is this for real?

the last post i wrote that was full of any true substance was may 11th.... and it has been ten days since i wrote about my boring mind.

the truth is, i'm still boring.

i feel like i haven't analyzed anything of importance in a long time, i haven't freaked out, i haven't felt discontent, well not enough to write about it....

and the things that i have felt that might, i repeat might , have been worth writing about in the past dont really seem worth writing about now.

people have been telling me to write and now i know how my friend travis feels all the time, although i think his has to do with time more than a boring mind. its not that i dont want to write.. trust me.

if my mind stays blank much longer i'll post another book excerpt.

sorry guys.

danielle & bryan

one of mine and seth's oldest friends got married this weekend.

it was BY FAR the best wedding i have ever been to.

it was nothing like a normal wedding.

p.s. i hate normal weddings.

it was so nice to have fun at a wedding, feel like a part of it and not have to hear jokes about how shitty marriage is before reading corinthians and having an awkward alter call.

it was a 'backwards' wedding, so the reception was first. this was great for so many reasons, one being that we ended on the best note possible, the actual ceremony. when we arrived there was various food items and booze. arabella ran right up to the table, grabbed a chicken wing and took a bite.... luckily zeb caught her and seth took it. gross slash hilarious. we sat on blankets with old friends and drank and talked, ate the best carrot cake cupcakes while some flew kites. after a lovely time of eating and drinking we all marched to the end of the cliffs at montana de oro while seth and zeb played songs and we sung along... at the end they had their ceremony... which went like this...

seth and zeb in the middle of a circle of the bride and groom's very closest friends and family playing only fools rush in. my eyes might have welled with tears... not a common occurrence.




then danielle asked seth to play a song he always played for all of us ladies when we were younger, strictly a friend song... no shows. i will by the beatles.



i really almost lost it at this moment. its been a while since seth has played this song for me and as you all probably know my favorite thing in the world is being reminded of those days.

one of my favorite people in the world, and danielles maid of honor bess, then gave a toast...



and nola was a gypsy.



bess was followed by a few other dear friends and family members of theirs, a falcon who flew in the ring, and the vows (which were maybe my all time favorite vows i've heard). the entire time one of their friends was tossing rose petals over everyone and it was perfect....

i loved the exact amount of love, humor, and fun this wedding contained. it felt more real than any wedding i've been to, it wasn't about all the things weddings seem to normally be about and they didn't feel the need to be overly dramatic about what was taking place.

then we walked back to the beach, nola slept.



and we went home.

i'm so happy for danielle, i love her so very dearly... she is our sister.

dream big

i had a dream that one of our close guy friends was gay (i wont say who on here because he might be offended... i of course only liked him more gay)... anyway he and his partner were moving down here and i went to their house to hang out.... and his partner and i became best friends... then becky and jacob showed up. jacob came in and said becky was in the car and she had been taking shots of hennessy (something i'm preeeeetty sure she would NEVER do) and that she needed to know what to do about her hangover in the morning so he wanted me to go tell her my tricks... hahah SICK. i went out and she had colored her hair blonde and it was down to her waist. gross. and they were driving a minivan...?

the sweetness

i'm separating my blogs.

honestly will be completely devoted to me and my mind.

the sweetness will be my children.

walls can't stand forever

i've always been a good builder.

i could build walls around my heart like no one. whenever i need protection, i can provide it for myself... the consequence of this protection is detaching. detaching from people and in a lot of ways, life.

i could live a private life. i could be like everyone else and keep my problems in, avoid the drama that confused lurkers bring. i have to weigh the benefits on either side.. the only reason this is even an issue is because i naturally want to be on stage. i want to live in front of people, i want to be transparent, that's what comes natural to me. i have to weigh whether what comes natural is the most beneficial for me and my family.

people say to me a lot that if i dont want drama in my life i can't write about my life. this is true i suppose... but can't i want something whether i know i'll receive it or not? and cant i ask for that thing from at least the ones who are close to me?

i get sick of hearing people say i love the drama that surrounds me. i truly hate it. ask my husband. it gives me a stomach ache, it makes me sweat, and its the only thing left that gives me anxiety. saying this may seem egotistical but its just the reality of what i see in my life.. people like to watch me, they like to talk, and in a lot of instances people have become overly obsessed or involved with my life. any of my close friends could tell you they have witnessed this. they can also tell you that the strange thing is that i, myself, am not a very dramatic person.

