Work in Progress Heart

I woke up feeling extremely angry and bitter this morning. Angry because I feel like I haven't gotten closure from some past events in my life, and bitter because I have allowed myself to hold on to the anger. I have been toying with ideas of how to cut that anger out of my life, and I had come up with some solutions. All of them were good, but some were and are going to be hard to follow through with. It's hard sometimes when cutting anger towards one person effects your relationship with others. Unfortunately, ridding myself of this negative energy involved doing so. But I like to think that they would understand and not take it personal. If they don't understand however, I'm sorry and I apologize.

My life right now is up and down. For the most part, I have really good days. But with all good days, we have to have our share of bad days. I enjoy being single (for the most part), but mainly I don't think it would be fare to myself or the other individual, if I were in a relationship right now. Today has put in to prospective that I really am not in the right mind set just yet to take that leap. Tho I continue to work on myself daily, I don't feel that I fully know/love myself yet.

I know I'm great person. I know I am deserving of someone that will not fill a void, but become the other half to my "work in progress heart". I know that in order to love that person, I have to love myself.  And today I learned this; Love is patience.

I was talking to a friend of mine today about what has been going on in our lives. I told her how I was feeling and how angry I was. She expressed to me that she and her husband were continuing to work on their relationship and in doing so, decided to do the 40 Day Love Dare Challenge. For those who don't know what that is don't worry, I didn't either. It's a for couples to help strengthen their relationship. It's Christian based (Each challenge is related to a verse from the bible). I asked her to explain a little bit of what the challenge was and the first thing she said was "Love is Patience". I found it ironic or that for some reason I was supposed to hear that today. She told me that the book is for couples, but really it would be good for anyone. It teaches you how to love your self in a way, and also to love others. "Love is patience" stuck out to me.

"Love works. It is life’s most powerful motivator, and has far

greater depth and meaning than most people realize. It always
does what is best for others, and can empower us to face the
greatest of problems. We are born with a lifelong thirst for love.
Our hearts desperately need it like our lungs need oxygen. Love
changes our motivation for living. Relationships become meaningful
with it. No marriage is successful without it.

Love is built on two pillars that best define what it is. Those
pillars are patience and kindness. All other characteristics of love are
extensions of these two attributes. And that's where your dare will begin.
With patience.

Love will inspire you to become a patient person. When you
choose to be patient, you respond in a positive way to a negative
situation. You are slow to anger. You have a long fuse instead
of a quick temper. Rather than being restless and demanding,
love helps you settle down and begin extending mercy to those
around you. Patience brings an internal calm during an external
storm. "

I really needed to hear that today. I needed to hear that through loving myself, my patience for the things that effect me most negatively will over power all.

Love really is the most powerful motivator. It really is needed like our lungs need oxygen.

Love is the one thing that unifies us. Love is the one thing that unifies us, with who WE are inside.

For now, I continue to work on loving myself.

Nicki

What. The. World. Needs. Now... IS LOVE.. SWEET LOVE!!!!

For all of those people that hate Valentines Day, I just don't understand you. "It's a waste of money." "It's so commercialized." "Why do you have to have a day to celebrate your love with someone when you celebrate it everyday?!"... (That one is my personal favorite!).... To answer that last question.... NO ONE CELEBRATE THEIR LOVE AND RELATIONSHIP EVERYDAY!!!!!!!! ..... How do I know this? Because I was practically married for two years and there were days that I wanted to kill him. (Well not literally, but you get the point)

Love is the one thing in the world that makes everything beautiful. When you look at the world through eyes of love, the air smells better, the colors around you seem more vibrant, and yes; life seems sweeter.

Valentines Day is one of my favorite holidays. I love going the extra mile on that day to show the person I am with that I truly care about them. Valentines Day doesn't mean you have to spend hundreds of dollars to see that person smile.. it means that you do something a little extra to show that person you take pride in your relationship and that you feel your love DOES DESERVE to be celebrated!

My most memorable Valentines Day comes from my high school boyfriend. Neither one of us had a lot of money, neither one of us were nor are we now superficial... So for Valentines Day he cooked me dinner, we exchanged small gifts and letters we had written to one another, and we spent the night watching movies together cuddled up on the couch.

Valentines Day has nothing to do with spending money. To me, the most heart felt gifts/memorable are the ones that are sentimental. Take time to write that special someone a letter professing what exactly it is that makes you grateful to have them in your life. Make them a card, a picture frame of the two of you in it, or even a freaking macaroni necklace! It doesn't matter what it is, its the thought that counts.

Love is beautiful, and YES, it should be celebrated every day! If we can have a holiday to honor our country, our Father in Heaven, the birth of Christ, our Freedom, and the dead... Why can't we have a holiday to celebrate the one thing that makes this world beautiful... LOVE!

