A Moment Of Intimacy

Lately I am fascinated by the concept of intimacy. Ok, who am I kidding? It’s not just lately, I have been fascinated by this subject for as long as I have struggled with it. Which is basically my entire life.

I’ve always wondered, what is a healthy dose of intimacy? How close is too close? How far is too far? What is the ultimate purpose of connecting? And what is real connection? And perhaps the most important question, where do I, as a person, begin? and where do I end?

I don’t know the exact answer to any of these questions, but I’m constantly riddled by them as I study myself and others in our daily interactions. Though I’ve been very fortunate in many many ways, and certainly got “enough” love, as psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott would approve of, I still don’t feel that I had the best example of what healthy intimacy means. Not with myself, with others, or with life.

I am particularly interested, at this point in time, by how and why we find ways to avoid intimacy and connection. A couple of years ago, I read this book called “Facing Love Addiction”, by Pia Melody. You’ve heard it before through the lips of Robert Palmer… “Might as well face that you’re addicted to love”. Well yes, believe it or not, love can be an addiction. Or perhaps better said, the feeling of “falling in love” can be addicting. There are people that get a high out of “falling in love” and compulsively seek this feeling over and over again. Ahem… I, of course, wouldn’t know what this is like. But, as a highly empathetic person, I can certainly understand the feeling. And honestly, how can you blame these people? I mean, what’s better than falling in love?!

What’s fascinating about this particular group of people Pia calls Love Addicts, is that in actuality, they fear intimacy. They like the high of “not knowing” someone because when you don’t know someone you can just pretend that they’re exactly who you want them to be, and in a sense, live in a fantasy world. You never have to face not only who they are, but who you are.

Love Addicts, are usually drawn to what Pia calls Love Avoidants. Now, a Love Avoidant is also an addict, but usually he/she is addicted to something outside the relationship (Work, drugs, sex, gambling, food, etc) and he/she uses this external addiction to, you guessed it, AVOID intimacy.

What’s really incredible is why and how the addiction is created. It’s usually due to a dysfunctional relationship in your childhood, usually with one or both of your parents. It’s simple, Love Addicts were generally abandoned, emotionally or physically, to different degrees. Whether a parent gave and then withdrew affection or emotional support, the Love Addict becomes “needy” of closeness, or at least the “feeling” of closeness. Meanwhile the Love Avoidant usually had a parent who enmeshed them, which basically means they leaned on them emotionally or relied on them too much at too young an age. Having been “invaded”, so to speak, they tend to crave space and distance in order to feel ok. So, in the case of the Love Addict, their sense of self was threatened by the abandonment of the parent, and in the case of the Love Avoidant, their sense of self was threatened by the over-closeness of the parent. So while in a relationship with each other, both the Addict and Avoidant tend to expect their partner to meet their unfilled needs of childhood (closeness or distance). Instead, due to their contradicting addictions, they often get trapped in a vicious and frustrating cycle of attraction and rejection, in which neither gets their unrealistic needs met. Yes, go ahead, read this paragraph again.

Then, bear with me here, there are also people who have had one of each of these parents. One who abandoned them, and one who enmeshed them. These people are both Addicts and Avoidants, which means their sense of self is threatened both when someone gets too close AND when someone gets too far away, making most facets of a relationship relatively unbearable. Believe me, this explained a lot (Read my other blogs).

As I think of how and why intimacy can be an uncomfortable experience, I am reminded of that wonderful movie called “Lars And The Real Girl”. A man who struggles to connect with people orders a life size doll and proceeds to have the delusion that she is his real life girlfriend. His brother and sister in law decide to pretend that the “girl” is sick in order to get him to visit the town Doctor who is also a psychologist secretly treating him. During one of his weekly meetings with this Doctor, she gently strokes his arm and discovers that the act of touch is actually painful to him. It turns out, he hardly received any affection as a child, and so it literally hurts him to be touched. This really blew my mind. I didn’t know it was possible for a caress to be painful. It made me wonder… Is this why we fear intimacy? Is it ultimately a fear of pain? A fear of being crushed and destroyed? And/or a fear of being abandoned?

It seems each of our personal cability for closeness and connection has been passed down through nature, and then developed through nurture very early on. These different degrees of “intimacy tolerance” we learned, drive our ability and desire for closeness, and soon we find ourselves maneuvering around our own “intimacy comfort zone”.  For me, as an actor and writer, I feel most comfortable connecting and relating when I am acting and writing. For a Taxi driver, it may be while he is driving you to your destination. For an athletic person, it may be when doing something physical. At the same time, as an actor and writer, I may also hide behind a character or my writing to avoid actually being real with someone in person. That same taxi driver may be more open with the strangers in his back seat than with his own family. That athlete may feel really anxious if expected to just sit still and talk to someone.

