A Year to Look Forward To

I have a lot to look forward to this year.  January - a trip to Oakland.  February - a trip to New Orleans, Louisiana.  July - a trip to Europe.  This year is the year I need to do things that I have said I wanted to do.  I've always wanted to go to New Orleans so I'm going.  I've never been to Europe so I'm going.  This is going to be a great year.

Uneasy

The mind runs uneasily when it doesn't understand.  It racks its brain over and over, reading and re-reading, analyzing and over-analyzing, running through scenarios and memories over and over.  I want to know why but I don't ask in respect, so it becomes an internal struggle without closure.

Things change so much in 1 year.  Last year, I was "the most important thing" in his life.

My best friend

I've loved you for half my life, that is if I even know what "love" is.  I've said it to 3 different people thus far, and I meant it every time when I said it, but looking back, I think it was real only once.  It was you, and I knew it was different because with you, the feeling lasted.  When I don't hear from you for a long time, your number flashing on my phone still makes my heart race.  At the risk of sounding cheesy, it's true.

I've loved you for half my life.  With you, it's always been a roller coaster of ups and downs.  In physics, some charges attract and some repel, and that was the story of our relationship together from the day I met you.  We got close and separated, got close and separated, got close and separated...always a work in progress, but the chemistry seemed magnetic because somehow we always found our way back to each other.

You call me your best friend.  I'm scared to call you mine, but when I'm excited about life, I want to call you.  When I did something new, I want to tell you.  When I'm frustrated and worried, I want to share with you.  When I'm sad and lonely, I want to see you.  I miss you at the beginning of every morning and at the end of every night.
I don't want to believe I'm your best friend because you don't call me when you're happy or you're sad. You call me only when you want to satisfy yourself.  Sometimes it feels like that's all I am to you...just a booty call.  I want to be more to you.  I want to hear from you from your triumphant moments to your fears and failures.  I want to hear your everydays.  I want to hear about all the new life lessons you've learned, the new friends you've made, the new experiences you've enjoyed.  I miss that about us, but it's not fair to ask because what I'm really asking for is the relationship that we don't have anymore.
I don't want to believe I'm your best friend because when you meet someone new, she'll be your best friend, and I'll just be a friend you used to have.  And if one day, you're in a position where you have to choose, I'll expect you to choose her because it's the right thing to do.  I won't hold you to what you said, so I don't want to believe I'm your best friend because someday, maybe even today, it won't be true.

No two people are perfect or even perfect for each other.  They just love each other enough through mountains of patience, tolerance, compromise, understanding, sacrifice, and appreciation.  I heard an older couple say that love is just a measure of tolerance.  I secretly hope that one day we have that level of patience, tolerance, and love to keep actively fighting through our misunderstandings to understand one another's needs and maintain a close relationship.

God, I know it's a lot to ask for, but you make miracles happen right?

What pain are you willing to sustain? What are you willing to struggle for?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-manson/the-most-important-question_b_4269161.html

The Most Important Question You Can Ask Yourself Today

By Mark Manson

Everybody wants what feels good. Everyone wants to live a care-free, happy and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when you walk into the room.

Everybody wants that -- it's easy to want that.

If I ask you, "What do you want out of life?" and you say something like, "I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like," it's so ubiquitous that it doesn't even mean anything.

Everyone wants that. So what's the point?

What's more interesting to me is what pain do you want? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives end up.

Everybody wants to have an amazing job and financial independence -- but not everyone is willing to suffer through 60-hour work weeks, long commutes, obnoxious paperwork, to navigate arbitrary corporate hierarchies and the blasé confines of an infinite cubicle hell. People want to be rich without the risk, with the delayed gratification necessary to accumulate wealth.

Everybody wants to have great sex and an awesome relationship -- but not everyone is willing to go through the tough communication, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings and the emotional psychodrama to get there. And so they settle. They settle and wonder "What if?" for years and years and until the question morphs from "What if?" into "What for?" And when the lawyers go home and the alimony check is in the mail they say, "What was it all for?" If not for their lowered standards and expectations for themselves 20 years prior, then what for?

