Awesome squared

A double dose of awesome for the week:

Local awesome:

My friend’s brother, Joey Hagerty, was selected to be on the U.S. Men’s Gymnastics Olympic team! (That’s him, third from the right.) It’s even more delicious because he was pretty much written off a few years ago when he had shoulder surgery. He’s a total dark-horse contender this year, coming seemingly out of nowhere to be the third man named to the team. You probably won’t hear much about him during the coverage. He’s pretty low-key. But I’ll be wearing my “Team Joey” shirt during the Olympics. Yessiree.

and in the world of…
W W aWesome:

Those in the know have already gone through several changes of underpants in anticipation of…

Yes, that’s right. Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog! A Joss Whedon (swoon) production featuring Neil Patrick Harris (local swoon) as Dr. Horrible and Nathan Fillion (mega-super French accented le swoon) as Captain Hammer. Don’t believe me? Watch the trailer, foolish mortal.

Teaser from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

Act One premieres FREE on July 15th at DrHorrible.com. Lick it up, baby. Lick. It. Up.

Gratitude

I was thinking the other day about why relationships don’t work out. Why you can be so in love with someone one day and then some time later there is nothing left but hurt and resentment.

I think that when you have so much of your emotional energy tied up into one person, it becomes more difficult as time passes to not associate every emotion with them, whether that person is the cause of the emotion or not. When you are happy, you attribute part of the happiness to them. And when you are angry, you do the same.

With really long relationships, and maybe the reason divorce is so common, we all go into relationships with a set of expectations about our lives and what they are going to be. Then, when the expectations (about our jobs, our lives, anything) aren’t fulfilled, the person closest to you can become the target of that misplaced disappointment. If you always dreamed of becoming an author, then years later it hasn’t happened, it’s easier to blame the person you are with for holding you back or to direct your anger at them than to be grateful to them for sticking around while you were flailing about being miserable.

And maybe once you start hurting each other, you start pushing each other further and further away until nothing is left between you but space. How do you bridge that gap once it is created, and how do you mend the places that don’t seem to fit together anymore?

It would be a much different world if we could somehow try gratitude in place of bitterness.

it might be broken

I’ve been feeling a little bit off for the last few weeks. I’m not sure what it is. The sun is shining, my serotonin levels are up, I just bought new sandals. Life is good. But something feels broken, or at the very least a little bruised.

This happens periodically. I’m not the most consistently chipper girl on the planet, by any stretch of the imagination. What is strange about this time is that my usual fix isn’t working. It used to be that there was certain music that I could listen to that would act as the Neosporin on all the little scrapes and bruises of my psyche. It didn’t fix them, but it made them heal a little faster, with slightly less scarring.

And my music isn’t working anymore. In fact, it feels a little foreign to me right now, like somehow it changed, or maybe I changed. But it’s not the right fit. And instead of making me feel better, it’s just making me feel sad.

I think maybe it’s because the music reminds me too much of a friendship. Well, not even really a friendship, per se. Have you ever met someone that you liked to be around, but the friendship was always more important to you than it was to the other person? Where you are always left feeling like maybe you aren’t funny enough, or smart enough, or special enough to qualify to be that person’s friend? Who needs friendships like that, right? And for this person, I always feel like I am always held at arms length, like I am allowed to exist on the periphery of their existence, but not any closer. And that was enough, for such a long time, that I convinced myself that it was all I was worthy of.

Then I spent time with other friends who brought me in as family, with open arms and open hearts. And I think maybe the contrast between the two made me realize that I’m not only worthy of true, honest friendships, but also that maybe the other relationship isn’t worth all of my energy.

It’s not that the person is a bad person, by any stretch of the imagination. And the person will probably always be a part of my life, but I’ve started to accept the limits of where our relationship lies. I’m done making all the effort though. It’s too exhausting.

Back to the broken – How do you heal when your favorite comfort reminds you of your sadness?