Unfrozen In Time

This is a continuation and conclusion of journal entries mainly between 2022 and 2024. Where I last left off in Frozen In Time, I was feeling stuck in another cycle of unexpected challenges causing me distress to the point I wasn't feeling life as vividly as I would have liked. I feel that it wasn't until the summer of 2024 when I turned 30 that I started to feel myself more again.

Though my love life was still stagnant, I was grateful for the love and support of my family and friends instead. I am always able to love myself vicariously through their love for me and work on my self awareness so that I never settle for less than we feel I deserve. Despite our efforts, this is the beginnings of where I learn the unexpected challenges of life sometimes allures me to the chaos of the romantic situations I often encounter. I'm not sure I'll ever publish the full details of what happened in my romantic life in 2025, but I hope in time I'll be able to translate my experiences and lessons elegantly, eloquently, and allusively.

Santa Monica Pier, California. August 2025

11/30/23

I know my worth. I know my value. I know the life I want even if at times I deny it. I have much uncertainty, but I know I'm a strong, beautiful, intelligent, capable woman. I agree that I am worthy, I am quirky, I am honest to a fault.

5/1/24

Maybe I waited this long to process through writing again because I blinked and two more years of pain, lessons, and struggle had passed. It wasn't nearly as painful and long to heal as what I endured in my divorce, but it wasn't difficult to dissociate when life took the wheel and drove. It prevented me from having time or will to truly reflect and process what I felt to be meaningless mundane experiences. Maybe I allowed complaisance, stubbornness, and fear to keep me numb and on auto pilot; to keep me apathetic and indifferent. Deep down I feel like this power, energy, and ability to live a vivid life is inside me that has always been dormant; like a sleeping giant in the ice waiting to thaw ready to wake.

The last few years of my life I put many things on hold. I never wish to put my life or personal growth on hold again. I have always done my absolute best to maintain balance, to stay true to who I am but I reserve much of my love, energy, and purity for where it is deserved. When my life turns to shit I don't always have the desire to fight it and I will never get to choose when it happens. I don't love that it puts me in a situation where I'm living but not alive; where I'm surviving. It's a poison to my ability to open my heart, be kind, true to myself, and genuine. I want the fire to fight even now fighting sleep when I want to stay awake. I'm not always physically exhausted, but lately I feel so tired. I want to feel full again. I want to be awake.

5/11/24

My teenage self would never know how much struggle it took for me to get here. I do get complaisant in love, life, and the things that fulfill me. The dust of life sometimes only allows me to blink through it. Part of my issues is my fear or rather anxiety of the pain which comes with change and my fear of failure or rejection even though I've made strides to get to where I am. Sometimes I don't know what I actually need to change until I'm hurting.

Pain is a sign that something is not right or as it should be. I like to refer to it as growing pains because even though your body isn't physically growing it still hurts when your life is. Sometimes that pain is also translated as grief because it hurts when we lose parts of our life that we never wanted to conform.

I'm always shocked by my strength to have even pretended over the years that I was okay when I needed to so that everyone I loved could believe it too. While I allowed myself to be vulnerable with my current infatuations I'm still trying to make sense of how I keep finding myself in these hopeless situations. It feels like my life repeats scenarios either to mock me for my karmic sins, or to teach me lessons I refuse to learn: that I'm a hopeless romantic in a world where love is conditional. I was born to be a lover with trouble forever finding it in a life where I never want to be betrayed again.

I can't help how I feel when I desire someone this much, but it is a theme in my life I know all to well. My journals are a sacred place for me and sharing parts of them with others has been my greatest vulnerability. Maybe I did it because sometimes I don't know how else to be understood, or to even see myself clearly.

Regardless of this cathartic place my journals are for me, there was a time I so desperately wanted to be free of the ghosts of my teenage years that I burned several books that told the story of who I once was. Though I feel remorse for it now in ways, there was a power it gave me to letting it go. That regret also didn't stop me from tearing pages out of my current journal for a vulnerable purpose once more. I find that part of the irony of what I'm willing to allow of wearing my heart on my sleeve for.

Maybe I do it to myself or do it for the plot. Rather, maybe in those moments when I embrace being imperfect and do make mistakes I might regret later for these heavy infatuations I'm always intoxicated to, it's exactly what I'm meant to be doing. Perhaps it is simply my fear of getting hurt again that is stopping me from feeling alive, keeping me reluctant, and always self sabotaging having anything deep. Still that doesn't explain my relentless attraction to emotionally unavailable men and their attraction to me.

Present Day

In hindsight, through feeling the pain of my greatest heartaches I am constantly reminded that despite being betrayed by love I too am human with my own sins. I acknowledge my faults, and though it is heavy to stop holding onto the life we once loved, I also am looking for my place, my morals, my balance in this world. I suppose the hopeless romantic in me wants to believe that if I never meant to hurt anyone I loved then the ones I felt love from too probably didn't mean to hurt me if they did. That may be naive, but I was once told by someone I love that you can't worry about things that you don't even know are for sure. Here I am worrying about a broken heart that sometimes I cause on my own refusing to forgive or let someone in.

I learned to embrace my darkness long ago. I learned to love myself relentlessly including accepting my flaws, but I had to endure the pain of what I went through to get there. My type may be what it is as a result of seeking what I see in myself. They have plenty of dark that not even a good girl can change them. Besides, I don't imagine finding a connection with someone I would want to change anyway. If I ever expect to be loved for who I am, I need to love someone for who they are; along with every single missing, broken, or empty piece.

Then there's me: the girl everyone says, 'you don't like him because he's good for you,' or 'you want what you can't have,' or 'you self sabotage so you won't get hurt.' There's also that following my divorce, I am far too fucking stubborn to change for any man that 'not even a good boy can change me' takes a literal meaning too. I already gave too many pieces of myself away that I want to cherish every piece I would never give for anyone.

I may not have a confident answer as to why my romantic life keeps the pattern it does, but it makes sense that it's safer to have non-commital satisfaction than to have something deep. I keep falling into the same scenario with these taintalizing men where I know in my heart that despite them being unobtainable, their interest in me is real. Naive doesn't describe it because I've been there too on the other end and my intuition has never been wrong before about it. I still hear my mother telling me what I never used to believe, "they're just too intimidated by you." I feel that so much more now that I know what my own intimidation prevents me from obtaining and when my doubts are constantly rebuttaled by the very men I struggle with.

Choosing the morally correct path with these perceived morally wrong feelings when I was on that end of it only led to pain and confusion. That told me that sometimes even the right decisions lead you to an inevitable demise. The clash of my morals left me broken, but it was letting the light shine on the shattered pieces that allowed me to see the beauty in the reflected aura. I started to see the world that way; to see people that way; to see nature, the universe, and myself that way.

Reluctance may be what is self sabatoging what I could have presently causing me to act on impulse when given the small amounts of confidence and bravery. Both are just part of who I am to protect myself from being with someone unworthy of me while still being able to enjoy small thrills. Someday I'll find someone willing to love me despite my sins, however learning to love them myself first was all I ever really needed. I still have plenty of light, life, and love to give, but earning that shouldn't come easily after I've realized it's value. I suppose until I have found who truly deserves my efforts, while I wait for that sleeping giant of my great love story to thaw, I've got time to be relentless, stubborn, and hesitant.

Santa Monica Pier, California. August 2025