michelle says

youveescaped:

Thank you for not warning me about the very creepy angels made of stone that I watched in my dark bedroom alone. I will have an awesome time not blinking tonight. AWESOME. THANKS. I would say DIAF but you know, <3 you.

• Keurig coffee pods
• packets of string cheese
• Go-Lean CRUNCH bars in assorted flavors
• individual microwaveable popcorn packs
• chocolate-covered raisins
• sugar in the raw packets
• splenda packets
• granola bars
• instant oatmeal (Quaker)
• trail mix (individual portions)
• Clif bars (chocolate chip variety)
• snack size candy bars (Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Snickers, Nestle Crunch, Kit Kat)

We will survive forever. 

My friend Andrea made me cry last night on the phone. It was a good kind of cry, in a way. In that she was complimenting me and telling me that she thought I was wonderful.

I received an email over the weekend that made me stop and cry, but in a bad way. It brought back all of these painful memories that I thought had mended within myself. I had fixed them and remedied them and, through them, made myself stronger. And then this email came and took all of that fortitude away for an hour. I felt so raw and real and terrible and it left a powerful time for me to examine myself. I could use all the cliches in the book: this email was like a hurricane, like an explosion, like a dam breaking.

It was, though. It was all of these things. I felt like I was hurtling in space backwards, back to the time when I had first felt these feelings of loss and hurt and pain.

But after I landed and I recovered, I realized that no, the fortifications had not broken down, that I had healed, that I was better, and stronger, and more alive than I had been before. That the person who wrote that horrible email was out of my life forever and that I could keep them there. That I have power over my life and that even if I, due to my core trusting and naive nature, let someone bad into it, I also have the power to remove them. It is easy if you move an ocean away from someone, but even then, if you cannot, you can forgive them in your heart but only if they have learned. And if they have not learned then you can tell them that they have not learned. There are still lessons for them but you will not be the one to teach them. Only that in your absence they must learn from the hole you leave for them to fall into, from the burst of wind that hits them when you walk out of their life, and grieve for the respect they had and then lost that feels like a knocked down wall.

And then you will tell yourself that you will only leave room for those in your life who respect you, and cherish you, and love you as you love them.

It is hot here. The sun is bright overhead, but there is a breeze from the ocean that comes to rescue us every so often, whisking away the sweat from our brows, enveloping our bodies with a cool, soft air.

The first thing I noticed on my way to Caye Caukler, as I took the water taxi to the island, were the school children in their homemade uniforms. When I came to Belize, one of the perks, they said, was that everyone speaks English. But these children spoke some other language, one I could not recognize, which I have since learned is Creole.

Caye Caulker is so small that they don’t allow cars on the island, only golf carts and the occasional tractor for large loads. We are staying in a guest house in the cheapest rooms, a shared bathroom outside in the back and a kitchen outdoors. Everything is cheap here, American prices cut in half. The dollar is so ubiquitous here that I paid for my dinner last night and caught Abe Lincoln staring back at me from a fiver when I got my change.

But the thing that gets me most is the water. It is so blue and clear and perfect. We went snorkeling at the reefs yesterday with the green sea turtles and the sting rays and the tiger sharks and the eels. Our guide dove down to point out the fish and dove through caves with a preternatural courage while I hung back and did my best to avoid the coral.

…to defriend someone from your Facebook friends list because they just got married and changed their name and you are only friends with them because you were in the same class in journalism school together? And then you’re like, “Jennifer Jones? I don’t know no stinkin’ Jennifer Jones.” Then you to go to their Facebook page and see that it was Jennifer Smith, that girl in your newswriting class that you always found vaguely annoying. And now she’s married and has a new name and the only thing tying you to her was the fact that she was Jennifer Smith and you knew her as Jennifer Smith and you didn’t even know she was getting married let alone changing her name and now she is an entirely different person. It’s like invasion of the name snatchers. I don’t mind the marriage stuff but the name change thing is just crazypants. The measure of friendship is whether or not you know/care whether or not they are getting married, I think. And if you don’t know or care, then there you have it. Facebook audit!

I am the worst person alive when it comes to sending real mail in New York but I am pretty good at it when I’m at home in California! Which I will be in about two weeks. So. Who wants a card? If you do, send your address to michelle(dot)said@gmail(dot)com.