behind a curtain making you fall for the illusion of his grandiose power, vowing to define your experience of truth and reality. You believe in it’s power until you realize that it’s a false projection. Karma only has the power to define your life if you give it that power. Karma can be our worst enemy or our best friend and that choice is always ours.

There is a well-attested story that, at the premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, someone had to turn Beethoven around to see the tumultuous applause of the audience because he wasn’t able to hear it. A the end of his symphony he had no idea of the response his music had elicited, though you can bet your ass, as deaf as he was, he heard every note that he conducted.

Sometimes you have to ignore your limitations and push through the CAN’Ts and SHOULDN’Ts and DON’Ts, until the world applauds at how you overcame the odds.

Perhaps it’s absurd for me to compare myself to these artistic geniuses. Perhaps the love I am aiming to attain is a Gandhi or Mother Teresa kind of love, one that I may never be fully capable of. But, I say aim high. Michelangelo said it even better:

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark. ”
– Michelangelo

Despite my Karma I’m going to chip away at my marble with the faith that though I have yet to see it, something great lies ahead if I just keep chipping away. Someday, I might just find that the work I have done on myself has indeed brought me closer to being the person I want to be, a person capable of great love.

“One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one’s capacity.”
—Pierre-Auguste Renoir

“No wise (wo)man ever knew where (s)he was going, (s)he just knew where (s)he wanted to be.”
—Unknown

Ellie Araiza

Truth Before Love – Mind the Gap

I think it’s time I tell the truth. I am obsessed with love. It is literally all I think about every second of every day.  I learned many moons ago that love is the most important thing in life, some would go as far as to say it’s the only thing that really matters. Well before and since then, I’ve been consumed by an insistent drive to understand it.

“If love really is the most important thing in life, I give up opportunities to love people all day long” I said in my one-woman show Turtle Love, where I explored my deep fear of intimacy and equal, yet opposing, unwavering desire for love. “Loving someone is easy, not letting anything get in the way, that is hard.”

On New Year’s Eve I was out at a restaurant with some girlfriends when we ran into a guy I’d been on one date with once a couple of years back. I couldn’t even remember his name, but I remembered that it had been a good date and that I really liked him but he never asked me out again. After a brief hello, my friends and I sat down to have a beer and burger. My friend Latisha sitting next to me said, “Ellie, I just don’t get it, you’re beautiful, you’re intelligent, you’re kind.  You’re such a great girl! How is it that you haven’t found someone?” To her shock and surprise, my eyes welled up with tears as I said… “I have no idea”.  She didn’t know she was the third person to tell me that in a month, and I was really starting to think there must be something wrong with me. She also didn’t know, that this guy I had once dated was standing in front of me flirting with his now very cute and blond girlfriend. Though I couldn’t care less about him, he reminded me very much of the last guy I had loved, who I’d recently found out had just started up a new relationship. It was painful to watch my projection of this past love, now in a blooming and happy in a relationship with a new girl.  In a sense, the picture of what I wanted was playing out in front of me and somehow, I still wasn’t in it, and it felt completely out of reach.

Why can’t I find love? I live and breath love. I’ve read more books about love than I care to mention. I’ve been in therapy breaking down the walls, cutting through the lies, pealing down the layers that could keep me from love. I feel like an Olympic athlete that’s been training tirelessly for the gold medal, yet somehow I never even qualify to compete. Why is a girl like me perpetually single? Why is it that after years of trying and giving it my all, I still can’t find somebody to love? Is it that perhaps there really is something wrong with me? The answer is no. And yes. No, because there is nothing inherently wrong with me. And yes, because I would be lying to myself if I told myself that I don’t have something to do with it.

My desire for love is not wrong, the fact that I am worthy of it, is not wrong. The fact that I work hard on myself so that I can be available to love, is also not wrong. What is wrong, I have come to find, is my core and mostly unconscious beliefs about love. What is wrong, is the domestication of my heart and my misunderstanding of what love really is. What is wrong, is that the love I seek to find is at the moment, just a theory. It’s a dream that I have yet to experience in my reality, and because of that, what feels right is actually wrong, and what feels wrong, is probably right. Was that enough of a mind fuck?

Let me attempt to explain. I shall start with the question “Why now?”. Because I just re-lived the love story of my life. I dated someone for a while, I had great expectations and hope, and then, it didn’t workout.  It’s not just that it didn’t workout, but that in actuality, it worked out exactly as it has always worked out for me. What happens is that in the end, nothing happens. I have been through this enough times to know that’s become like a recurring nightmare. A nightmare that has changed very little since the first boy I loved back when I was 14. Now I am 29.

Why do I keep repeating the same patters? There can only be one reason, I haven’t learned my lesson yet. So what is the lesson?

Let’s take a look shall we?

Once upon a time, there was girl named Ellie who went around the world looking for love. Each time she met a boy that was cute and charming and had all the qualities she was looking for, she jumped in heart first and told herself that he was God sent, and that he must be the one. Why? Well, mostly, because it felt so right. And yet, after a few days or weeks or months the relationship would fail to blossom. Ellie was constantly heartbroken and always left wondering “what am I doing wrong?” Frustrated yet determined to fix the problem, she set out to do everything right. She studied love, she did yoga, she went to therapy. But time and time again, the same thing kept happening.

One day out of pure desperation, Ellie found herself crying heavy tears into a pond. Suddenly an old and wise turtle emerged from the water. “Why are you crying?” he asked. “My heart is broken, another boy has left me and I am hurt. This always happens”. Then he asked, “How does it happen?”. Ellie responded, “I don’t know, it’s just that at first, it feels so right, and then, it just doesn’t workout”. “Ahh” said the turtle. And after a long silence he asked “What feels right?”. Ellie thought for a while and all she could come up with was “I don’t’ know, something”. 