this is what i know: i have to choose what my expression is worth.

is the freedom my mind receives,
the life my heart feels from writing,
the healing i experience,
the comfort of knowing i'm not alone,
the countless people who write to me, telling me they are changed by my mistakes, my words, my life...
is all that worth the loss of some privacy? is it worth being misunderstood? is it worth unnecessary drama?

the answer for me, and for us, hands down is yes.

its times like this, when the drama swirls around my words changing their motives and creating masks over them- masks of hate and blame, that i want to give up. i want to get out my trustworthy tools and build my walls high and strong. i want to push everyone out, keep them at arms length, where punches are missed. i want to stitch my lips closed. even i, who thrives on letting out every emotion, get weary when understanding and grace is so sparse.

i have to fight though. i have to fight my protection, because i know thats not really what it is. i see my walls for what they really are, a cage. i have to trust, that i am who i am for a reason, i married who i married for a reason, i had the kids i did for a reason... and i'm good the way i am for all these reasons. i have to remember that i truly believe that my transparency is more beneficial for all of us.

what?

this song is retarded. i love it.

favorite things show

today ara and i went to the park, at our favorite park there is a coffee bean and every time we go, we usually get a chocolate milk.

today we did.

and while nola sat in her stroller ara crawled into my lap and just sat there while i asked her questions...

what or who is your favorite...

boy: jahleel
girl: hallei
lady: mama, deborah & danielle (felgler)
guy: papa
show: dora (duh) & kai lan
song: cinderella song (one headlight- wallflowers)
color: purple red & pink
place to go: thai food & the park
book: goodnight moon
animal: cow (she has ALWAYS said this... which makes me just that much more devastated about letting her eat that steak the other night, when i think of it i feel sick inside)
house to go to: E's and claire's
food: watermelon, pasta, thai food & beans&rice... (couldn't pick just one... takes after mama)
drink: chocolate milk
hairstyle: ponytail
friend: claire
person to see: lane
baby doll: baby poopie (the first doll she's ever had)
outfit: pink princess dress (which is weird cause she's been wearing the purple one for a week.. haha)
shoes: purple jellies
toy: broom
doggie: genesis (i mean they do french kiss a lot)
princess: belle
prince: papa
place to be at home: the couches... yikes.
language: chinese
friend of papa: kevin (seth said 'more than matt even?' and she said 'yea, kevin' sorry matt)
friend of mama: sarah
treat: cookie
fruit: blueberries (obviously she doesn't know watermelon is fruit)
veggie: carrots
singer: jacob dylan
word: hi
real baby: faye


i love this girl. i love her tiny tiny face and her big huge hair.

i'm boring myself

the inside of my mind, is starting to bore myself.

usually, as you all know, my mind is racing.. analyzing... getting crazy. lately its been very peaceful. (even with all the unnecessary -and unwelcome- drama that so constantly follows me)

its kind of shocking me. i find myself thinking of nothing, well nothing of importance anyway.. going to bed early because my mind slows... watching people or things go on and not analyzing every word, every movement. its weird, and its boring slash nice... i like it for right now i just hope its not forever. i'd hate to be losing my crazy.


like how boring is this post?

and im going to bed right now.

gross. i hope this doesn't last.

preciousness and beef feasts

so we went to san luis this weekend. its weird how now when i visit i get that same feeling i had right before we moved... this tense trapped feeling, the only place i dont feel it, is hanging out at the biermanns house. that's where we stayed, i love love love staying there and it was nice to have seth with me this time and for him to get to spend time with lane.


all four girls were ADORABLE. its so amazing to see arabella and claire play... they finally pretty much just play non stop and dont fight... they had a tea party outside and dressed up in their pretty clothes. its also funny watching nola and faye because faye is more like ara as a baby and nola like claire. i'm so glad my girls have girls they can hang out with, even if they dont live close.










then ara did this...




so precious.

it was hilarious.

it was really great being there, the whole family, with their whole wonderful family.

and then came the beef feast....








thank you erin and karl for making me steak, as far as meat goes, i'm sure it was great.

here's the deal. i'm not a meat eater. i'm never going to be.

that being said, it was ok. i liked the more rare better, which is weird to me. mostly the taste was whatever, meat actually doesn't taste much compared to other foods i dont think... the texture was pretty sick... but the problem was my head. i could NOT get past feeling like i was doing something terribly wrong... and i didn't even stop eating meat for moral reasons... it was creepy to cut it, it was all just very creepy.

it was not what i have been imagining all this time.

creepy.

arabella

she is getting too hilarious for me.

here are some recent quotes...

