Dreams from the Tide Pool
A collection of notes by Lisa TolentinoArchive for Uncategorized
Falling out of love.
PhD, I was in love with you for a long time. Looking back, we spent a tumultuous 6 years together. And the year before that, I courted you in the sweetest honeymoon phase. All those dreams we had way back when I was in my late 20s, young and naïve … what happened to them. In the madness and newness of change, I let them go and they deftly drifted out to sea when I left San Diego. I didn’t know where they went. I didn’t know what I’d done. So its just funny now, to see that they’ve managed to find their way back to these shores. I see them. They’re weathered. They are smooth, soft, clarified. They came back, and so without a doubt, I know they’re are still mine.
I want you to know that I loved you well, through thick and thin, the best I could. You pushed me, and I pushed back, and we made it to the highest of highs, and I can honestly say, the depths of the lowest lows. We have one more month together. Let’s not draw it out, but just do our best to grieve what our relationship was not. To celebrate all that we have been through together, all that we have achieved. It was quite a run with you … and though I condescendingly joke about it frequently with others who also fell into tailspins with their PhDs, I could never truly say I regretted my time with you. I needed you when I chose you. And you helped me grow and discover things I would have otherwise never known. It’s so hard to say goodbye to the one who saw through it all … the one who simply knew me all too well.
Let’s finish this together. Let’s do it sooner than later. Then we can stay true to ourselves and move on with our lives. Let’s toast a new beginning for tomorrow. And then we’ll fly out of here, vibrantly bursting forth in the infinite colors and glory this journey offered us. PhD, you will always be with me, and I will always cherish you.
stretch marks
This post is not really about stretch marks in the literal sense. Here, the stretch is the evidence of reaching out or reaching within. For me, this day brings with it the feeling of shedding and old skin for something new. Coming to realize who you actually are, instead of trying to change yourself to be who you thought you should be. Accepting your self, you mistakes, your triumphs, and the ways your dark and light play into a shadow dance. An openness to what comes that cannot be controlled or willed in any way. It’s knowing in your heart that there is still plenty of work to be done. And then there’s the embrace ~ that grace is both easy and never easy, but you trust that in time, things will align. The dance, the tension, the beauty that follows through the noise, the ever shifting balance between holding on and letting go … and the humanity the emerges throughout.
We stretch because we love to play and play to love. We learn, we stretch, we play.
On holding on and letting go
This has always been a tough one for me. When the going’s good, why would you leave? When things get tough or stagnant, why would you stay? If you’re looking for an answer, this is the wrong post. I just have questions. But for me, maybe it’s in the questions … I still have questions, I’m still curious, about life, about limits, about myself and others, about spirit, about some topic. The great what-if. And so I go and try, and it opens doors and closes others, little trap doors, hidden walkways, and an occasional grand entrance in this great house of life.
All this time, I’ve been trying to find a way home, when in truth, I’ve been home all along.
Hide-and-seek, the infamous game that everyone probably played as a child. Sometimes I’d hide and never get found. Other times, I wanted to be found, so I ‘gave up’ so you could move onto the next game. And still other days, we played it ruthlessly. But in the end, we all played together. Certainly, never perfect nor pretty nor permanent, but all part of the gamut of a game well-played.
Hide-and-seek, version 2.0 for grown-ups … is it much different playing it as an adult as it was back then? Maybe so, if you forget that you’re still playing, that you can chose to keep playing, and that if it’s taking a bit too long, maybe it’s time to be found.
A way to live.
I suppose we get this one lucky shot to live. There is just one way, and that’s forward. Cut your losses, accept your responsibility for your part in what was not, cry some, laugh some, and pick a new hobby to fill the times when self-pity seems like a more comfortable option.