“Well” said the turtle, “Is that something true?”. “I’m not sure”, Ellie said with a puzzled look on her face. To which the turtle responded “My dear, love will always be a fallacy without truth. You must understand the truth of what is, before you can possibly know if what feels is right, is true”

Ha! Turtles.

So what feels right?

What feels right is based on my deeply routed yet mostly unconscious false beliefs about love.

“Huh?” you say. To which I respond, “Exactly!”

Let’s deal with the conscious ones:

-I learned love is conditional, based on whether or not you please somebody.

-I learned love is something to be worked for and chased after.

-I learned love is a reward and it is withdrawn as punishment.

This kind of “love” feels right at first because it’s familiar, it’s what I know, it’s the story I grew up with. But, it’s a lie. In contrast, here is the definition of true love I have come to believe in:

-Love is unconditional

-Love is always present and available

-Love is a birthright, and perhaps above all,

-Love is a choice.

The truth is I’ve been lied to about love and on a cellular level I still believe it. Though I’m making every conscious effort to re-write my definition of love into one of a love that’s present, natural and flowing, the unconscious belief is still the one driving the vehicle. Hence my problem, or what I’ve recently come to call, the gap.

Early on I absorbed one definition of love, based on my experience, and later in life I have uncovered a much greater definition, but because I have yet to experience this greater love, it still doesn’t ring true. It’s as if I was given a road map to love when I was a child and I’ve been following it for years only to discover that the compass rose is completely turned around. Now someone hands me a map with the correct cardinal directions and I don’t quite believe it’s true. Hence the gap.

The gap is the space between your dreams and reality. The gap is the space between your false beliefs and the truth. The gap is what lies between what feels right because it’s what you know, and what is right because it’s true.

Thankfully, the gap is closing more and more with each of my experiences, but it is still there. And the only way to close it completely is with the truth.

-By learning to accept and love what is, not what you want something to be.

-By taking responsibility for the filter through which you see the world.

-And by being open to experiencing a new reality, outside of the one that you know.

It takes courage to break out of the comfortable shell the ego built for self protection. But I believe it’s worthwhile venture, and it starts with you.

I have now begun a journey into yoga teacher training and this past week was the first of 12 weeks to come. This is where I seek to develop a relationship with what is, with reality, with the now. This is where I seek to let go. This is where I want to learn, to choose love, to choose freedom, to find truth. My first lesson:

“Love is a fallacy without truth”

I could spend my life falling in love with an idea of love, or with an expectation of love, or with a misunderstanding of love based on my past. Or I can learn to be with love, to let go, to see someone for who they really are and chose to love them as such or not. The only way to find true love, is to live truth first, love will follow.

Ellie Araiza

P.S. Turtles are the shit because they can breath through their ass.

P.S.2. “Love is a many splendid thing, love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is love!”

P.S.3. Mind the gap (to be read with an English accent)

To my 16 year old self

To my 16 year old self,

I know you worry about guys liking you. In a few years you’ll be swatting them away like flies. The truth is, most of them will be attracted to you for the wrong reasons and will fly away on their own accord. But some, will stick around. If you feel drawn toward them in return, walk the plank. They have something to teach you.  Don’t be so concerned with whether or not it will last. Everything in life is temporary. Be more concerned with whether or not you genuinely care about each others well being.

Eventually you will realize you don’t have to be nice to everyone all the time. You can actually think about yourself first, and not necessarily be selfish. This will be quite a relief. And you’ll discover people will respect and appreciate you more when you don’t bend over backwards to accommodate them.

Don’t worry so much about how you look. It’s much more important how you feel about yourself. This idea you have about being perfect is someday going to eat you up.  You really might as well give up on it. Someday you’ll realize that everything about you that you’ve wanted to “fix”, is actually what makes you amazing.  This will be hard to believe. Probably for the rest of your life.

Baby girl, you don’t have to be so strong and so brave all of the time. Your ego will often trick you into believing that you are the only one with issues, the only one who suffers, the only one who’s lost. Don’t believe it. Don’t be afraid to share your struggles with other people. You are not alone. The ones who really care will listen and relate. You will discover that your strength lies in your vulnerability. This is what connects you to others. When you finally realize this you’ll cry for all the lonely nights you held yourself together from fear that you could not fall. Fall my darling. Fall.

On that note, everything you fear will happen. You will get your heart broken, you will make the wrong career choices and you will be judged. The truth is, all of this is unavoidable. Everywhere you try to avoid mistakes, you will make them. Everything you try to runaway from, will catch up to you. And eventually, you will meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it. So relax, you may as well enjoy the ride. The truth is you have very little control.

You are very talented. By all means develop your talent. But know that your talent is not something that will bring you love. The admiration it will bring you is merely transitory. What your talent will ultimately bring you is healing. In turn, it can spark healing in others. But again, this is something you have no control over.  Just do your best and keep growing. Don’t fear the light, let it shine.

Someday you’ll wake up to find, that every effort you’ve made to be worthy of love, was only distracting to the fact that you have always been worthy of it. You will see that the masks you wear don’t get you what you want no matter how good you are at wearing them. When you realize this, it will be very painful. Even so, out of habit, you will probably try them on again. You are a stubborn one after all. But eventually you’ll knock your head against the same wall enough times to realize you are likely to break before it does. And you will. When you do, you will see that in all your efforts not to get it wrong, you missed all that was right. This is when you will be ready for true love.

Unfortunately, true love will not come when or how you expect it to. But live in the moment. Yoga, therapy and music will prove to be very helpful. Lean on them. Lean on good friends and family. And remember, the most important time is now, the most important person is the one that you are with, and the most important thing, is to do good. Everything else, takes care of itself.

Love,

Your 27 year old self 😉