Because happiness requires struggle. You can only avoid pain for so long before it comes roaring back to life.

At the core of all human behavior, the good feelings we all want are more or less the same. Therefore what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire but by what bad feelings we're willing to sustain.

"Nothing good in life comes easy," we've been told that a hundred times before. The good things in life we accomplish are defined by where we enjoy the suffering, where we enjoy the struggle.

People want an amazing physique. But you don't end up with one unless you legitimately love the pain and physical stress that comes with living inside a gym for hour upon hour, unless you love calculating and calibrating the food you eat, planning your life out in tiny plate-sized portions.

People want to start their own business or become financially independent. But you don't end up a successful entrepreneur unless you find a way to love the risk, the uncertainty, the repeated failures, and working insane hours on something you have no idea whether will be successful or not. Some people are wired for that sort of pain, and those are the ones who succeed.

People want a boyfriend or girlfriend. But you don't end up attracting amazing peoplewithout loving the emotional turbulence that comes with weathering rejections, building the sexual tension that never gets released, and staring blankly at a phone that never rings. It's part of the game of love. You can't win if you don't play.

What determines your success is "What pain do you want to sustain?"

I wrote in an article last week that I've always loved the idea of being a surfer, yet I've never made consistent effort to surf regularly. Truth is: I don't enjoy the pain that comes with paddling until my arms go numb and having water shot up my nose repeatedly. It's not for me. The cost outweighs the benefit. And that's fine.

On the other hand, I am willing to live out of a suitcase for months on end, to stammer around in a foreign language for hours with people who speak no English to try and buy a cell phone, to get lost in new cities over and over and over again. Because that's the sort of pain and stress I enjoy sustaining. That's where my passion lies, not just in the pleasures, but in the stress and pain.

There's a lot of self development advice out there that says, "You've just got to want it enough!"

That's only partly true. Everybody wants something. And everybody wants something badly enough. They just aren't being honest with themselves about what they actually want that bad.

If you want the benefits of something in life, you have to also want the costs. If you want the six pack, you have to want the sweat, the soreness, the early mornings, and the hunger pangs. If you want the yacht, you have to also want the late nights, the risky business moves, and the possibility of pissing off a person or ten.

If you find yourself wanting something month after month, year after year, yet nothing happens and you never come any closer to it, then maybe what you actually want is a fantasy, an idealization, an image and a false promise. Maybe you don't actually want it at all.

So I ask you, "How are you willing to suffer?"

Because you have to choose something. You can't have a pain-free life. It can't all be roses and unicorns.

Choose how you are willing to suffer.

Because that's the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have the same answer.

The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain that you want to sustain?

Because that answer will actually get you somewhere. It's the question that can change your life. It's what makes me me and you you. It's what defines us and separates us and ultimately brings us together.

So what's it going to be?

A sign please

God, give me a sign...like a more obvious sign please.  I've been told I can be pretty oblivious so just something in-my-face would be preferred.  I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to do or where I'm supposed to go, but I'm trying to keep an open mind and an open heart.  You say just ask, so this is me knocking, seeking, asking.  I'm lost.

"'Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend...

It's a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to realize your Personal Legend. It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on earth...To realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation...And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.'"

-The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Let Go and Let God

I'm going to "Let go, and let God."  I'm just trying to keep in mind that everything happens for a reason.  I'm not sure why we keep coming together and separating again, and I don't know what God has in store for us next, but I trust that He has a plan.  I trust that this relationship and break-up was a lesson to set us up for something greater, and we just have to wait and see what that is.  It might not be what we expect, but I have faith that it'll be exactly what we need. 

---

I always thought it was you, or at least most of my life.  I don't know why, but I just felt for you and fell for you differently.  Last week, I prayed for peace, and He answered my prayers.  This week has been such a productive week with workouts, friends, meeting and hanging out with new friends, appreciating co-workers and employees, and even getting to talk to you was relieving.  I think most of all the working out has made me feel much better about myself and challenges my thoughts of what I am really capable of.  I'm stronger than I thought.  Everything is mental.