Just as we can learn very healthy ways of connecting, we can also learn destructive, passive and toxic ways to connect. And though many of these learned patterns were originally adopted to protect us, what happened when we were 4, is not necessarily happening anymore, and yet, for many of us, our relationships are still defined by that original programming. Most of us are driven to protect the wounds we suffered in childhood and we unconsciously fight to “avoid” feeling that same pain in the future. Unfortunately, this method always backfires. The pain has already happened, it’s already coloring the lens through which we see, and we are allowing this vision to control our future. And we wonder why we keep re-living the same patterns in life, and why we keep running into the same issues with people, when brick by brick, we are reconstructing the very past we want so desperately to runaway from.

Recognizing when our patterns are no longer serving us and digging deep to understand where they came from, is not an easy feat I’ll tell you. But it isn’t until we face the past and become conscious of the reasons behind our patterns, that we can begin to have more genuine, honest and fulfilling connections. Do I set healthy boundaries, or do I build separating walls? Do I stay within my “intimacy comfort zone” because I’m afraid of loving someone “too much”? Or because I’m afraid of loss? Or because I’m afraid to make somebody equally as important as myself? These are questions we can begin to ask ourselves to uncover the truth behind our motivations.

So, in today’s world, how do we get close to people? Texting, Facebook and email, are the quick, easy and modern ways to connect. We don’t touch each other as much as we touch our phones. We can use these devices with the press of a button to ignore a call, or put off answering a text. People and their communications become impersonal; bubbles, chimes and moving ellipses. We can respond when or if we “feel like it”.  We can easily create the persona we want to be, and hide those parts of ourselves we would rather not show. But is that true intimacy? Doesn’t intimacy require sharing your whole self? Not just the pretty part?

It’s no wonder we, as a modern world, struggle so deeply with depression, anxiety and self-worth. It’s no wonder there is mental instability, violence and drug abuse. We as human beings who are social and built to connect, find ourselves feeling disconnected and isolated.  Most of us are never intentionally taught to work on our ability to connect, and so we find ourselves going through life ignorant to our unconscious patters and ultimately AVOIDING the very thing we so DEEPLY LONG FOR.

We think we’re close to our parents, our best friends, our lovers. We can rattle off their birthdays and favorite movies, colors and food items. We allow our brains to categorize them based on what they like and dislike, where they have been and haven’t been. We think this means we “know” them, right? Yet, I find, that in truth, people are un-categorizable. People are immense in their being. They grow, and move and change, and there are always a thousand things you don’t know even about the closest person in your life. And yet, we box them up and package them and assume this means we know them. We develop pre-conceptions about who they are, and even who we are, and inevitably find ourselves limited by these. We learn who we can be around one friend vs. the other. What we can show and what we should hide. Intimacy doesn’t become so much about discovery, and growth, but more about safety and “knowing”, even controlling. So could it be, that ultimately, the fear of intimacy with ourselves and others, is quite simply, a fear of the “unknown”? 

I mean think about it. Really start to notice how much you even look at people’s faces and how long you hold eye contact. You might be surprised to find that when you pay for your groceries, even though you might openly chat with the cashier, you hardly look into their eyes. There is an intensity about looking into somebody’s eyes. At that point you cannot deny, “I am real, and you are real, and we are both alive”. And, this is both exciting and terrifying but mostly, mysterious and incomprehensible.

What would happen if you share yourself as you really are with whoever you are with and say how you really feel? If you look into your lover’s eyes when you’re making love and acknowledge not only the pleasure, but the person? If you linger just a little bit longer in a hug than may be comfortable? I’ll tell you what will happen, you’ll have to face the fact that life is freakin’ weird and nobody really has any answers!! And that it is both ok and not ok AT THE SAME TIME!!!

Freaky. I know.

My life has been colored by a desire to have healthier connections.  Believe me when I say, I still have A LOT to learn, and it’s likely to be a lifelong practice. But like Eric Fromm says in The Art Of Loving (my favorite book of all time), love is an art, and like any art, it needs to be studied and practiced daily to be mastered. It is not just “easy” or “natural”, as we would like to believe. We may all have the talent for it, but talent without hard work and development, is like the frame of a car without an engine, it ain’t gonna take you too far.

