Avoidance

It's time for me to come clean: I've been avoiding you, dear blog, for the last month or so.



I would love to say that my absence has been because of busy-ness - that my life is flourishing with social butterfly-like activity; that work has been boomingly busting; that I've felt so unconditionally accepted and involved in my community that I haven't noticed a need or urge to reach out and be expressive.



I just haven't known what to say. So I've been avoiding it.



Ha, and now I have so much to say that I don't even know where to start!



I dropped my cell phone in a puddle one rainy February day and now I don't have one. It was a slow, agonizing death for both my phone and my sexy phone number (it doesn't get much sexier than 357-4000), but I've been without it for several weeks now. I would love to say that not having a cellular device is unbelievably liberating. But my phone and I had a pretty healthy text life (not to mention actual phone calls!) and I'm both amazed and taken aback at how much I depended on that thing for support. Of course, it's not the device istelf that has helped me through tough times, but the contact with loved ones it facilitated.



I'm 7 months into my 24 month service agreement and doubting (see post "I'm a doubting Teri" for more details) and feeling daunted at the task. I've said it before: I love my job, love my boss, love the kids I work with and don't mind LA so much. So why the crap can't I be happy here? Is it a matter of just deciding to be and ignoring any other emotions that pop their ugly little heads in the door? No matter what I do - no matter how much I work out, pray, eat, don't eat, talk with my roommates, don't talk with my roommates, turn to my family for help and advice, turn to friends for help and advice, turn even to strangers for help and advice - I can't seem to go more than a few days without having some kind of emotional explosion behind my closed bedroom door (or, like last night, behind the wheel of the car) which requires half a travel pack of Kleenex and a wardrobe change for my pillow when I finally pull it together.



Perhaps it's the spiritual emptiness I feel in what I expected to be one of the most spiritually abundant times of my life. I don't know. I'm done trying to figure it out.



It hasn't all been doom and gloom though. I'm noticing that kids from the school who I have never met know my name and say "hi" to me as I walk past them on the playground. It's really heartwarming to experience that. And today we had meditation with the 7th grade girls and I couldn't believe the power we have to make twelve 13 year-old girls lay absolutely silently for 45 minutes!



Oh! And last week we had a "Girls Night Out" with the high school girls from our Confirmation class - an endeavor that has been floundering a bit in the area of attendance - and 17 girls came to Yogurtland with us! And what a blessing it was to buy $70 worth of frozen yogurt and walk around Little Tokyo eating it in 50 degree weather!



So there you have it. I'm back. I'm done neglecting you and keeping you from the goings-on of my life (and I don't say that under the assumption that your happiness and well-being are dependant upon being updated on the goings-on of my life - I wouldn't dare be so presumptuous).

Please accept my sincere apologies.