I was always attached to an idea that we would end up together, but now I'm just trusting in God that everything happens for a reason.  Whether or not we end up together, I know it will be for the best, and I'm getting more comfortable with that idea.

Sure. Right?

I was sure...I was so so sure, without a doubt.  And now, I doubt.  Now, I'm not sure.  Am I just stubborn or am will I be right sometime in the future or am I just flat out wrong?

Sinking

I keep getting a sinking feeling...it's the feeling when a billion bricks falls on your heart and it sinks and your eyes water.

It seems to be getting harder.

10 Things Happy Couples Do Differently

I keep reading this over and over, and I just wish I had read this article earlier or did more of these things earlier: http://www.marcandangel.com/2013/09/12/10-things-happy-couples-do-differently/

• committed to growing together
• resolve conflicts through love, not retaliation
• meet in the middle and work together
• actions consistently backup their claims of love
• focus on what they like about each other

Hôm nay

Hôm nay đau lòng.

Boomerang Theory

In a movie called, "Little Black Book," one of the characters talks about the "Boomerang Theory," that if you let someone out into the world and they still come back to you, then they are meant to be yours.  I know it's wishful thinking, but I hope that is what happens.  I hope our story doesn't end here.

There's a Vietnamese saying that "a person planning doesn't compare to God planning."  I'll just have to wait and see.

Love is a choice and a lifestyle

I needed this today.

From LeLoveImage blog: http://leloveimage.blogspot.com/2013/08/thats-love.html


Love isn't the wispy, now-I-love-you-now-I-don't that everyone seems to think.

I have been in love. I still am. He has the bluest eyes you have ever seen and he kisses my forehead and tells me he loves me and I can never get enough of curling up with him in the mornings when we wake up. I hate going an entire day without talking to him. Our lunches together, when we both come home from work, are the highlight of my afternoon. I love watching him move, and the way he asks how I am, to check that I'm really okay.

Oh, yeah. Also we've been married for two years and I'm pregnant with our first baby.

Love doesn't always look like two people drifting in and out of one another's lives. It doesn't look like fuckbuddies and hookups and friend-zones and continual heartbreak. Actually, I don't really think that's love.
 
Love is absolutely intentional.

I fell head-over-heels for the man who married me. Our parents were friends way back in the day, and he struck up conversation over FB. We had a long-distance relationship for two years of beautifully innocent friendship before we decided that he should visit, to see if this was going anywhere.

In April he visited for four glorious days. He was a perfect gentleman, and asked my parents for permission to court me. He even asked my permission to kiss me, he was being so careful - it was charming and archaic and showed just how much he cared about respecting me and I loved it. When he took my hand in the car my heart melted, because I had just been wishing that he would. Just before he got on the plane, he kissed me for the first time. I couldn't stop smiling for the rest of the day, the imprint of his light beard on my lips, wishing the feeling of his hand on the small of my back pulling me close would never fade.

Four days after he left, I finally got up the courage to tell him I loved him over text message. He said he knew before he left that I did, and sent me a video response telling me that he loved me, too. I have long since lost track of how many times I have watched that video.

When the 4th of July came around we finally arranged for another visit. He had to work, but he flew in over the weekend, to ask my parents for permission to marry me, and to propose. The proposal was a surprise - he had shipped the ring to my house ahead of time to make sure he had it.
He proposed halfway up a cliff on a rocky beach, no one in sight. If you have never been in love, I can never describe to you the feeling of your heart in your throat and the rock in your stomach: it is the most intense joy, the most amazing discomfort, and you can't stop from kissing him, because nothing else matters but this huge love you feel between you, and it's like a gift from God that he loves you back.

After I graduated with my degree, it was my turn to visit him and meet his parents. I visited for two sunny, warm, beautiful weeks, and met his friends, and made out with him on the couch in the evenings... it was bliss. I boarded the plane back and couldn't figure out why I was going back.
We were married one month later. It was a stunning wedding. We honeymooned for a week on the Oregon coast, then he took me back with him halfway across the country to the cute little one-bedroom apartment he had rented for us.