Even though I don't have a special someone to share this day with at this time in my life, I remain happy and humble. I love LOVE and I love celebrating LOVE. If you have that special someone in your life, I hope you take the time today to honor your love and let them know how much it means to you to have them in your life.

Cherish LOVE. Cherish the light it brings into your life! You never know when it might be taken from you.

Happy Valentines Day everyone!

Nicki

Happy Birthday to My Papa

Happy Birthday to my dad, the best man I know! I am so grateful to have a father like him. I know that all kids say "I have the best dad in the world."... And of course I feel that way, but beyond that, I feel that I have the best dad for ME. What I mean by that is that I don't know any other father that could hold a place in my heart like he does. My dad is my hero. He is the man that I look up to most because he has always been there for me. The older I get the more I realize how amazing my parents are.... And the older I get, the more I realize how much I need and love having the father that I do in my life. I have never felt closer to him than I have this past year. The first time I realized this was Easter Sunday of last year . That is still probably the worst day of my life up to this point in my 23, almost 24 yrs of life; and the one person I needed that day was my dad.

One of my fathers greatest qualities is that he is relaxed. He has this way of calming you down and making you feel as if everything will be alright, even when if feels like the end of the world. I guess that is a quality needed when you are a father to two emotional daughters whose tear ducts open like flood gates on a regular basis, and husband to the emotional mother in which we get our "emotional gift" from. I feel that I can speak for all of us when I say that he has held our family together... Even in times when we weren't ok individually or as a unit.

My father is the hardest working man I know. He has always provided for our family to make sure that we have not only had what we needed, but what we wanted. During our hardest times when he been out of work , he has worked side job after side job to make sure we had not only the necessities, but he also made sure that my sister and I had what we wanted in order to keep doing the things we loved. I think sometimes the hardships that we face as a unit is what pulls us closer together. I have never felt closer to my family than I have in the moments we have experienced hardships like that.


The reason I love my dad most is because I honestly know that no matter what decision I make in life, he will always love me. I am not perfect, nobody is. But everyday my dad gives me the greatest gift he could ever give me, love and acceptance.

I can only hope that one day I end up with someone as great of a man as he is. He is corky, smart, easy going, handsome :) , a provider, witty, honest, loyal, family oriented, and all around a hero. He loves his family more than anything and everyday he does what he can to make us proud. That to me is what makes him so wonderful... Everyday he tries his best to always be the great example that he is.

Thank you to him for all that he has done, and continues to do each and every day. I can only hope to be as great of a parent to my kids that he has been, and will continue to be to me.

Love Always,
Nick

Cheers!

Happiness... That is my New Year's Resolution...


Cheers to eating what I want, exercising when I want, dating who I want, traveling where I want and making memories to last a life time. I'm loving life just "doin' me". This is my year in one way or another. It's my year to grow as an individual and smile constantly. It's my year to pave the rest of my life... It's my year to accept myself as me and to continue to love myself inside and out....

I smile more these days and I feel TRUE HAPPINESS within. That is something that no one can take away from me.

Cheers to 2012! :)

The Masterpiece

Christmas Eve will make it eight months from the day Cacey and I said our big goodbye. I feel like the past eight months have flown by so quickly that I haven't really been able to process what my life has been like since we said our final good bye. I have experienced more mixed emotions in the past couple of months, than I have in all previous relationships/heartaches combined. I'm not upset about it. I feel like its been good for me. Cacey is a big part of the woman that I am today. His girls will be forever imprinted on my heart. My love for him, will always be held on a level that I can't explain.
He was my "first" for a lot of things. He was my first honest relationship.  He was the first person to make ME put MYSELF first. He was the first person to tell me that creating art should be done because you feel passionate about it, not to make money. He was the first person that I had a family with, even though his kids weren't "technically" my own.

I loved Cacey. I loved him as he was because he loved me as I was when we found each other. I didn't have to hide pieces of my past in fear that he wouldn't understand. He allowed me to be honest with him from the beginning, and I think that is why we were able to communicate so openly. Amongst all of the things he was my "first" for, he was the first one to hurt just as much as I did when we realized that is wasn't going to work.

Walking away from our life on Easter Sunday was heart wrenching. The levels of sadness and anger I felt, were unimaginable up until that point in my life. Trying to process the "whys" and "hows" didn't get me anywhere. I was sad because I wasn't ready to let go... Even tho deep down, I knew it was time. I was upset because I didn't understand how you could just fall out of love with someone.... I still don't understand it, but I am no longer trying to understand it.

Someone once told me that "there is only one kind of love and if you can't love someone enough to spend the rest of your life with them, then you never truly loved them at all".... I feel sorry for that person and anyone else who is narrow minded enough to believe the same. I feel they are pessimistic towards love because they are too afraid of opening up their heart enough for it to be broken.

