Remabulous

On heartbreak in the face of change.

I have taken the risk in the past to share the things here that are hard to talk about and to say out loud. My friend Christina Morassi shot this photo a week or so ago when I was in the middle of a difficult conversation with the gentleman caller. We have challenging schedules, big goals, and different ways we are able to show up.

It has been a struggle, making love something I talk about in any kind of public forum. I wanted it in my life, so I put it on the list of goals last August, and I felt that I had found it.

And now, despite trying, despite realizing we wanted to make it work through an ellipses, there is now a period at the end of this sentence.

I have been expanding and growing what I want to accomplish in my work and my life and my ideas and my life feels much bigger for it. I had dreamed of us building these bigger lives together, that we'd help each other along the way. Apparently this desire to be around each other in this process translated as pressure and wanting more than he felt he was able to give.

It's curious to me that the grief is so different this time than it was before. I wanted this so badly to work. I wanted this life to unfold for me with him in it. And I wanted more from him.

It is painful to look over a pattern of a few years of being with people who wanted less than I did. Who didn't want to commit a few years ago, or made big promises but then went back on them, or who didn't want to see me as often as I wanted to see them.

I wonder if it's normal to feel like one is just bad at relationships. Or that it's impossible to grow in business and keep the things from your life that you loved from before. I'm scared of that idea. It makes me scared of what I would have to sacrifice in the future to reach my goals.

I think I'm going to have to let #6 go for this year. It's too heavy and has taken up too much of me for now. I suppose to have experienced it for a couple of months still counts, since I never specified how long I wanted it to last.

Make your goals specific. I think there is a way that things you really ask for always show up. I just wish I had been clearer about what I wanted this time.

I asked him not to contact me again. I didn't see the point. But the space of sitting knowing that may be the end of any contact is hard.

Perhaps hard is sometimes the only way.

Item #10: Go to museums in LA, the Natural History Museum Edition

So... I'm a bit behind on posting this, but I did check a Museum off the list of #10. Am getting a little panicked on getting this one totally done as there are a huge number of Museums here in LA. Huge. Terrifyingly big.

So, I shall share those I plan to get to before the clock gets reset on August 30th with 33 for 33, and then I shall share the amusing photos I got while at First Fridays two weeks ago...

Yay!

The "I mean it, I'm going" Museum list.

• The Skirball
• Norton Simon
• The Hammer
• Getty Villa
• The Annenberg (technically a gallery, but I love photo, so I'm going.)

I've already conquered:

• LACMA
• MOCA
• Museum of Jurassic Technology
• Getty
• Natural History Museum
• Artwalk in Highland Park
• Huntington Gardens and Library

Feels good to have a whole list!

Here we go with the photos...

Getting stared at by a Croatian.

I had heard a lot about Braco, a Croatian healer from various sources that I trust regarding his visit in April this year. So... when he came back, I was more than eager to check this out.

Thankfully, the ellipses over with the gentleman caller, we decided that this was something we needed to check out.

After all, when else do you get to reply "getting stared at by a Croatian" when someone asks what you're up to that day. I loved it. I told everyone. It never got old.

OK. So he doesn't actually stare. It's more of a gaze. But still. Being gazed at implies things I didn't think were part of the picture.

So... as the gentleman caller lives over towards the westside,I picked him up on the way to the airport and convinced both him and his roommate that a documentation of the "before" state was required.

Here is us before the staring:

OK. So maybe I suggested we might want to hang towards the droopy side in order to convey the transformation. But still... We've been stressed lately with work, so it seems fair.

Off to the hotel ballroom for the gazing!

Bless the ellipses.

#6 has turned out to be quite the saga this year. Honestly, I only put something to do with relationships on the list in the first place was that I thought I needed to be more specific after the 31 for 31 list's "Have sex" item failed. 100% no action of any kind last year. So "Find Love" seemed like a better way to approach it.

And in many ways I have been delighted with the result. I am more open to what love means right now. I am so aware of how much I love my friends, my family and my city. I do love LA. It surprises me to think this, having been such a die hard Bay Area citizen for such a long time, but I do.

And during this tricky phase with the gentleman caller, I heard I love you from friends and family almost every time I spoke to them. The support was incredible. And even though we were experimenting with being apart, he and I still said we loved each other in what we wrote back and forth and when we spoke.

Ultimately it seemed silly to feel that way so clearly and not be together and figure out what that means as we go.

You don't have to swallow a challenge all at once. You can take life in little bites. I like this better.

It was a beautiful thing to trust what I believed was possible and to see that trusting in myself and my beliefs was the right thing to do.

And perhaps this painful period of time was a way to really get to the deep bottom of #6: Find Love. I know that I have more knowledge than I did before.

And it feels good. But next time, I have informed my gentleman, we're going to do this in a less traumatic way. Phew!