Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

Long time. Very long time. I've been hesitant to write because I haven't felt that anything productive would come out of it. I've been too hung up on my feelings to get past them and finally achieve some level of clarity.

I'm back.

Mentally aware again, and it is almost like I'm living again. Sometimes I go through these times where I get so caught up in what is happening and what people are feeling that I don't remember those times very well because I was too preoccupied to live. But not this time, I am awake and ready to embrace the world.

But tonight is going to be me slow dancing with my thoughts.

The image I keep coming back to is the sky the other night. The first clear stars of spring. It brought me back to break, when my family and I camped on a beach in South Carolina. I never wanted to leave. I don't think I have ever fallen in love with a place so quickly. There was magic in the air, and it hung in the trees like the spanish moss. It was almost as if time had stopped and all I had to do was to exist in this wonderful rift in time.

The moment I was specifically thinking of was one or two in the morning and I had to get up to go to the bathroom. (bear with me here). Since we were in a campsite, on the beach by the way, there were hardly any lights or pollution from the outside world. I saw the moon hanging in the sky over the ocean and I walked up to the beach and for a good while I just stood. I was mesmerized by the vast expanse of dark and light that unfolded above me. Everything seemed to make sense and be okay for those few minutes. Not wanting to end it, I lay down in the sand and just...was. It was in the upper sixties and the perfect weather for thinking. The way the moon hit the clouds and the way they reflected in the water, somehow everything was an inspiration and contained magic.

I could have been there forever.

Something I'm working on is maintaining perspective. It is so easy to get lost in the world and find important the things that the world tells you are important. Sometimes you may believe the world so much that you force yourself like things you think you should like, as opposed to what you actually do like. Follow your heart. Learn to paint with all the colors of the wind.

All I can say is that it is good to be feeling myself again. The same me that lay on that South Carolina beach, same me that climbed the great wall, and the same me that went out dancing in the thunderstorm when she was two and sang "Singin' in the Rain" at the top of her lungs. I am a compilation of every experience I have ever had and every person I have ever met. But that makes me who I am, for which I am grateful. I am grateful that I can look back and say that, on the whole, who I am is proud of who I've been. I love looking back and seeing moments that I know defined me then and continue to now.

Like that night on the beach, I am constantly learning new things about myself and the world around me. I wouldn't trade living for anything. It is so beautiful. The beauty in our sorrow. In our pain. And yet that beauty is complimented by that of joy and love. You cannot have one without the other. I would not have it any other way.