If we don't manipulate our minds...                                                                                                                                  Our minds will manipulate us.    














                                                                                This photo was filed in '10 Summer Sadness... Definitely sad, insanity at it's finest. Not a trace in memory of this specific time together, but of our friendship of course. That's the beauty in Lub... purely a genuine friend.   Always was and always will be.
 He appreciated our unspoken boundaries.  It made our relationship stronger.

This is a lifestyle~ Not a sentence.

        

                                           Recovery gives me what I thought my disease was or would give me.   

       My view of  boundaries have changed significantly  the past few months. I used to think  of setting boundaries as pushing people out of your life~ completely. It meant to lose somebody. That is always what happened when I set them. I put limitations on friendship because that was what they were-friends. And they disappeared. They took it personally. I lost.
       If I set boundaries with you it doesn't mean I don't want you in my life at all. When I figured this I stopped putting forth boundaries. I didn't want to lose a friend. I got hurt. I was used and abandoned… again where is the friendship?  I still find that I'm giving myself emotionally with no expectations in return satisfaction.

  ~ I have no expectations. I receive more. ~

      My new view of the boundary system is quite simplistic. They are set in place for inner worth; self respect. If you can’t be just my friend then find your self gratification elsewhere. It feels empowering to be at level of comfort with myself to not care anymore if you are part of my story or not. I can live with out because for once in my life I’m okay with  just living with me.
I do care about your feelings. Be honest, mostly with yourself, and everything will happen just the way it is supposed to happen.

                                                                                     
                                                                                   
                   Beautiful                                                                        
                            things
                                                                                               don’t
                                                                                                  ask
                                                                                                     for
                                                                                                       attention.

 I spent my "weekend" going through 1/7 of my files dating from 2005-2014.  Definitely necessary to stop and take a break from searching that far back into your past~ especially when all I'm doing with my life right now is trying to move forward. My life's irony continues. 

Another memory in time. 

Happy Birthday, love. 

I've been having this awkward fascination  with high levels of saturation.

But the noise created by this is annoying to a point of unworth.





I don't know... just keep shooting.

A Parable 

The Tragedy of Tragedies 

The Story of Hugh  

Once upon a time a Royal person was born. *His name was Hugh. Although I will refer to him as ‘he’, no one actually knows what his sex really was and it didn’t really matter. Hugh was unlike anyone who had ever lived before or who would ever live again. Hugh was precious, unrepeatable incomparable, a trillion-dollar diamond in the rough.  

For the first 15 months of life, Hugh only knew himself from the reflections he saw in the eyes of his caretakers. Hugh was terribly unfortunate. His caretakers, although not blind, had glasses over their eyes. Each set of glasses already had an image on it. So that each caretaker only saw Hugh according to the image on his glasses. Thus, even though Hugh’s caretakers were physically present, not one of them ever actually saw him. By the time Hugh was grown, he was a mosaic of  other people’s images of him, none of which was who he really was. No one had really ever seen him, so no one had ever mirrored back to him what he really looked like. Consequently, Hugh thought he was the mosaic of images. He really did not know who he really was. 

Sometimes in the dark of the night when he was all alone, Hugh knew that something of profound importance was missing. He experienced this as a gnawing sense of emptiness- a deep void. 

Hugh tried to fill the emptiness and void with many things: power, worldly fame, money, possessions, chemical highs, food, sex, excitement, entertainment, relationships, children, work- even exercise. But no matter what he did, he never felt the gnawing emptiness go away. In the quiet of the night when all the distractions were gone, he heard a still quiet voice that said: “Don’t forget; please don’t forget me!” But alas! Hugh did forget and went to his death never knowing who he was! 

Mmmm Hmmm~ Goodmorning.

Waking up to this is not a bad way to start your day!!! ...And thank you for the motivation to go for a run. 

So this could be my new back yard!? ... I'm fighting staying in Prescott over going back to Cali. I'm all up for suggestions. What I was doing before wasn't working. Now I'm working on me.

 I've been working on me and only me for the past five months and I've barely scratched the surface. I know what I want in life~ I know the self center egotistical Jess is still very much alive and breathing. And now I'm bringing to life the renovated Jess. The Jess my friends and family haven't seen in a decade... or for some have never even met. The feeling of getting comfortable with myself is nerve racking. I've spent the last half of my life hiding behind others. I've always been Chris' little sister or Sean's girlfriend or the famous for Idy, " Theresa's your mom!?". Growing up in a small town kind of does that to you or for you. Then those people faded away when I grew older and I did create a name for myself... And not one I'd like to keep. 

       I can't wait to get out there again... It's been too long. I was reunited with my lap top almost a month ago and had been in and out of checking my site on MM- always disappointed. Photographers from LA area were still contacting me for future plans from last summer... where were the creatives in AZ!? Then I noticed I hadn't changed my location on my profile. OH. whoops. Sorry friends. I spent two days messaging my Cali photographers: setting up shoots for this summer out there and apologizing for my negligence to the photographers who wanted to "shoot tomorrow" in the desert.

     So I updated my profile: First day. Two jobs. First shoot in AZ.  Saturday.

       One of a few of my works, with Dan Dozer, displayed in an art gallery  in Santa Monica last month. Being in Arizona kept me from going to the opening. The showing went over very well for the photographer. I can't wait to work with Dan again. 

*Being sober doesn't mean being invincible. I would like to think the days of stitches, bruises and black eyes are over, but that would have to entail my life being over~ which is just now beginning. The difference in my new injuries is the feelings behind them. There is a lack of regret, shame and humiliation when trying to explain the new bruise or having to defend my boyfriend, "He would never hit me!".
            It is now turned inward to feelings of practical fear~ how am I going to be able to do this or that at work? My new job doesn't entail washing dishes or anything of that sort but having to 'take it easy' for a pinkie wound is quite absurd.
              Freedom from self. Laughing at the new not so exciting stories as they were before; like this new addition to my collage of pain~ I was sweeping my front porch!

Three stitches... Removed tomorrow. 

y

I pray that I may see signs of my growth in the new life.
*~~~`*`~~~`*`~~~`*`~~~`*`~~~`*`~~~`*`~~~*
I pray that I may always keep trying to grow.