Learning A New Way to Love

Defenses, Releases, and Escapes

For the last couple of months I have been learning how to be within myself all over again. A whole year has passed and I only now have a chance to look back and see its gone. I feel a little raw and ready to be redone. The first year of graduate art school is done and I feel like the most I have to show for it. Being asked to evaluating oneself on so many levels becomes tiring, begins to ware down the fundamental things the keeps a person

together. One of the biggest thing I've learned not to be afraid as much as I used to be...there really is nothing to lose because if not now then when? I'm not afraid to

take chances but I have been playing it safe for too long. The ideas of self are starting to melt away...the idea's about a lot of things.

For the longest time I have been walking forward while looking backwards...its ridiculous because I can't see where I am going...no matter how hard I have tried it has been such a struggle to focus. Finally the break and pause has come and there has been time to think, time to breath. I must collect myself prepare to go home. I'm a little nervous because so much has changed, I've changed and its always been hard to go back to a place that has moved in its own time outside of your own.

Release, letting go...that has been a continual uttered phrase. Why is it so hard to move on from the things held so dear once in the past...its past and done but there is so much damn residue left all over that how can I not feel it still all around and in me. Time and work has been my friend but the taste of things never leaves my tongue . I remember these scribbled words I've recently seen on paper "It Is Going To Be Okay." Sure it will be but something has to give in so many places. I believe this to be true and know it already is...for the first time in a very long time I am actually able to do things for myself and by myself and I love it. For so long I have been giving to others to the point that I forgot what it was like to be one in myself. Its an important thing to not lose oneself and its so easy to do...it was no one's fault other than my own.

so now I learn a new way to love.