lighted up fridays

after a few heavy posts, i offer you something differ.

(journaling in parks makes me happy, too)

something light. like the little joys.

HAPPINESS:

1) reading poetry on street corners in san francisco to strangers. screaming it to the full moon night sky. realizing strangers are listening, affirming, applauding. genuinely.

2) words. i am painting the world in letters. after nearly two years absent, my creativity is back. powerfully so.

3) singing. i am no etta james (sigh) and no adele (double sigh) but the vocal chords i do have are not bad. friends and family tell me all the time i sing well. and, well, i am starting to believe. i’m starting to understand the concept of personal range and tone. plus, singing helps with throat chakra opening

4) skirts. i am officially over pants. skirts offer a mobility pants do not. and a certain femininity i am unearthing, rejoicing in.

5) coconut oil in my coffee (insomnia calls for coffee sometimes, unfortunately). coconut oil, in general.

6) the weather. spring sprung early. sometime mid-february. it may speak to global warming but. i am enjoying the sun and its shine thoroughly.

what’s making you happy these days?

namaste

zoe

so i watched demi lovato’s documentary (this one is long)

and, surprisingly, i almost cried a few times.

(source)

girl was honest. at the end i wanted to like, sit down with her and talk and talk and talk. i know MTV showed her in a specific slant but she talked candidly about issues not widely discussed (see the post before last).

she said things i related to. brought up questions i asked and continue to ask all.the.time.

her honesty tapped mine on the shoulder, said, “come on, man, just let it out.”

so.

here it goes.

(THIS IS VERY OPEN)

friends relate to the thoughts. not the extremes. explaining thought processes to their fruition (e.g: ending up over the toilet) never happens. i keep a lot under wraps for a variety of reasons. mainly because no one i know is a bi-polar bulimic with anorexic tendencies. at least outwardly, anyway. additionally, a lot of friends dismiss my worries as needing to get laid or needing to reap more gratitude. not that i disagree entirely but. that hurts. that makes me think and believe my feelings are overly dramatic and childish and not worth discussing or believing. after a while you give up on honest connection and just fucking agree, you know?

i know a lot of what i experience emotionally everyone experiences emotionally. yet, not everyone chooses to hurt themselves. not every ends up acting out those creepy things lurking around in the darkness of your self. and i really don’t want to keep pretending i am not genuinely troubled.

if i survey my twenty-two years, i can tell you this sadness did not start a mere two and a half years ago. it started in my childhood. i remember being called a cry-baby at age seven. i remember friends distancing themselves from the overly-emotional and very sensitive child, whose contradictory bouts of wild energy caused teachers to speak privately with my mom and a friend’s mom to say something like “i don’t think you should hang out with zoe”. i remember feeling awkward and uncomfortable and worthless by age nine.

i remember friends in middle school telling me i was too sad too often. one girl told me i was depressed and wanted to drag everyone down with me. which was not true. not true. i just felt a lot and was confused and wanted someone to tell me it would eventually be okay. that i would eventually be okay. after that i shut myself up. stopped spilling the secrets buried in my heart. i stopped thinking i was special enough to be heard. i sealed myself off and learned to play the role of “helpful” despite crying myself to sleep frequently. by the end of middle school, my mom asked me one day if i wanted to “see someone” (a therapist, namely). i ignored the request because there was nothing wrong.

but i remember being angry all the time. i remember crying, hating myself so much. once, i jokingly played with scissors and my wrist. i was only half-joking. (i’ve never said that to anyone)

i cried myself through the first two and a half years of high school. the self-hatred formed in my childhood carried into my teens, multiplied and manifested. i mellowed out a lot my senior year. found a group of friends who loved and accepted me. the next surge electrified me my freshman year of college (makes sense). the crying started up again. the depression.

when i read through old journals, i am struck by the deep sadness written in the pages. part adolescent angst, part deep emotion children don’t regularly feel. the words hurt me now, years later.

of course, i’ve experienced happiness, too. i’ve had numerous happy days. i’ve had a lot of people in my life who love the person i am. i cannot discount any of that. however, the heaviness of my sadness often feels extraordinary.

and totally mystifying.

because i know the extent of beauty in my life. of privledge, of love, of abundance. i want to stress too that i never asked to feel the things i feel. i never asked for the thoughts that make no sense in conjunction with the elements that make up my life.

i understand the saying “you are what you think” but, sometimes, my thoughts do not feel like my own. they creep out of shadows. become a loud sound i can’t drown out with happiness or gratitude or a good fuck. even when life goes right, i still struggle. the heaviness never lifts entirely. sadder still is how well i’ve learned to numb it out, to shrug it off and pretend like all is fine (being vulnerable is hard).