It was during our honeymoon, and shortly afterwards, that I realized just how much I didn't actually know him.

Our long-distance relationship, paired with his short in-person visits, didn't allow for me to experience his moods, his facial expressions, his highs and lows and food preferences and insecurities and frustrations. It all came as a total shock, on top of culture shock (moving from the north to the south is a huge difference in culture) and the loneliness of no friends and no family and suddenly realizing you are in love, and have just married, a stranger.

There were several long nights of misery, of loneliness, of having to learn one another entirely anew and understand how to live together, of learning what the other person needed. It broke me, too many times and for too long.
 
I chose to love him anyway. Just as he chose to love me. There were lots of personality changes, lots of unmet expectations, lots of surprises about one another, in those first six months. There was even, "No, I had no idea when I married you that you were like this".

But we didn't let that change anything. We chose to keep loving one another, to keep returning to the table, refusing to give up or to let the other person go. We were in it for the long haul. I know lots of people who would have thrown in their cards and walked away.

What we have now is so much stronger for all of that. I love him more than ever, and he is still my best friend. We still have our fights, and after two years it's become "We always fight about this... so what is it that's still not working?" and we keep pursuing the answers.

That's love.

That's why I read some love letters, some breakup letters, some forlorn and "poetic" accounts between lovers of their heartbreak and misery and I think, "What makes you think that's all love is?"

What if love is far more than that? What if it's not just physical attraction, or sex, or strength of emotion, or a really nice guy that makes you feel not-lonely?

What if love is a lifestyle?
 
What if "love" is a fight to be patient, a choice to remain kind, a refusal to hold grudges or get so easily angered? What if it isn't about pride, but about compassion? What if love can't stand for anything but truth, even when it hurts, and despite the hurt, insists on continuing?

What if love doesn't fade, because you believe that love is so much more than the emotions you feel?

My husband and I have tattooed our wedding rings. Love is not an option, and marriage is a sacrifice to hold it. We are in this together, and, by the grace of God, we will grow old together.

That's love.

What I Knew

I don't know when it was that I knew it was you.  I just felt it.  In my being.  I just knew.  I just knew it was you, and no matter who I dated or was with, whenever you contacted me, it was just different.  When you chatted me when I was at Berkeley, you gave me the smiley butterflies.  When you texted me, it just stopped me in my tracks.  I never knew what it was and I couldn't describe it.  I can't imagine you feeling the same, but for me, a part of me just knew.  I was silent about it because it's crazy, right?  Ludicrous!  And I knew it must have been crazy.  I was just a girl hung-up on something in high school that never really materialized into anything, that almost never even happened, but in my memories, it was so real, so so real.  I knew you didn't feel the same and that at best, you were only physically attracted to me. 

And somewhere, somehow in the roller coaster of off and ons, your feelings started to change.  It was as if overnight, your feelings had changed, and then it was like a dream came true when you fell for me too.

The relationship that I both wanted and feared was better than I could have imagined.  You were loving, devoted, warm, committed, and you taught me what love is.  Love is compromise.  I was too selfish and too attached to my own way of being, the few things that I felt could prove that I was still me, and not a woman making history only in relation to a man, not a woman who couldn't detach herself from a man, and not a woman who would spend her whole life changing for her man and waiting for her man.  I wanted to be me, myself, and I, a woman with a recognized identity that stands tall by herself.  I dove into work as a means to contribute and leave behind a legacy.  I devoted my days and nights to it, and I selfishly prioritized work over you, my lover and friend, especially when you needed me the most.  I was obsessed with these ideas of staying me that I forgot about us.  I was stubborn and selfish, and with you, I learned and am constantly learning the art and necessity of compromise in a relationship. I don't prefer compromise, but when I think about compromising vs. the alternative, not being with you, all I want to do is compromise.

But it is hard to change, to change my habits, and to consciously keep everything you say in mind, and I know progress is slow.  It's even harder when my own partner doubts me, doubts that I can change or compromise.  Habit is a tough opponent, but you're really my biggest obstacle.  You doubt me at my every step, question my every attempt, deny all my apologies.  You hope I will change but you publicly doubt me.  It hurts, and I fear you may be right, and why am I even fighting for someone that can't believe I can do better in our relationship?  You don't have faith that I will change, but maybe that's what I deserve.  What else should someone expect except what the past has shown?  I can't blame you, but when you're so vocal about your doubts, damn it hurts.