At the end of the day, we are all the same. Not one of us is spared suffering, we are all afraid and we all need and want love. Connection is basic to both our survival and our sanity. When we avoid intimacy, we avoid ourselves. To learn to give love to ourselves and others, should, in my opinion, be the most important thing in life. An absolute priority. One that in today’s fast paced, results oriented, money making world, we need a constant reminder of. Let’s remind each other through touch, eye contact, genuine interest, that we are here together.

Whether it’s a brief 5 minute exchange with a stranger you will never see again, or a 50 year marriage with the love of your life, every connection is meaningful. Even the simple act of a sincere smile can be more intimate than 1000 words spoken. When you have the chance, put aside your work, the dirty dishes, the to-do list, and spend time with yourself, with your kid, your pet and/or your partner. Every moment that you can take down the mask, and relate, and discover, and see yourself in another person, is a moment of healing, love and bonding. A moment, of intimacy.

by Ellie Araiza

Dear Mr. Valentine

Of all the years that I have felt love, hate, joy, indifference, hope, resentment, yearning and disappointment on Valentine’s day, it wasn’t until today, that I’m simply overwhelmed with a sense wonder and curiosity. What I really want to know is, who is this Mr. Valentine? What was his deal? And how and why, have we come to celebrate this ever contradicting, provocative, and often conflict inducing holiday?

So I did some research!! What I have found is well… Very little.  Mr. Valentine appears to be quite the mystery and little is known, or even provable, about who this character was. Regardless, allow me to explore. Behold the Wikipedia introduction to Mr.Valentine:

Saint Valentine (Latin: Valentinius) is a widely recognized third-century Roman saint commemorated on February 14 and associated since the High Middle Ages with a tradition of courtly love. 

Courtly love?!

What is that? You might ask. I had to ask the same. Ahem, Wikipedia, please enlighten us once again:

Courtly love was a medieval European literary conception of love that emphasized nobility and chivalry. Medieval literature is filled with examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing various services for ladies because of their “courtly love”… In the high Middle Ages a “game of love” developed around these ideas as a set of social practices.

Ah, the game of love. I myself wrote a song that began with these very words,: “Happy Valentine’s day, now would you please, stop, I don’t want to play these games anymore.”

As for this “set of social practices”, I can only imagine them to involve bowing, kissing hands, and giving flowers, ultimately “courting” a woman to inspire fancy and fondness.

But let’s be honest, these games which have evolved over the centuries into texting, emoticons, and passive aggressive Facebook status updates, can often be indecipherable, confusing and above all, maddening. Just yesterday I saw two lovers quarrel on the street, and I thought to myself, ah, the pressures of Valentines. I bursted into a mad rant directed at Mr. Valentine himself:

ME: Who are you Mr. Valentine to impose such expectations on a single day of the year? Who are you to remind the lonely that they lack love? And remind the coupled that their love is surely lacking? It’s cruel I tell you. Cruel!!!

After reading much about Mr. Valentine’s life, I can only imagine how he might reply, in an English accent, I’ve decided:

MR.VALENTINE: Cruel my darling? Cruel is to be a legend uncertain and misunderstood over the centuries, with little known about my life and achievements, to such a degree that I have been removed from the General Roman Calendar by the Roman Catholic church. Cruel, is having to share the day I died with the supposed death of two other so-called Valentines Saints, none of which is based on historical facts, as though we were triplets forced to share the same forsaken birthday. Cruel is being beaten by clubs and stones and ultimately be-headed for trying to convert an Emperor to Christianity… And even crueler yet, is that the day I died has come to be celebrated, year after year, as a day of Love.

Of course I am speechless. Perhaps he is right. That does sound cruel. After all, Mr. Valentine was once kind enough to restore the sight of a prisoner’s daughter… Or was it a Judge’s daughter? In any case, it must be noted, he is most associated with bravery, strength and courage for refusing to deny his faith.

MR. VALENTINE: Thank you for acknowledging that.

ME: My pleasure Mr. Valentine. I shall continue.

MR. VALENTINE: Please do.

Now, it seems to me quite appropriate that a man, so misunderstood by time and history and scholars, be associated with love. Because let’s be honest, Love is perhaps the most elusive and undefinable concept on the face of the earth. When I look at it this way, there are three things I am drawn to in the story of Mr. Valentine:

1. He restored a woman’s sight.
2. He refused to deny his faith.
3. He was beheaded.

Why are these three things so relevant to Love? Well, quite simply…

1. True love must be preceded by, Truth, therefore one must love with open eyes.
2. True love is largely based on faith and belief, and yes, courage. One must choose to practice, nurture, protect and embody such things associated with love as: kindness, responsibility, generosity and respect.
3. True love requires a certain amount of self-sacrifice. It can feel as though you are being cut into pieces when you make someone else as important, or even more important than you. The ego is, in a sense, dismembered, the head is in a sense cut off, as logic no longer steers the boat, and the heart must ultimately lead the way.