'my daddy doesn't live at Disneyland he lives at work and baja fresh.'
(yes she has started calling him daddy sometimes, although both seth and i despise it)

she was making up a song the other day and the only three things i could recognize from it were 'I'm having a baby'... 'necicita'... And 'bob dylan.'

shes been saying a lot of adorable things like 'nola is my husband'... 'nola misses me and i miss her'... 'i like her. she likes me too. i'm married to nola.'

me: ara where did you come from?! Ara: from target.

she talks in spanish a lot saying 'por favor' and 'si'... yesterday she told me 'hable means speak spanish'.

just now i sat and tried to learn something she wanted me to do for like 10 minutes and i never achieved the exact movements she wanted from me.
she wanted me to sing 'i love my toothbrush, toothbrush, toothbrush' and then wave my hands in this VERY particular way, that i was just not getting evidently... and bend my knees up and down at the same time... then she wanted me to sing it and wave my skirt around after.. every time i would try she would make a frustrated sigh and say 'no, not like that, like this' and raise her eyebrows at me with widened eyes... like, 'do you get what i'm saying now?!' .... i didn't. i never got it. she gave up and then she started singing a song about giving up!!!!

outrageous.

grow a pair

This is the last time I'm saying this. If you have a problem with me or something I do or something I have done or something ive said and you care about me or my family then you muster up the integrity and dignity to come straight to me or Seth and talk about it.

If you want to gossip, go ahead, but stay the hell away from me and my family.

I swear to god if I could cut San luis obispo out of my life and cauterize the wound never to be opened again without hurting the ones I do love there... It would already be only a faint memory.

evolve

i have a baby on my lap... so this is an attempt at a blog, we'll see how far i get... but if i dont do it now seth will come home to an exploded wife.

i'm always growing. i have never stayed in one place, inside myself. when i look like i have fallen behind i havent, i'm just growing more.

the past few months has been well, insane. the combination of feelings i already had, postpartum depression, moving away from everything seth and i knew as a couple, and being stuck almost suffocated me.

i had to struggle to find the end, to find the freedom that i feel so deeply now. i had to fight against being a mother, fight against being a wife... fight against myself. the only way i thought i could find freedom was to push against everything i thought was keeping me from freedom. why did i think i need this 'freedom' so bad? because i've always been a mother, then i got married young and fast, i had kids young and fast... and here i was not even realizing that i had postpartum depression and in a place where i could push. push against everything that i had set up the past three years. ... and as always i got extreme.

for me when something in my heart is going to change i always know, because first comes the idea that it needs to change, then comes the intense struggle, the extreme and then comes the break and its here.

this process can be taxing of course and i dont always make the best choices in the midst... but i'm always moving forward and i've always come out better and stronger once its through.

seth is my best friend and the person i want to share my life with... but we weren't smart in the way we got married and had kids, we know this.. very well. the pressures of what i thought was supposed to be and what i thought marriage was meant to look like have made me crack. i had this idea that i had to be something that i'm not and if i couldn't be that then i would never be enough for seth. its an interesting dynamic to grow up not learning what love is and to marry a man who was taught his whole life how to love intensely. its two worlds colliding, and not gracefully. i could look at him and be frustrated that he always knew how to be selfless, because it only reflected on how i somehow couldn't do it. i could look at him and be jealous, because he didn't have to struggle to love.. well not very much i thought. i could look at him and feel guilty, because i would never have the strength to love him how he loved me.

if he did something to hurt me he would apologize and say he would change, if i did something to hurt him i would apologize and say i'd try to change. in my heart hoping it would somehow happen, not understanding my control. its not just that i was being selfish, its that i truly didn't understand that i could have control over the patterns of love i had been taught my whole life. i didn't understand that i could change how i speak, how i defend, how i fight... i could change everything about how i love, but i didn't know. i thought if i changed it i would be lost and vulnerable, all my walls would come crashing down. they would, but i thought this would be bad.


so we came to this place... where all these things had been present for years, always getting better of course but still existing in our home, and then we got to the place after the unplanned pregnancy... where we have two kids. we've both realized we've been sacrificing our lives, seth's dreams, for something that's taken us over. i realize i'm only 24. my friends from my childhood are in school still... school?! i had been stuck in this town where all the people i was friends with were so much older than me i had forgotten what people my age were doing... (no offense) but seriously... i had jumped to 30. so now i see, i'm 24, i'm married, i have two kids... i never did anything i wanted to do. i never had time, just to me.. to find out who i was. i was having a quarter life crisis.