i’ve been trying not to overthink. i’ve been trying to talk myself down. but, you know, it’s like, how long can you pretend you’re okay? i can’t do that to myself anymore, deny reality.

example:

one of the syptoms of bi-polar (II) is racing thoughts, ones that make you keep late hours and develop insomnia (because the brain won’t shut up).

and right now my mind is goinggoingoing. i can’t keep my focus on one thought for very long. my heart is racing, too. i’m all panicky. jittery. i feel like i have so much energy but i haven’t slept properly in three weeks (6 am bedtime last night though i got into bed at 1) and wake up heavy and slow. i don’t really feel like i can breathe well. i’m crying, not crying. yet, i started the day over the moon happy. i wentwentwent all day. i laughed a lot. felt light.

yet.

here i am.

inching closer to midnight, exhausted in theory, but feeling incapable of sleeping.

i wrote this for a variety of reasons.

i wrote this for myself.

i wrote this because it’s okay to own your emotions and thoughts, to acknowledge them as real and worthy of discussing and i needed to prove that to myself.

i wrote this for you, sitting there, lost, unable to explain anything you think or do to anyone, even yourself.

i wrote this to show you’re never alone, even if you think you are.

namaste

zoe

(p.s: now i feel naked. metaphorically speaking.)

(p.p.s: and much lighter. talk about needing to let some stuff out, huh?)

(p.p.p.s: i really need to work on talking to people in my life i can physically touch.)

a story about silence

i remember the television blaring on all days of my childhood.

(source)
i remember the radio announcer speaking to my mom as she primped and primed herself for the day.

i remember music in my ears on the bus, as i did homework, while i read.

i remember words without meaning pouring into gaps in conversation.

i remember anything to cover up the silence.

the absence of noise woke the fear in my mind. the fear unfolded stories about ghosts in every creak of my wooden home, about loneliness amplified, about unwanted thoughts staging an attack. noise blanketed the drop offs into the unknown so that i never quite dropped. much like the characters in kurt vonnegut’s short story “welcome to the monkey house”, sound severed my thoughts from growing. i remained distracted, anxious for the next silent moment.

i went to a jesuit high school, one that required its students to attend retreats with religious tones. as a girl opposed to religion and anything remotely religious, i entered retreats a fairly closed-minded skeptic. especially my senior year, the longest of the retreats. for four days a random chunk of my senior class and i embarked on this journey. which, along with talk of jesus, spirituality, and life-in-general, included meals. eaten in silence.

imagine.

dining tables lined with seventeen and eighteen year old kids wiggling in discomfort with eyes focused solely on food, with minds shrieking WHAT THE FUCK. ears catch the only sounds to be caught: cutlery against plates, food against teeth.

no one knew how to navigate the soundscape of silence.

i struggled to understand the purpose. what did silence at the dinner table do for me? what purpose did swallowing my food and my words serve? i wanted to talk to my friends. to laugh. to compare notes. but retreat leaders kept our vocal chords at rest.

i graduated high school in 2007. yet, it is now, in 2012, that i understand the beauty in silence.

silence removes distraction, allows for intentions to become clear, for thoughts to manifest fully instead of getting lost in music notes or t.v banter. thoughts become a lot less scary when you hear them out. loneliness somehow melts away, too. you hear your heart in the quiet. you see yourself as alive, as connected. not alone. never alone.

a space without excess noise brings me a sense of calm, too. though it used to bring me anxiety (and sometimes still does, especially in conversation). i feel much more relaxed here, sitting on the couch writing, listening only to the wind talk with the birds and the house clock tick in the dining room. i am comfortable. not anxious. not scared.

there is a reason i find solace in the mountains.
there is a reason i will settle down on a hillside some day when i’m grown up.

like any other habit, adjusting to silence takes time. you cannot understand the importance of silence in a day. it took me about five years to scratch the surface and i am still exploring. be curious anyway, even if you’re impatient (like me). practice at living in silence. explore its depths. see what happens.

i think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you uncover.

namaste

zoe

badvertisements (i’m so clever)

critical thinking comes to me naturally.

