Down and Up

I know that I posted just a week or so ago about how I was feeling so ready to move forward with my life after my last relationship, but if I am 100% honest, I have to admit that although things are worlds better than they were 5 months ago, there are still moments, hours and sometimes even days when I still feel completely heart broken. I tell myself to be strong and to be positive and that I can do anything and I have to pat myself on the back and say that I am pretty darn good at doing those things; being strong, being positive and seeing opportunity and abundance instead of closed doors and a lack of something, but today, I have to admit that I just feel a bit tired of trying so hard to be strong.

So it goes without saying that today couldn't have been a more perfect day for finishing Eat, Pray, Love, while riding the bike, and of course, while shedding a few tears. I am so completey inspired by this woman---the way she so indulgently gave into pleasure, the discipline and flexibility she demonstrated in searching for the divine, and the strength and faith she built in herself during her journey through Italy, India and Indonesia. Her authentic courage and self-created happiness move and inspire me.

And for a girl, who more than sometimes lately, just collapses in a pool of tears missing what it feels like to be in love and wondering when love might come again, there is nothing more refreshing than a real, true life story of a do-it-yourself woman who dilligently pursues what brings her joy and in the process stumbles upon love in forms that she never before could have imagine existed.

Even now as I sit here writing this I ache thinking about whether or not I will ever get to have the wonderful, happy feeling that comes with falling in love again. It scares me a little to think that it could be quite some time before love comes into my life again but Elizabeth Gilbert's story gives me hope and forces me to look at this time in my life as an opportunity to continue working on finding what it is that brings me genuine happiness.

Okay that is quite enough of my rambling for tonight, here are a few more passages from the book....enjoy:)

"In the end, though, maybe we must al give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices." p.334

"And now, I am coming back to Gili Meno under notably different circumstances. Since i was last here, i've circled the world, settled my divorce, survived my final separation from david, erased all mood altering medications from my system, learned to speak a new language, sat upon God's palm for a few unforgettable moments in India, studied at the fee of an Indonesian medicine man and purchased a homefor a family who sorely needed a place to live. I am happy and healthy andbalanced. And yes, i cannot help but notice that I am sailing to this pretty little tropical island with my Brazilian lover. Whi is--I admit it---an almost ludicrously fairy-tale ending to this story, like the pate out of some housewife's dream (perhaps even a page out of my own dream, from years ago.) Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years--I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue." p.327

"When all this was finished, I was empty. Nothing was fighting in my mind anymore I looked into my heart, at my own goodness, and I saw its capaciy. I saw thatmy heart was not nearly full, not even after having taken in and tended to all those calamitous urchins o sorrow and shame; my heart could easily have recieved an forgiven even more . Its love was infinite." p.328

"We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I'm a failure....I'm lonely....I'm a failure...I'm lonely...) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking fo a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourelves from our suffocating mantras." p.325

"When I look back at the fou years thata elapsed between my marriage starting to fall apart nd the day I was finally divorced and free, I see a detailed chronicle of toal pain. And at the moent when ic ame to this tiny island all by myself was the very worst of that enire dark journey. The bottom of the pain and the middle of it. My unhappy mind was a battlefield of conflicted demons. As I made my decision to spend ten days alone and in silence in the middle of exactly nowhere, I told all my warring and confused parts the same thing: We're all here together now, guys, all alone. And we're going to have to work out some kind of deal for how to get along, or else everybyd is going to die together, sooner or later." p.324

"So what will become of me and Felipe? Now that there is, it seems, a "me and Felipe"? He told me not long ago, "Sometimes I wish you were a lost little girl and I could scoop you up and say, "Come and live with me now, let me take care of you forever." But you aren't a lost litte girl. You're a woman with a career, with ambition. You are a perfect snail; you carry yur home on your back. You shol hold on to that freedom for as long as possible. But all I'm saying is this--if you want this Brazilian man, you can have him, I'm yours already.
I'm not sure what I want. I do know tht there's a part of me which has always wanted to hear a man say, "Let me take care of you forever," and I have never heard t spoken before. Over the last few years, I'd given up looking for that person, leanred how to say this heartening sentence to myself, especially in times of fear. But to hear it from someone else now, from someone who is speaking sincerely...." p.313

"...but I must admit this, as well---that sailing over to that quiet island all alone, I was never more terrified in my life. I hadn't even brought any books to read, nothiing to distract me. Just me and my mind, about to face each other on an empty field. I remember that my legs were visibly shaking with far. Then I quoted to myself one of my favorite lines ever from my Guru: "Fear-----who cares?" and I disembarked alone." p.324