i dreamed of leaving, all of them. running away. i wanted to stay in my bed every day. i started to not like my little girl and not want my husband to even talk to me. its not that i didn't want this life in the end. its that i didn't want it right now, i was full of regret and responsible for all of it. if you have these feelings it is very easy to enjoy them... to soak them up and run in your mind. if you can't run physically, then your mind can at least take off right? the problem with this is it can't stay inside long.

i kissed our friend. a friend seth has known his whole life. the kiss wasn't the point, neither was the person. the point was where i had gotten. i had pushed so hard, i had run so far in my mind, i had been so selfish, i had needed freedom so bad that i had hit my extreme. the kiss itself meant nothing, no love no romance.. but it was what the kiss symbolized for me. that freedom. that fake, hurtful, destructive, freedom.

this was not the freedom i was looking for.

it took the decision of us being apart, me leaving my house and my family to have my beloved freedom... for me to realize that's not what i wanted. what i wanted was never the extreme, that had become the lust of my heart since balance couldn't be found.

the night i was suppose to leave i couldn't. nothing could make me leave this house, this home. we had dinner and something broke. it was the release i had been waiting for. the communication finally resounded and our hearts weren't strangers anymore. it only took one conversation to express exactly what each other needed, it had to be at that moment for some reason... but when it happened my heart changed. i realized then that i had grown. the struggle was painful and my actions were hurtful, but we wouldn't be here without them. we need to be here.

this past 2 months has changed my entire life, and my whole perspective. i needed it badly, very very badly. i have evolved. this struggle is over and i have come out stronger, wiser and better. there will be many more struggles in my life but i truly believe that this one was something different, something bigger than most.

its amazing to feel like i have the power to change whats around me. to love seth how he needs, to be able to say 'i will change that' without a doubt that i can. everyday i can feel the affects of this change inside me and its good.

its perfect to know now that i can have freedom, that i have not lost myself. there is balanced freedom for me and love for seth.

im only willing to share my mistakes, where i failed for the benefit of anyone that can find it from my transparency and for myself. i dont like to hide the things i do, i feel rotten inside when i do. i'd rather the world know and judge me as they may for kissing another person, for being selfish, for being stubborn, than keep that ugliness locked inside so no one can judge me. its easy to look good on the outside when the bad stays hidden inside. i dont want that. i want to look like what is true about me.

i have many faults and i have so much farther to go, but i'm not afraid of failing anymore. i'm not afraid of not being enough. i know what i am capable of. i have more of a capacity to love greatly than i ever thought possible.

seth and i start counseling this month and i will have counseling of my own. i have never had consistent counseling and though i think i've come very far without it, i think this is the perfect time to start.

living in freedom is so good.

mothers day

for mothers day we went down to the santa monica swap meet, got bored, then came home.

mothers day then got nice haha... we ate, and went to our favorite park. it was so relaxing and really really fun.
























and in case you missed it, see it here...

I'm writing a mini blog via text. Crazy. My heart feels like it's going to explode because i've had something Ive wanted to write about since before my furiousness and I still haven't sat down to write it. I know some of my writer friends would be like 'it's only been like a day' but you guys know the feeling you have when the words are stuck inside you aching to get out and you just don't have a minute to release them... I know you do. So I'm only writing this to say that I still don't have time... And I'm bursting.

life is good

its crazy how much has changed in a matter of weeks.

i really think now that i had postpartum depression. i think that's the only explanation for how i felt, especially how i felt vs. how i feel now.

here is what we have been up to...


two cute girls always being adorable...















took a trip to cowboy town (which is actually paramount ranch)









and we've been working on getting our house the way we want it, finally





how cute is that baby in the bottom corner?!
we got that table off craigslist and we both just LOVE it.
we got that picture print from urban outfitters, which normally i dont like... but since it was a picture of bikes that look exactly like all the ones seth and i have owned and ridden together over the past 8 years it seemed very appropriate... and it actually makes a big difference. it feels very good to see bikes in our house, a part of us that's always there to look at.

i will write more about the depression and how things have changed later, my mind is still racing at the moment... i'm gonna need to talk it out more before i can write it down :)