In summary, love is the shattering of illusion, the brave art of promoting values that encourage growth and well-being, and the ultimate humility in surrendering to giving beyond ourselves.

And so I must thank you Mr. Valentine, for unintentionally becoming an annual holiday that reminds us to question, explore and appreciate this most fascinating concept of love. The study of its comprehension, whether attainable or inconclusive, will ultimately lead us all to salvation! Or… Insanity. But really, who’s to say there is a difference.

I will leave you all now, with my most favorite definition of courtly love, also found on Wikipedia:

In essence, courtly love was an experience between erotic desire and spiritual attainment that now seems contradictory as “a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent“.

Love is not a finite, tradable good. It is bigger and greater than all of us. It is here, it is there, love is anytime and anywhere. Our job is to learn to see it, feel it, and share it.  It is the gust of water that the gates of our hearts can shut out, or allow to flow in and through us freely. It can never be tamed nor contained, and yes, that is both frustrating and wondrous.  So wherever you are on this Valentine’s day, alone or in love, hopeless or hopeful, restless or settled, I can only suggest, you let it be, because above all it seems, love, is out of our control. Would you agree Mr. Valentine?

<LOUD SNORING>

ME: Mr. Valentine?

MR. VALENTINE: ZZZzzzzz….

ME: Mr. Valentine?!

MR. VALENTINE: Huh? What? Who?

ME: <SIGH> My thoughts exactly.

😉

by Ellie Araiza

Minus 33%

Ch. 1 – What’s Wrong?

For the third time, she offered me anti-depressants. She said it would be a low dose, just to get me back on my feet. For the third time, I said, “No thank you”. Was I really that bad? I mean I thought I was getting better.

I know I can be dramatic. Maybe she just thinks I’m much worse than I really am. I come here every week and dump all my shit on her, but she doesn’t see me outside of this hour of purging. She doesn’t see me when I’m laughing with my friends, or singing with my band, or flirting with some boy at a bar. I have plenty of moments of joy. It’s just sometimes they are dampened by a subtle cloud of depression. This cloud drifts and grows smaller and bigger depending on the day. Sometimes there’s a storm, sometimes it’s just quiet and slyly questioning everything with the ever bottomless “What’s the point?”. It’s been with me so long I used to not even notice it was there. That is until my unconscious unraveled to the surface in painful patterns. Then I had no choice but to face it, to pay attention to the parts of me dragging me down, begging to be heard.

It’s my second time in therapy. Going on 2 years now. She mustered up the courage to ask me why I didn’t want to take the anti-depressants. Because I feel like it would be admitting defeat, I said, I feel like it would mean I failed. “It’s interesting”, she said, “I’m offering you a low dose anti-depressant just for a little while to help you out, and you don’t want to accept help, because you think it means you are a failure.” I might have chuckled when she said that, as I often do in therapy when I realize that I contradict myself. I am, after all, only there for help. Her words got me thinking. Do I believe accepting help makes me a failure?

I began to realize how much I punish myself. I started to think of the ways in which I don’t accept help, in which I don’t allow joy or support or relief into my life. I realized it had been a long time since I listened to music. I used to always listen to music when I showered or got dressed, just to keep me company, to keep me sane. But then I stopped because I felt like it was distracting me from my thoughts and feelings, which I must be in tune with in order to know who I really am and what I really want, right? I stopped doing things that I thought were fun because I thought that I had to be focused and I felt like I had to get somewhere and I felt like I had to be something or someone. I started to see all the little ways in which I was making life harder on myself. Why do I do this? Why do I make life hard on myself? Why do I find ways to temper happiness?

So I started listening to music again, I started to watch mindless TV shows again and I started to look for ways in which I could relieve some of the pain, or allow in some comfort. Give myself more of a break from this whole “facing myself” thing. Maybe try not being so hard on myself. It was nice. I got momentary pleasure and distraction from these things. At times I was reminded of why I love them. And yet, I still found myself feeling like these things were an escape. Because what I really want to do is change myself. And I’m afraid that doing these things I like and enjoy is just procrastination from doing what I really need to do, which is figure out what’s wrong with me and fix it.

