A Just for Me Kind of Day

Today I spent the afternoon at Kopan Monastery, just enjoying watching all of the people and spending a little bit of revitalizing "me time" in there beautiful gardens and looking out over Kathmandu Valley.

I have been working on two new personal photo stories that are fairly intense and taking up a great deal of my time. They are not only consuming me with the amount of time that are necessary, but also may potentially take a bit of an emotional toll on me as well. But, I think that usefullness is what I am really looking forward to.

I have been a little bit distanced the past few days, so a break and a bit of refreshment was exactly what I needed. I have really had a lot on my mind lately. It seems that I came all the way to the other side of the universe to find myself. Which is what I guess one makes this sort of trip for in the first place. Its funny though, it seems that I am spending a lot of time catching up through online chatting with a lot of my girls back in the "Atlanta area" that I have really allowed a distance to grow between us in the past. But, it seems that all the way across many miles of land and sea, I have reconnected to friends that I had let slip away, and have learned just what gems each of them are and just how much I miss them.

It seems that the theme of this "finding of myself" has had a theme of exploring my relationship skills. I have made some really good friends here, and I have let some of them slip away. It seems to be a theme in my life.... But through this process of trying to figure it out the past few days, I have realized that I do sabotage relationships and friendships.

While sitting out on the hill of the monastery garden looking down at all of the people enjoying each others company, I began to cry, but I don't think of this as an unhappy cry, but a cleansing cry. Sometimes when the sky opens up and you see yourself in a different light you just have to stop and take a long, hard look. I realized just how scared I am of love. And I don't say that only in reference to a romantic love, though that is definitely the top of my fears. But it is this fear that has driven me to spend many moments of my life alone, while claiming that it was due to being focused or independent, but eventually alone does lead to moments of lonliness.

I am scared not of giving love, but of losing love from my life. Actually I know that it is just that I fear having to say goodbye, which I know is a common fear for most. I know that those of you that are close in my life have known that long before I would dream to admit. I know the day that fear came into my life was the same day that I had to let one of the most important role models in my life go. When his time with me escaped my grasp, my father also took a piece of me with him up into the sky. So today I believe that as the rain stayed out of the valley for just one day, the sky opened up on me with showers of sunlight, and Dad maybe handed down to me a little piece of me that I let go a long time ago and restored to me a peace that I had forgotten to miss.

In my friendships here in Nepal that I have let slip away too soon, I can admit that I did out of fear. Fear from knowing that in just 5 weeks I will have to once again cross all of those miles and all of those seas, and while reconnecting with friends from my past, I realized just how great of a distance that would be in compared to the small distance that once distanced me from others. But as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. And this silver I believe may be golden. As I may have burned a bridge that I was too scared to even try to cross, I did learn that the only way I am ever going to make it to the other side is just to take it rung by rung, and step by step.

Just the other night one of my girls told me that they were so proud of me for "putting myself out there." She reminded me of the bridges that I have crossed in the past, but also of the walls that I have built so high to even see any of those new bridges that have been built since last I left my shell. Communication is the key, and I have learned that nothing will work if you don't just come out and say what you feel, but most of all, allow yourself to feel what the world is trying to show you. I know that I can live independently and that I am damn strong from all that I have lived through, but now I see that independence does not have to mean being going about it all on your own.