(source)
(also: TRUTH.)

if you couldn’t tell.

i ask ‘why’ all the time. i always have. sometimes it gets me in trouble. sometimes it winds up hurting me. sometimes though, it helps in sorting through the bullshit.

like advertising. i am okay with judging the shit out of advertisements. especially those aimed at men, women, weight and appearance. my heart goes fluttery fast whenever i watch television commercials in particular.

like the progresso commercial where a woman calls and speaks with a male chef who, because he is male clearly (clearly) doesn’t care about the customer’s weight loss and the joy she expels. so she asks for a woman, instead. because, obviously, all women turn into dithering piles of giggles and claps whenever one of us loses weight.

or the nutrisystem commercials claiming prepackaged, processed, gnarly foods covered in plastic will help you shed the weight you so-desperately-need-to-lose. maybe it will. but nutrisystem won’t help you develop tools to build a foundation with food not in little boxes. it won’t teach you how to view food as nourishment and as enjoyable. because, for real, boxed food rarely compares to homemade, hand crafted deliciousness.

or how about the workout programs we see in between our shows? the ones showcasing dramatic body transformations? yes, i do believe discovering a healthy weight will increase a person’s confidence as well as health. but no, i don’t think focusing solely on physical appearance as a means to happiness and wholeness is good. it’s superficial. it leaves out the person inside, the one who believes her outsides matter more than the solidity of her character. additionally, what happens when and if you stop the work out regiment? what happens when you lose that “ideal” body and gain your natural one?

or what about proactive commercials? zits are unseemly. be smooth. be clear. be perfect. hide your flaws because they’re offensive.

or, man, the over-the-counter speed pills playing dress up as diet pills?

what the fuck are we selling here?

according to american media, our outsides matter over any other piece of our selves. the size of your waist directly affects the number of friends you have. no one will like you if you’re not thin, wearing straight hair, and a white smile proving your happiness. there is always something to fix. there is always something to improve. we’re never enough.

we’re selling unobtainable ideals. we’re selling body-consciouness and food obsession. we’re selling guilt and shame and depression. we’re selling inauthentic, pitting fake against real.

i am so angry. so frustrated.

because it doesn’t matter how smart you are (i’m pretty smart and i fell for this shit). this type of advertising weasels into all lives. it catches people unguarded. there is a reason western culture breeds eating disorders and self-esteem issues. there is a reason women trade dieting tips like old family recipes and don’t bat an eyelash when a friend complains about her thighs.

what kills me the most is the apathy, the blind acceptance, of the culture we live in. i know people fight against the negativity brought by american media. i know of body acceptance movements and women’s empowerment organizations. but i know intimately the shrugging, the “it is what it is” statements.

during the oscars my aunt kept referring to the “fat lady in the background”. pointing at the screen, at her, like some displaced wild animal in the zoo of perfection. my dad joined in eventually. i simmered. i bubbled. until, eventually, i boiled over, almost yelling as i spilled, “can we not call her fat? she’s a person, in a dress. she’s a person.”

it kills me how easily we attack one another and ourselves. how we judge without reason. how we build self-worth from the surface and stop there.

i encourage you to start asking questions. to start seeing the not-so-subtle messages tucked between dippy dialogue and uppity commercial jingles. further more, i encourage you to share your opinion, even if others think you’re nuts (e.g: my parents think i’m crazy every time i spout off at the t.v.). because, whether american would like to acknowledge it or not, some malicious force is sinking into our conscious. this isn’t okay anymore. this wasn’t okay, ever.

imagine a world in which depression, anxiety, body-shame, and self-esteem were not the biggest personal issues our culture faced. imagine if we started to consider our character, if we started to measure our worth in how much we loved, how much kindness we shared? what would we look like, then?

we have more power than we think. this doesn’t have to be forever “it is what it is”.

this doesn’t have to be shrugged off anymore if we don’t want it to be.

namaste

zoe

(p.s: ironically, i post this the week after nation eating disorder week. yeah. i would)

(p.p.s: i know it’s music monday but i wrote this last night and am still pretty fired up so. music later. and really, does anyone care? eh.).

self-love sunday

the right words to start this ramble are not at my fingertips.

(me and daises yesterday in san francisco sunshine)

this week was weird, right?

filled with heavy energy. i slept in weird cycles, experienced insomnia for the better part of the week, woke up foggy every day. an underlying sadness tinted the week.

i spent hours unloading into my journal. honest thoughts. confused thoughts. too many thoughts.

and saw my truth:
i am only honest in words, in writing.

i have so much to say to so many people. so many thoughts and feelings and conversations i want to vocalize. not necessarily pleasant ones, either. but each time i gather the strength and steadiness to open my mouth, it stays closed. those inflated words deflate, fall back to their homes in my chest, and i implode silently.

i am as emotionally developed as my seventeen-year-old self.

i’m too busy being nice, good, easy, to speak my truth, to find my voice and use it. as i explained to a friend the other day: “i am going through the teenage rebellion i never had.“

(although, ironically, i was very quick to share my opinion when i was a teenager)

or, maybe, more accurately, i am going through the quarter life crisis no one talks about. either way, i am a big ball of feelings with no outlet other than my pen and paper. everything inside me is screaming for release. i can’t be afraid of how other people react anymore. it’s not a burden i need to carry. it’s not one i want to carry. this lack of sense of self has me floating int a weird, uncomfortable, shaky place. i’m running around trying to find my self in other people.

i gotta get over this. i’m not as fragile as i keep telling myself.

this week, i’m shooting for honesty.

off the page.

namaste

zoe

(p.s: remember when i mentioned phantogram the other music monday? well, give the phantogram pandora station a listen. hot damn.)