When I "knew" it was you, was that just blind love?  What was that?  Can my gut be wrong?  Because how can my gut feelings and my distorted high school feelings argue with clear-cut observations in front of me that you are not happy with me.  You want someone more supportive, more intuitive, more connected, more selfless, more trendy even, everything that you determined I am not or won't provide.

I love you, and I feel like I've always loved you, but now I have to prove to you that I'm worthy of being loved by you, and I'm falling short.  You've asked me to be sensitive and the more I open my eyes and try to read your body signals, the more disappointment I see in your eyes.  You're disappointed in me, and if I was to be selfless, it seems just wrong to stay with you.  You want someone to sense you, feel you, be your best friend and your lover, and you think I live to fight you.

I see you resenting me.  Almost everything that I've asked you to do with me in the last few weeks has been shut down: seeing a musical even though you liked Aladdin and Wicked, hiking Escondido Falls even though you claim to like the outdoors and camping, random events and Groupons --> all "no thanks."

When you talked about buying a house next year and I said I could chip in, you bluntly told me that you didn't even know if you'd be with me.  I lightly chuckled but that's when the truth stared me down that you were no longer serious in a life with me.  That truth knocked me out and challenged me to get up and fight for it, but my intentions to compromise and do better are just going nowhere.  I'm just so sad and tired of seeing you disappointed, and I'm really lost, really really lost...I'm at a lost for words and a lost of actions, and nothing seems to make things better.

I've ran Monday's events in my head over and over again:  both of us barely getting there by 6:45pm and a small disagreement about whether a family meal would feed all 3 of us.  It's so small and petty, and I don't get why that warranted almost a whole week of not talking.  It's because it wasn't really those events.  It's beyond arguments.  You said, "you just expect it now" and it's clear that this year and a half of frustration towards me has built up into a mountain of resentment, and these nonsense irritations just lit the dynamite.  I called you, and when you started watching TV, I knew you just didn't care.  You were just over it.

I'm scared what I "knew" is nothing more than a young girl's young hopes, blissfully ignorant of disconnect and disappointment. I don't know where to go from here. I really miss what we had. 

This postsecret always resonated with me.

Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

"It is a peculiarity of a man that he can only live by looking to the future...And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence..."

"it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.  We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life...Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.  These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment...They form man's destiny, which is different and unique for each individual.  No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny.  No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response.  Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action."

"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.  In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible."

"Live as if you were living alredy for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!"

"...being human always points, and is directed to something or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.  The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself."

"According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed;  (2) by experiencing something or encountering something or encountering someone; (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."

"We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fat that cannot be changed.  For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement.  When we are no longer able to change a situation--just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer--we are challenged to change ourselves."

"This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how.'"

I fear

Words. News. Articles. Conversations. TV. Movies. Radio. Music. Commercials.
An overwhelming influx of information distracting me from my own thoughts and feelings. Not enough moments of silence to process and evaluate myself, where I am in life, and where I want to be.

I fear that I will never relive the adventures of EAP VN, exploring new cities and meeting new people with utter freedom and not tied down to anything.  It was an experience I will never forget.  But at any moment that I am living and breathing, I can still see the world.  I should not fear as long as there is breath, life, and health in my body.

I fear that I will be abandoning the family business with not enough structure, help, and support to sustain itself.  But I shouldn't because it has survived 23 years without me and can and will continue.  I fear that I will leave my mom and sister to deal with the mess and the stress.  But I need to remember that I can be replaced.

I fear that I will disappoint my partner.  He aches for change, with inspiration and motivation, and I don't know where to start.  He needs more understanding, empathy, connectedness, and sacrifice and I'm scared I can't be all that he wants.  I'm scared I simply just don't have it in me.

The Pursuit of Meaning

"What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans": http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/