I’ve spent most of my life feeling like there is something inherently wrong with me. Like I’m missing something that everybody else has. Like God forgot to insert some little piece of information, some little strand of common sense in to my mind. My friends and family insist that it’s not true, that there’s nothing wrong with me. But there is. What’s wrong with me is that I think that there is something wrong with me, but that is still something wrong with me, isn’t it?

Ch. 2 – My Disease.

Yoga has proven to be as much my therapy as well, therapy. My teacher says that you can do yoga, and work really hard at it, and it will help you in your life, or you can forget yoga, and just have faith. Since I can’t have faith, I do yoga.

Yoga gives me, my body, my mind, my spirit, a map to follow. A safe playground to experience myself and my being. It’s just about the only time of day that I give myself permission to just be in my body, and just be alive. It’s a set space where repetitive movements, and attempts at postures are somehow comforting. They satiate both my desire and need to feel like I’m working hard, as well as validate my nagging feeling that I am not, nor will I ever be good enough, and yet on the yoga mat, that’s ok. It’s ok on my yoga mat if I can’t do a pose perfectly, because my teacher says it’s ok. Because the sutras say, that it’s not about getting the pose right, it’s about how you move into the pose, and whether or not you are breathing and present. That is all that matters. I try to transpose this into my life. But it’s much harder to believe off the mat, that my best is really good enough. Off the mat I fall for the lies that my mind likes to tell:

-You are not worthy unless you are productive.

-You should always be doing something useful.

-You must become perfect, or you will not be loved.

Which leads me to what I have come to call, the disease behind my disease, a.k.a. perfectionism. As unconscious drives have risen into consciousness, I have come to believe that this is the source of most of my anguish and depression. I have a core belief that I have carried for many years, that I will never be truly loved, until I am perfect. Perfectly charming, perfectly intelligent, perfectly vulnerable, perfectly intrusive, perfectly tame, perfectly kind, perfectly humorous, perfectly perfect.

Perfect = Love

Imperfect = No love

The problem with this way of thinking is that, when love comes into my life, I reject it because I know I’m not perfect, so it can’t be real love, right?

My friend Mari says I shouldn’t think of it as a disease, but as coping mechanism, as a way that I developed to survive my childhood. Self-preservation or something like that. I suppose she is right, and I suppose maybe I could be a little more gentle on myself if I look at it that way. But frankly, it feels more like a disease. It feels like cancer. Because it’s my very perfectionism that is actually devouring me for being a perfectionist.

For example, I do this thing I call “zeroing out”. It’s like a button I push in my mind that makes everything I accomplished basically zero out. You see in perfectionism, the tiniest flaw destroys the whole. When one thing isn’t right, like a house of cards, everything else topples over. All the effort you made, all the work you did, is rendered worthless. I “zero out” several times throughout the day. Despite all I have done, I feel like I have done nothing, and despite any progress I have made, I feel like I‘ve gotten nowhere. I’ve served no purpose and I’m just another day behind.

Perhaps the worst thing about perfectionism, is it’s like programming. It’s not something you can take off. It’s always there. You are either trying to be perfect, or you are trying to be perfect at not being perfect. Or, you are trying to be perfect at not trying to be perfect at being imperfect. And it is literally an attempt at the impossible. Yet my stubborn mind keeps insisting it’s the only way that I will get what I want.

Needless to say, it’s exhausting, and of course depressing. Because every day I live my life for the day that I am perfect, and everyday I fail. I don’t get closer to being perfect, I just get farther and farther away.

Ch. 3 – The Lies Of The Mind.

When I did my yoga training last year, we had a special guest speaker by the name of Martina Ziska. A lovely yogi with such an air of wisdom about her that we all sat at the edge of our seats knowing it was important to absorb every word she said. We took turns asking questions, and finally it was my turn. Not surprisingly, I asked about perfectionism in yoga.

It seemed to me that yoga can really feed into perfectionism. Often times instruction is very specific. We spend a lot of time talking about and refining details of the practice down to our fingers and toes. An inhale is tied to a very specific movement, as well as an exhale. There is an emphasis on correct placement and accuracy in our transitions. Its about moving consciously, but it seems to me it’s really easy to get caught up in this idea of “doing it perfectly”. And so I wondered, is perfectionism something to be cautious of in yoga? And how do we find the balance between effort and ease, when our calibration is off?

Martina listened, and as I spoke, I felt as though she didn’t hear what I said, she felt what I meant. When I finished my question, she looked me in the eyes from across the room, and as though sensing the kind of person that I am, she said, “Oh yes, I used to be like you”. Then she simply said, “Approach everything with minus 33%”. At first I wasn’t sure what she meant, but after some thought I came to understand, that my hundred percent, is actually trying too hard. She was suggesting that I back off.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised by this comment. I had had other yoga teachers say similar things to me. One said, “Just because it’s easy for you, doesn’t mean you are not doing it”, in other words, you don’t have to make it hard on yourself just because it comes naturally. And another one said, “More ease, less effort”.