(p.p.s: i haven’t felt like blogging at all this week.)

clean house, clean heart

i woke up writing poetry i forget now.

(a tree without leaves the other day on a walk)

a song rooted down into my conscious after the words disappeared with the morning fog.

limbs ached to express, to twirl.

(of course i obliged.)

i want to say i am proud of myself but that doesn’t sound right.

blissfully astonished does.

yes.

because i keep waking up.

every day.

i keep recommitting.

keep
breathing
reaching
expanding
shedding.

after dancing, after breakfast at noon, i confronted my closet.

threw away piles of clothing holding
the old me,
suffocating the present me
by living in trash bags just out of reach.

now i have two pairs of pants. three if you count my tie dye ones.

which i do.

anyway…

i’ve got a mountain to explore! it’s sunshiney outside and i’ve got little tolerance for sitting inside when it’s so beautiful out there!

namaste

zoe

funny moments in afternoons alone

i wrote this whole other serious post earlier.

(san francisco last week. pretty, pretty)

i suck at conclusions (whole other tangent) so, i took a break before writing it.

and took the opportunity of having an empty house with really awesome acoustics to belt it etta-james style.

you know the kind. sometimes equipped with dance moves.

yeah.

(yeah?)

eventually you laugh at yourself. (if you’re me).

because it’s funny to go from deeply frustrated to deeply light in like…an hour.

mostly though, it’s funnier you still pretend to sing to an audience.

even though the audience is your refrigerator and kitchen table.

namaste

zoe

to be real

that last post felt and sounded nothing like me.

(source)

for real.

like, really, in retrospect…what?

doling out skin care advice doesn’t sound like me. it’s not what i want to write, what my heart asks me to bare.

i continuously move away from the true nature of this blog: a means for me to cope (and, i guess, technically, an open journal for the anonymous).

to be honest, this blog is more for me than for anyone else. call it self-ish, it’s okay. i don’t feel self-ish. the internet offers virtual communities. so. this is a way for me to connect and start dialogues until, eventually, i can start ones with the people in my life face to face. call it practice.

you may wonder why i chose to post so candidly. i’d hoped by now you’d have picked up on the openness of my nature. i like to talk, discuss and, occasionally just kidding like all the time, to the dismay of friends and family, over analyze. sorry. that’s in my DNA make-up, too. i have always been interested in the answers behind the questions, in investigating. i like the nitty gritty in life. the shadowy details. some people don’t.

i am here for those who do. i am here to share this journey alongside yours, to connect to other humans experiencing the experience of life and living. because you know, it’s not easy. this whole living business.

skin care just isn’t on the agenda, kids.

i can’t wish away the feelings i feel. no matter how i try to avoid them, ultimately they’ll round a street corner on some tuesday afternoon and link arms with me again. talking about them talks me through them, before, finally, talking me out of them.

i did not ask for the life i landed. something or someone somewhere put me in the ‘really, really ridiculously lucky pile‘ and threw in some baggage for good measure. no one can be ‘really, really, really ridiculously lucky’.

every person carries sadness. did i not say that earlier this month? well. it’s time i start believing it. it’s time i start allowing that sadness, that anger, that nitty gritty, to be felt instead of covering it up with a superficial, poorly concocted happiness/gratitude blend. i can’t guilt myself out of experiencing authentic emotion anymore.

i’m done apologizing for what bubbles up, for being ashamed every time i sigh.

starting.

now.

namaste

zoe

a post about skin-care

so you might have noticed how often i say, “we’ll talk about that later!”