I am admittedly, and often unnegotiably, hard on myself, and it’s a terrible infliction that I’d like to let go of today. So in this note – to myself, really, and to any others who crave a kick forward:
Today, I make myself accountable, to choose to make use of this one-time gift of life and time, to live it well, to loosen regrets, to risk rejection, and to love hard, as if the loss hardly mattered. My childhood dreams have always been the best guidepost in times when I’ve felt like I was simply slipping away. So I’ll follow them now. And I hope you will, yours.
The hardest lesson.
It’s amazing to me how fragile a world view can be. Take for example, the picture below.
Homer's Odyssey, taken from http://schoolworkhelper.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Homer-odyessey.gif
This is a portrait of Homer’s Odyssey. The hero goes on a journey which eventually leads him home. It looks courageous, it looks life-worthy, and there is plenty he achieves along the way … battles scars, lives lost, and so many stories to tell. At one point, I thought this is what my life would look like in an ideal fight, to improve life quality for youth with disabilities. It would bring me home. However, in a place where I don’t recognize the “soldiers” around me because other battles lead to greater money, status, or fame, working in this arena has left me feeling more like this:
'Drowning' taken from http://joelmandre.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/drowning.jpg
My passion fuels an unpopular battle. I cannot simply “educate” anyone on “issues” to get them excited about disability. Some days, it is even hard for me to remember what it was that I was fighting for. People have different life experiences that may or may not enable their core to resonate with mine.
I have come to accept that I work from a place of real sensitivity and fear towards what happens in the lives of people with disabilities, because I have a personal reason to make this a priority. For those for whom it is not so personal, they may never “get” it. Compound different life experiences with a general cultural fear of disability, I now get why I sometimes encounter general denial, defensiveness, or even sarcasm towards people’s suffering altogether. Our filters, motivations, and causes govern the nuances our colorful, multi-faced response.
I have spent ample time trying to convince people of my position. Some get on board, others don’t. These encounters have been hopeful and life-changing, while others have been humiliating and punctured with shame. But at the end of the day, I have had to learn how not to take it personally. We are so different, it’s a wonder that we can connect with others on deep level and expect anyone to see the world through our eyes. My filters are not yours, as yours are not mine. But in what we shared, if we’re lucky, we may have experienced a genuine, common ground.
So in this Odyssey of a post, the hardest lesson I’ve learned isn’t about meeting my expectations or achieving my goals. It isn’t about holistic despair in which the world, where I blame the world for ignoring my truth as I sink into the depths of the ocean. Rather, the real lesson is about trusting one’s self. This means, trusting what I know to be true, listening for guidance along the way, asking for help when I need it … and knowing that discomforting feelings are sometimes there to teach us a lesson on how to act in ways that allow us to let them go.
performance, music and boundaries
I’ve been exploring why music has been such an important force in my life. Performing music is a form of intimacy with myself, with time, with space, with instruments, and with those who witness it. It has bounds … a beginning and an end, a theme, an opening and closing. It creates an envelope in memory that can be relived through a listening, a singing, a hummed tune in the distance. It brings you back to a moment in time. It frees you from the present. It propels you forward. Maybe it even traps you at times; you hold onto it, it holds onto you. Or, it cracks your mind and heart so profoundly that it leads to hidden wells of feeling, creativity, and imagination.
Music has saved me many times over. My engineering degree only became meaningful once I discovered music. My relationships and personal growth expanded when I embraced it. Open wounds started to heal as I started to play and perform again. It is a wonder that I would have ever considered living without it. For some, it’s a hobby; for others, it’s lifeblood.
On another level, I believe it is an open door to the soul. In interpreting and performing music, I’ve faced my capacity to trust in myself and something far beyond me. Performing music brings out primal fears of uncertainty; but in moving through challenges, I’ve learned to expand my comfort zone. Simply playing music also seeds of an unbounded connection with others that is not easily explained nor experienced in any other way. It connects us with times, places, and people long since gone. It brings us together now. And it casts a line that may continue to reach souls in the future. I wonder if others have experienced this. I do time and time again. If you have a story about how music has touched your life, please share it with me.
Dreams from the Tide Pool 