So I tried to lessen my effort. Minus 33%, felt like way too much, so I started at minus 3%, and moved up, or down, from there. I started in yoga, and then I let it seep into my dating life, and my work life. It was at times a relief, and at times the catalyst of sheer panic as to what might happen because of my lessened efforts. What would fall apart? What disaster would unfold? Who would die?

You see, the difficult part about minus 33% for a perfectionist like me is, it literally feels like you’re giving up, like you’re not trying at all. It feels as though everything that you fear, that you are always trying to prevent from happening, is going to happen. Minus 33%, is actually terrifying.

You start to realize how you mold your life to satiate your desire for perfection. You make every decision to appease your mind and it’s judgments of right and wrong, good enough and not good enough, worthy and unworthy. You are a slave to your own preconceptions and patterns and judgments, and for what? Because you are afraid of what your mind might say if you don’t follow it’s instruction? Because you don’t want to hear the raging voice of fear that insists it’s just trying to protect you? Because on some unconscious level you literally feel like if you don’t do what your mind says you should, you will die?

So you just keep trying to attempt the impossible; to be everything, to everyone, all of the time. Until one day, it breaks you. Until you fall and this time, you can’t get back up. Until you realize that the “pay off” your mind keeps promising you is lie. You will not be more loved, or more worthy, or more accepted, or more peaceful, or more happy, if you are perfect. You just won’t.

I used to joke that it’s a miracle I’m not an alcoholic. The truth is I have the personality of an addict. But I’ve always been so painfully aware of it and determined not to be one that it’s almost become my addiction to avoid addiction. In fact, I think it’s fair to say, my addiction has been striving for perfection. How crazy is that?

Perfectionism is a disease of the mind. And it’s quite a destructive one. But the truth is, it’s not who I am. My perfectionism is who I think I should be, and is therefore by definition, a war against myself. An inability to accept myself the way I am (I never learned how to), a rejection of my very self (one that remains partially hidden behind a variety of pre-developed masks) and an insistence, that me alone, as I am, without adornment, never has, and never will be good enough, worthy, or lovable. Well no wonder I’m depressed.

Ch. 4 – Tell The Truth.

Why in the world would I divulge this information on a public blog? Why in the world would I share these things with friends and strangers? Three reasons:

1)   I share these things with you because I know that I can’t be the only one that feels this way. I may have my own unique experience of this. But I know much of it is universal, and in this past year I’ve come to realize how powerful the words “me too” are.

2)   I share this quite simply, because it’s the truth. And what I’ve come to learn about the truth is it doesn’t get smaller the more you ignore it. It only gets bigger.

3)   I share this because I can no longer hide it. It’s hiding it that has been slowly killing me. The shame I feel both for being imperfect, and for being a perfectionist has been enough to keep me hiding from the world. And I refuse to continue doing so.

Thanks to therapy, which has helped me understand where my perfectionism comes from, and practicing yoga, which has helped me cope with and process life as it is, I’ve learned to sit in the imperfection, to sit in the pain, the discomfort, the ugliness, and just let it be. It still doesn’t change how shitty it feels, but it’s usually not half as bad as I think it is, and it doesn’t last as long as I fear it will. At least now I’ve learned that it won’t kill me. And I get better and better, as I learn to tolerate the parts of myself that my parents, and those I grew up around, didn’t know how to tolerate in themselves. Basically, my utmost humanity.

I didn’t take the anti-depressants. I decided to stick with learning to take better care of myself, doing yoga, resting and learning to love and accept myself more. Treat myself with kindness and respect. Fall in love with my life. Learn to listen to me. To really listen to me in a way that perhaps nobody has ever listened to me. Because what I’ve so desperately wanted someone else to give me, is something I can only give myself. And the only way to do this, is imperfectly. Because in this reality, there are no clear cut answers. There is more gray, than black and white. The path is changing and unpredictable. And I may fall, and I may stumble, and I may always cross paths with depression and perfectionism. But in the end they are only here to teach me who I am and who I am not. Exploring them and learning from them can only lead me to a better understanding of myself.  Know thyself, right?

Now, I can honestly say, it’s been a long time since I’ve felt really depressed. I feel sad sometimes, or scared, or happy, or angry. Thankfully I feel a lot of things! And so, may my road continue to be messy, unruly and most imperfect, for at least now I have joined the living.