(source)

and you might have noticed how rarely i follow through.

well, kids, lucky for you (purely an assumption) i am following through!

this is a big moment. i suck at following through. something i am conscious of and working on. starting…NOW!

today i want to talk about skin care.

my interest in skin care ignited back in the day of middle school and seventeen magazine reading. i poured over the “better skin!” articles, read up on benzoyl peroxide like other people did the articles of hot boys. yeah priorities! (well that and i always though those boys they did stories on were, um, ugly). i’ve tried everything — proactive, neutrogena, cetaphil, aveeno, et. al. (aka: any product on the shelves of your local rite aid/target/CVS).

i was always lucky, though. my genetics gave me generally clear skin. sometimes a little oily, sometimes a little dry, all depending on the weather. but i was never acne prone outside of a few zits around my period. i escaped high school relatively clear-faced.

want to know when all that changed? (i promise it’s not hard to guess)

when i stopped eating and started exercising like the world was ending the next day.

i started to break out with in the first couple of months after turning vegetarian and upping the number of runs i did each week. in places i never broke out — on my cheeks (i usually broke out on my chin, forehead, and right around my nose. and by “break out” i mean i got like, one or two zits). on top of that, i got cysts. big, painful ones on my cheeks. guys, i flipped my shit. because, what the fuck, i wasn’t 16 any more! i was twenty, a woman! not a teenager battling against hormones!

this is the best picture i can find to show you. what you can’t see: a smattering of under-the-skin, small zits all over my forehead. this was about two years ago, post-20th-birthday-cyst on my left cheek (you can see it).

(also, i look like such a baby).

anyway, it got really bad. really, really bad. gnarly whiteheads. painful bumps on my face and neck. i was embarrassed and uncomfortable. i had never dealt with any of that before. and i’m sure being sad and stressed all the time did nothing to help my skin along. i tried a million products without success.

it all changed when i hit my breaking point. my skin turned around almost immediately after i re-introduced animal products to my diet and stopped running. in fact, i’m pretty sure i haven’t had a whitehead on my cheeks since. (yes, i am knocking on wood right now). changing my diet changed my mood, my overall happiness. i upped my water intake along with my food intake, too. healthy skin needs a lot, lot, lot of H20 kidlettes!

additionally, i started looking at the ingredients in my face cleansers. if i didn’t eat anything i couldn’t pronounce, why should i use anything on my skin i couldn’t pronounce? especially when said ingredients leek into the body via the skin anyway?

today i use very, very little on my skin. i wash it every other day (though every day with water). once a day. at night, before i sleep. i use dr. bronner’s soap bars because i can read all the ingredients fluently and know what they are (rose scent is my favorite). i follow up my night-time face-washing ritual with a little coconut oil to moisturize and to replenish the oil i might have stripped away. twice a week or so i exfoliate with a coconut/brown sugar/vitamin E scrub my friend made me for christmas (i use it on my body too). it’s awesome.

and, again, i drink a LOT of water. i try really hard to not touch my face, as hands carry a lot of germs. likewise, i try really hard to not pick my face if and when i get a zit (way, way easier said than done, especially with whiteheads). a healthy diet helps tons, too. vegetables make my skin glow!

but that’s it. no fancy nothing. no expensive anything. just a cheap-ish bar of soap and some natural coconut goodness. my skin hasn’t looked or felt this great in years.

(yuh, i’m a dork-us. but without breakouts!)

what are your skin-care routines, if you have any? what works for you?

namaste

zoe

(p.s: please know that this is what works for my skin. it took a ton of trial and error to get here and your routine might end up looking different for you because your skin is different!

p.p.s: i’ll blab about haircare sometime later this week!

p.p.p.s: HAH. i totally didn’t mean to make the same face as the first photo. clearly, i haven’t changed much in two years when it comes to posing for photos. that or i’m awkward.)

music monday + monday lessons

mmm monday.

(san francisco on saturday on random street walks with my friend)

a light breeze, fat clouds, sunshine kind of monday.

i woke up intending to work out the whole day because i ate cake last night and militant, dictator zoe ordered it to be done. under strict authority, i laced up tennis shoes after i slipped out of my sheets and dreamy early morning haze. i skipped breakfast too for good measure. funny how plans figure their way out, though.

because the television spazzed out. and my brother came home sick from school. and my stomach grumbled loudly. and i picked up a pen and undid my tennis shoes. and i wrote into my journal. and i realized: “i still think my weight matters in the measure of happiness. so i still chase it as being the problem of all my problems” (journal quotes). silly anxious and negative self. it’s just cake, not the devil. calm yourself.

so i ate some breakfast, ate some more cake, laced up my tennis shoes, and took the walk i actually wanted. i listened to two pod-casts, did some yoga in the park under the sun, felt the grass beneath my feet. three or so hours later i am home, rested and happy and not thinking about that cake from last night or the cake from earlier. just how awesome my legs feel and how settled my heart is in my chest.

and how awesome this song is.

because i am in love with bon iver.

and mondays, for that matter.

namaste

zoe

(p.s: please don’t steal my photos. thanks!)