Tag: life

Insert cheesy “happy 1st of the month” line here

Chugging. I’ve been chugging. And not the fun stuff either. No, I’ve been binge drinking the fruit punch flavors of the month. Last month was “crunch time”, aka, working my life away. Which, unfortunately hasn’t proven to show its worthiness. The month before last the flavor was “positivity,” because shit, I needed a lot of that after the month before that was “emotional.” Good news though, the flavors do seem to be getting better. I started off with grape, and this next month is looking like a solid cherry.

It’s like that bright green button that’s been off in the distance, flashing, taunting me, is finally in arms reach for me to smash my fist into. The restart button. Oh buddy, I’ve been wanting to push it. Honestly, the only other thing that could satisfy me to the same extent would be peeling like 1000 plastic screen protectors off new appliances.

To restart. It sounds easy, but I’m guessing, ok preparing for, something resembling maybe Hell. Ok, so obviously not quite Hell. Restart does has a very positive outlook and feeling to it…But if I shoot low, I can only be pleasantly surprised, right?

For real though, putting aside the fact the I quite literally mess with my own mind as a defense mechanism, a restart is exactly what I’m looking for. Which is funny because knowing something, hell anything that I want, is a feat similar to my last journey across the desert, which never happened…case and point. Restarting is going to be hard, and there’s no easy way around it.

I have a tendency to try to look into my future, play out scenarios, imagine and expect certain things. But that tendency has given birth to a whole new level of anxiety and disappointment, so I’m thinking for this restart it is going to be best to just go with the flow. Like really, I’m going to jump on my inner tube, let my ass sit in the water, and float down the unknown river. Mind you, I’ll have a big stick to steer and poke away stranger dangers, but floating is what I’ll be doing. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t have goals or wants for this restart, because I got a hella lot, but it does mean that I’m going to surrender the parts of myself that have been afraid and unsure. Looking back, everything that I have truly cherished has been unplanned, so there’s no use in worrying and trying to be my own fortune teller. What I’ve done is guide myself in a direction, following my heart if you will. Corny and cliche as some of my beliefs, life has a way of working out. The shit you go through makes you something—at first maybe mad or sad, but then maybe strong.

You can’t go into a restart and think it’s going to be like Willie Wonka’s edible park. That’s when one of those “life lessons” hits ya square in the vagina, rain starts pouring, and “giving it time” makes you want to vomit in your mouth.

I’m choosing to restart. And it’s going to stem from a foundation of simplicity. I’m being positive. I’m being optimistic. I’m being ambitious. I’m being aware of my past, and enjoying my present. Knowing what I want doesn’t have to be a one word answer. For me what I want is a picture, you know because a picture is worth 1000 words. And I’m ok with the complexity of my happiness and the complicated definition of Emily Sage Pineda, because truthfully I never want to be fully defined. I like to wiggle.

Why the mountains

I swear the air smells funny. It really does. People say the air up there smells crisp, fresh and clean, but I get something a bit different. When I first took a whiff of mountain air it reminded me of a strange and distant memory—the smell of the sheep eyeball we watched get dissected in 1st grade. I’m serious, I can see myself and 4 other classmates sitting around a small round table in the project area, sitting in tiny multicolored chairs, watching in horror and amazement as Mrs. Wile took apart a single eyeball in a clear Tupperware as it sat in a water-like liquid. That memory sits on the edge of thought as I breath in the cold air of the mountains. And, for some reason, it’s still a pleasant thing—the scent of the mountains. Very strange, I know. The unexpected placement of that memory continues to boggle me.

The mountains do strange things to the mind, and honestly we all could use some mountain time. Mountains, they let your mind wander. They remind you of lives you once lived, the feelings you once felt. All in such an unexpected way. But they don’t punish you like doubt or regret does, they just sit there, massive and magnificent in front of you. And you don’t expect anything else from them except that. There’s such a peace in it.

Sometimes you need something strong, something being all that it can and all that it ever needs to be. Because, sometimes you feel like string raveling undone off the spool onto the floor. You feel like the roadrunner losing the ground you’re standing on waiting for that plunge that you all too well expect and know. Having something like a mountain in front of you, it does something. It stays strong for you.

In elementary school, I was one of those kids who would sit on top of the monkey bars during recess. We were like trapeze acrobats swinging down off of them. I was pretty good at it too, but one time I overextended my swing and found myself landing on my back onto the wood chips. I remember laying there gasping for air that wasn’t there, terrified at this dying-like feeling, but then I found my gaze up to the sky. It was bright blue with bright white fluffy clouds, and it was then that I found my breath. This was the first memory I have of getting the breath knocked out of me, and when shit hits the fan I can feel those wood chips digging into my back with that same burning in my chest. I discovered it then, I and still know it now, I need something like mountains. Because when I stand in front of something so huge, so entirely large, I don’t have to think about inhaling. It comes easy. I get to feel small. The aching of my longings, the worries of my discontent, the pain from disappointment, it all somehow gets blown away by the air up in the mountains, and I’m able to breath.

The weird air up there, the unexpected scent of it, there’s something funny about it, I swear.