Ellie Araiza

P.S. Confession: As a recovering perfectionist it has taken me over a year to publish this blog because I never felt it was perfect enough. That said, coming back to it time and time again, and working on it, has proven to be extremely healing. Today I release it, as imperfect and flawed as I. Cheers to minus 33%!

I don’t know

This is by far, the hardest thing for me to admit… I don’t know.

Survival. The most primal driving force behind every motivation.  How do I stay alive?

For me the answer has always been certainty.

I grew up with a sense that I must “know” what there is to be known in order to live properly. I must understand the ways of the world beyond a question of a doubt. Surely all of the adults around me seemed to know. They walked around acting and talking like they knew. They gave short one-sided answers, and taught from printed books with pictures, and graded answers on tests with “right” or “wrong”. Everything seemed outlined and defined and surely someday, when I knew enough, I would also “know”. Knowing was the way to get places in this life. Knowing was the way to be successful and confident. Knowing was the way to be alive.

For me, the certainty I’ve come to long for the most is certainty in love. My parent’s love was not dependable, it wavered according to their state or mood and according to whether or not I was pleasing or displeasing. I felt I had to know who and what I could be depending on what they were able to tolerate. Feeling any deep emotion was threatening to my parents because they feared their own emotions. Sometimes I was able to be myself, and other times I needed to hold back and contain so as not to disturb them or threaten their sense of “knowing”. I learned to hide the parts of me that were seemingly “too much” meanwhile secretly longing to be free.

I found freedom in alone time, in music, in daydreaming. As a teenager I spent hours on my rooftop staring at the sky, dreaming of the day I would be free. I always felt that day would come when someone loved me deeply. When I found my true love, then I would be whole, then I would be fully embraced, then I could be everything I am, without fear. It always seemed to work out that way in fairy tales. Happily ever after, right?

Since then, I’ve spent my life searching for a guarantee in love. Thinking that only within certainty would I find true meaning and significance.  That only when I was certain, would I feel safe, happy, connected, free. Give me the answers, show me the way, give me a star to follow, somebody or something to cling to and only then will I be able to be who I really am.  Yet time after time, the more attached I grew to these ideas of certainty, the more I had to create delusions to give myself this feeling of “knowing” I so desperately longed for. Some people do this through a religion, or culture, or politics, or any strong belief system. How did I do this? By falling in love at first sight, many, many times.

Of course if this “one true love” existed, I would know who he was when I saw him, right? He would walk into a room and I would just have this feeling of “knowing” in my body that confirmed without a single doubt that he was my soul mate. The one, and only. That he had come to save me from insecurity, to save me from uncertainty, to give me the love I felt I’d never had. Time after time I re-created this very scenario, unconsciously choosing someone I felt a strong attraction to to be “the one”.  But time after time this illusion was shattered. And damn, it hurt like hell. Why was I so surprised that these guys didn’t turn out to be who I thought they were? Why did it never pan out? Because in wanting so desperately to “know”, I was far from seeing what really was.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s always been uncertainty in my life that I’ve been able to deal with. I moved from Mexico to the U.S. when I was 16-years-old, then I moved to Los Angeles on my own when I was 18. I chose to follow my dreams to become an actress, a singer/songwriter and a writer, so based on my chosen endeavors, need I really say more? Even in love, I came to a point where I felt a tiny bit more comfortable with uncertainty. This was when I entered my first serious relationship. Thomas, let’s call him, was constantly reassuring of his interest in me which gave me security even though I never had certainty. I knew we had the basics: attraction, connection and commonality, so it was worth a shot. Unfortunately though, after 10 months of growing in intimacy, he wrecked havoc on my heart. I found out he cheated on me the entire relationship and was totally devastating. It turns out I was really hurt by something I didn’t know was happening, and after that, I proceeded to blame myself… “I should have known better”.  And out of self-protection, I decided I would never be uncertain again, because hell if anyone was going to hurt me like that again. I would find my true love and I would “know” and I would “get it right” next time. And that’s what I set out to do 5 years ago now.

Yet in the process, I unknowingly found myself further and further limiting my perception of reality. Limiting it to what I “knew”, to what felt safe for me to “feel” and “see”. Some unpredictability was nice, but overall, I was seeking a sense of security. I needed so desperately to believe in something indisputable, that I created it.  I created it in romantic relationships.  Some imaginary, some impossible, the rest mostly unfulfilled and unfulfilling. The problem with being so caught up with a need to know is you don’t and cannot see what is. You miss out on your life. You miss out on truly loving other people. You pigeon hole yourself into a limited version of reality. You start to die.

