Day 13:

Isaac Snowman - Slumber (n.d.)

aura

My aunt died two days ago and while we were not super close, I feel her loss so profoundly. I have experienced so much death in my almost 30 years and it never gets easier. I got to the hospital just as they were taking her away and I wish I had arrived a few minutes later. I wish I never had to see them unwrap her like a mummy so I could say goodbye. She was cocooned and buckled in and all I could do was shake. Because even though I have been to too many funerals to count, I had never been around someone who just took their last breath. All I could think about was my dad in that moment and how the last time I saw him he was basically a vegetable in the bed. I begged him to move on so that he and everyone else would no longer be suffering. At that moment, all I could think about was how is just dust in a tomb somewhere. The thought of someone just leaving this universe as if they were never even here is so unfathomable to me.

Death scares me so profoundly and sometimes I feel like it is looming over me. That at any moment my life will be taken from me and I will be just a memory for everyone around me.

Day 5:

In what ways are you inauthentic?

In most parts of my life, to be quite honest. There is so much that I put a front on for or just flat out lie about that sometimes it becomes too much. I lie about money, I lie about how I’m doing, and I lie about how I feel about myself and others.

Most days I agree to things because I don’t like the feeling of being left out but I literally can’t afford it. I’m too embarrassed to admit that I’m struggling right now. I need to start saying no.

I lie about how other actions don’t affect me. I lie because I don’t want them to know how much they’ve hurt me. My emotions have always been a touchy subject for me and that is something that I am working on as well. I need to learn how to express myself in a healthy way.

And what if it does work out?

It will.

Day 14:

What do you minimize about yourself? What do you flaunt?

Since I am fatter than most people, I try to minimize myself in several ways. I try not to take up too much space but always end up failing. When I am on a plane, I will make myself uncomfortable by squeezing my arms in so that I do not touch the person next to me. Id I am in a car, I will do the same but scooch as close to the door as possible. If I am in a crowded place, in an elevator, on the sidewalk, etc.

It is so subconscious at this point that I do not realize even doing it. It truly was not until this question that I realized I was making myself uncomfortable so that my bigness would not offend or bother anyone around me.

What I flaunt is more of a difficult question because it is so much easier to think of the negative than the positive. But I think that I am at a place in my life where I will proudly (kinda but I'll explain later) flaunt my height. I love wearing heels and I love going out and peering over a group because with heels I am about 6 feet tall. BUt the only time I feel self-conscious about my height is when a guy I am talking to is shorter than me in heels. And I KNOW that I shouldn't care but it is still a stigma that has stuck to me that will take some time to unlearn.

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Connecting the dots: constellations in the skies of old.

“They say when you meet the love of your life, time stops, and that's true. What they don't tell you is that when it starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up.” - Edward Bloom

Big Fish (2003)