sometimes children's stories are written for the grown-ups...

I have a hard time understanding love...I know, I know, that sounds incredibly emo, but I just sometimes have a really hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of what it means...

I haven't always had the best examples of love in my life...haven't seen it as a successful entity. And heaven knows that I have never come close to having it fully myself (outside, of course to my wonderful friends and my family).

I put up a serious wall before I even get started in a relationship. I have not been in many, just because the few I have been in have taught me that I need to work far more on myself before I can give myself to another person.

I catch myself, when it comes to love, thinking that things should be far more cookie-cutter and pretty than they can actually ever be. Or, at the first sign of pain or hurt or messiness I throw in the towel. I don't want love to be difficult.

But I think it is in love, when you love, when you are truly loved, that you are most fully alive. You are most real.

And what is real?

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

I think I have been a person who breaks too easily. A person who was afraid of becoming worn. But it is indeed the true sign of love to see something that is a bit used...a bit broken in. The china dolls on the shelf never know the messy grubby hug of an exurburant child. The are lonely in their perfection.

I am not a china doll.

And I am not content with putting myself on a shelf out of reach. If being real means that I have to get a bit mussed up, then I will roll around in the dust bunnies a bit more.

If being loved (and truly truly loved) means that I have to hurt a little, then I'm bracing myself. Because I am ready to be the real me.

So here I am. Broken pieces and all.

How much do I love this city??

Soooo much....

I was talking to some of my college girlfriends in the past week...we are all off on our own adventures now...this is grand.

Truly, I think it says something about the life that I have created that so many of my friends are so far away - not that our time together meant not enough to stay close..

because we are close.

not that we have all gone our separate ways...

because ways means so much more than location.

I love that I continually surround myself with people who pursue and live their dreams....

Like my friend in China, teaching a child and embracing an entirely new culture...Shanghai from ATL is certainly further than DC from Sugar Land. Oh, how brave she is!

Or my friend in Las Vegas - actually chasing after his career dreams, even in this tough economy, in an already tough career path. Las Vegas is awfully different from little'ol Waco, Texas. Oh, how brave he is!

Or my friend in NYC - making insane connections and working for big names...what was a beautiful click on a camera in small-town Texas will now become a name-maker for a new boy in the Big City...Oh, how brave he is!

Sometimes, I wonder if perhaps I am not doing enough, trying enough, being enough. I think they are living these extraordinary lives and I am waiting behind....

and then I remember...dreams come in all forms...

Here I am, a transplant in a new city. Living in a world so foreign from my own. And yes, there are struggles. Yes, there is heartache in the separation. Yes, there are days I wake up and forget that this is actually where I LIVE now...that I didn't go for a visit, that its not a study-abroad trip with an end-date in sight. I have chosen a place to put down my roots and now I am trying to gather as much sunshine as I can...I am embracing the here and now.

And I sometimes have to let my little heart swell with pride...I am living my dream too. I have stared the big, bad world in the face too and I didn't run away. When I packed up my car with as much of my stuff as I could, when I settled Zoey (dog) in the front seat and Chloe (cat) in the back...when I drove off through a flood of tears....I was embracing life in my own way. They were tears of fears - the "what ifs" and "what nows" and "what am I doings" were certainly some of the streams cascading off my chin. There were tears of missing...knowing how hard it was to leave the people I love. And there were tears simply of embracing the unknown.

You notice that children sometimes cry simply because they don't know what else to do? That life is just, in that moment, a bit too big and foreign and new....

Yeah, there were definitely some of those tears too.

But here I am...tears dried. There's always facebook and twitter and skype and..and you, blog. I will never lose those people. Because they are in my heart forever. And on the interwebs for infinity.

This...this is a new adventure.