Imagine how dissatisfying my life became as I set my mind to know, to seek certainty and find it, and then everyday I didn’t find certainty just felt like another day I failed. The more I wanted certainty the farther it seemed to be. I tried to cling to past beliefs and ideas and I wanted the world to fit the beauty of my vision. I was floating and ungrounded. I was lost and more confused than ever before. Wasn’t there supposed to come a point in adulthood when all my work paid off into a feeling of security and knowing? And wouldn’t this likely be rooted in some sort of prince charming that came along to save me?

After months and months of a bitterly disappointing disconnect between my dreams and reality, I had no choice but to invest in therapy and yoga and searching. A couple more broken hearts later, I finally surrendered into a great deal of breathing into what is.

What I’ve come to find is that my expectation that if only I “knew” it all, then life would be without struggle, without doubt, without fear, is terribly and unequivocally incorrect. The feeling that I am an inadequate human being because I don’t “know” it all, because I’m not sure how to “handle” everything, because I have emotions that are out of my control, is a complete and utter misunderstanding. And love? I’ve done it all wrong. I approached dating as a search for the fulfillment of my ideas and expectations. Looking for someone to fit the script I wrote in my head instantly, completely and unquestionably. Looking for someone to give me unconditionally the absolute security that he would always love me. Well crap. No wonder I’ve been single most of my life.

Somewhere along the road I picked up this idea that until I “knew” everything I would not really be good enough or be able to live my life fully. Instead I am discovering that the more I long for absolute certainty, the more I realize how uncertain I am. And it’s the mistaken belief that certainty will bring me freedom, that makes me seek to latch on to it, when really the opposite is true.

All this may sound ridiculous. The truth is, it is. But the other truth is that it’s the illusion or game of the ego, and the ego is very persuasive. It isn’t until the ego drags you through enough pain that you finally choose to step out of it. But it’s very scary to step out of a lie of “knowing”. Most of us would rather feel certain in a lie, than uncertain in the truth.

We all need a certain amount of certainty (pun intended), but for me it always felt like my life depended on it. I rarely felt secure as a child. I learned early on that if I didn’t take care of myself emotionally, in whichever way I was capable at the time, I couldn’t be sure anyone else would. This has kept me from being truly open with people, truly vulnerable. From seeing who they really are, because who they really are is always outside of what I “know”. In fact, you cannot ever fully “know” someone. It’s in the erroneous belief that we do “know” others, that our judgements and preconceptions take over and our relationships begin to shrivel, or at the very least, grow stale.

And so given this hard life-lesson, I can honestly say that in some ways I am dating for the first time in my life. I am learning to spend time with men, not choosing them to be “the one”, not trying to figure out or know if it’s going anywhere, but just getting to know them. Learning to see them for who they really are and to be open to being surprised. I am learning to trust my instincts, and to listen and pay attention to what I do know and feel, but over all, be ok with what “I don’t know”. And you know what? It’s actually kinda freeing.

Today, I stand before you, more uncertain than ever before. If you spoke to me at 18, I was so certain. I thought I knew it all. Perhaps I couldn’t tell you how I was going to get there, but I sure as hell knew where I was going. Today I have shed so many masks and so many identities, I stand before you as a human being grounded in mystery. A person that has talents and flaws, likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, but overall, I know not where I am going, I just know better who I am.

by Ellie Araiza

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 😉

Nothing Beats Reality

This is my first “official” blog. I decided to start posting because I’ve recently been very inspired by what others are sharing about what they’re feeling and thinking and it’s made me realize I have thousands of poems and essays sitting in my computer that have never been shared. I can only hope that people out there will enjoy and relate.

I’ve called my blog Nothing Beats Reality, because I just saw the documentary “Searching for Sugar Man”. It’s about a man called Rodriguez who got signed to a record label back in the 1960’s. He recorded an album that was so good it was expected to be a huge hit. But to everyone’s astonishment, it flopped. Somehow though, it ended up in South Africa where it was  pirated and where millions of copies were sold. Rodriguez became an icon though nobody knew anything about him. Extraordinary really. Anyway, without giving anything away (because it’s really worth watching!) sufice to say, that during an interview when Rodriguez, he was asked if it bothers him that he didn’t get recognition or money for his record for so many years. He replied simply, “Nothing Beats Reality”.

I was touched and inspired by his humility and connection to life. Indeed, nothing beats reality. And personally, I aspire to believe that reality requires no idealism, for it is already ideal.

Though, my thoughts and poems, may speak differently ;P

Ellie