Love is the one thing that changes the way you see the world. When in love, the world has a certain glow about it. Colors are vibrant and beautiful, everything seems perfect. When you lose love, those colors become dull and blend together. It isn't until you search for love that the world slowly brightens, but this time the colors are different. When there is no love, everything seems black and white.

Love to me, is like creating a masterpiece. For each time you find love, fall out of love or search for love.. a work of art is created. Some people choose to live in the future and forget about the past, which only allows them one canvas to paint their masterpiece on. For me its different. I use a different canvas for each phase of my life. If it were on a single canvas, you wouldn't be able to see the layers of who I am or what I have felt throughout my life. The way I see it is that in the end, I'll still have my masterpiece...Just all canvases strategically placed to create one ultimate piece of art.

I would rather be passionate and daring enough to risk getting my heart broken multiple times. could never be narrow minded enough to believe the world is painted in black and white. My past is filled with canvases painted in bright colors and also in dull shades of blues and grays.The canvas I am painting now is filled with warm blues and greens. Shades of blues to represent the emotions in which consume me from time to time.. and greens to represent new growth in finding love within.

My masterpiece may seem like too much for some people. It may be too scattered and messy, but to me its beautiful.... It's my beautiful mess.

reversed repulsion

They say that people walk in and out of your life for a reason, and in most cases.. those that walk out aren't worth letting back in. How does one decide if that is truly the case?

I am a firm believer in following the heart. It doesn't mean that it always puts me on the path that is right for me in the long run.. But how do we truly know if those paths that "feel right" at that moment... won't one day lead us to the path that is ultimately right for us? And even more... How do we truly know what is right for us?.... Doubts fill heads of even those who seem to have the "perfect life" or the "perfect relationship" every once in a while.

The last couple of weeks have been somewhat refreshing for me. Someone from my past whom I had ill feelings towards contacted me. As soon as I saw the name, my heart sunk into my stomach and my eyes welled with tears. I hadn't spoken to this person in over two years, and I hadn't thought anything positive about this person in longer than that. In talking with them, they apologized for all of the negative things said and done to me. They told me that I was a big part of their life and thanked me for all I had done.... I was at a loss for words because in conversations prior to this one, something was said to me that left a whole in my heart. Needless to say, I had been carrying that conversation with me for over two years, and it had been weighing me down for no one to see, just for me to feel.

As I read the apology, my stomach turned. I wasn't sure how to take it. I mean, obviously we didn't have the best track record. Nonetheless, I told this person that their apology meant a lot to me, especially considering what was said to me the last time we spoke.... They didn't remember saying those things, but apologized to me anyways and told me that none of it was true and that they were sorry for hurting me. I honestly thought my bitter taste for them would never go away, but I am proud to say that I no longer feel that stinging hatred towards this individual.

It's interesting how much time and maturity can heal a person. I don't think that either one of us are the same people that we were just a few years ago. I don't know if I would have been able to truly let go of that anger, had I not experienced "life" as it was after they closed the chapter of "our life".

I can't say what my future holds, or if this person will be a significant part of my life... All I know is that in talking to them, I was able to let go of a part of me and a past that I didn't know how to release myself from.

... People walk in and out of our lives for a reason.... The experiences we share with them help mold who we become..... And how they effect us in the present, determine whether or not they make it to our future. How far they make it exactly, is yet to be determined.


Uncertainty of what fills my future will always be in the back of my mind. But right now, in the present... I can confidently say that I am happy with life. I am happy with me.

Someone Like You

"Someone Like You"

I heard that you settled down
That you found a girl and you're married now.
I heard that your dreams came true.
Guess she gave you things I didn't give to you.

Old friend, why are you so shy?
Ain't like you to hold back or hide from the light.

I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited
But I couldn't stay away, I couldn't fight it.
I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded
That for me it isn't over.

Never mind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you too
Don't forget me, I beg
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead,
"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead,"
Yeah.

You know how the time flies
Only yesterday was the time of our lives
We were born and raised
In a summer haze
Bound by the surprise of our glory days

I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited
But I couldn't stay away, I couldn't fight it.
I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded
That for me it isn't over.

Never mind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you too
Don't forget me, I beg
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead."

Nothing compares
No worries or cares
Regrets and mistakes
They are memories made.
Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?

Never mind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you
Don't forget me, I beg
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead."

Never mind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you too
Don't forget me, I beg
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead,
Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead."

Every time I hear the song "Someone Like You" by Adele, I tear up and/or get the cold chills. I love her voice and her attitude. I think she is a great artist. I have always thought she has done a great job at putting her emotion into her music. I think that is why I love her so much. I have heard this song a lot. But it wasn't until this morning that I truly "listened" to the words. As soon as I got to a computer I started doing some research on her album "21" which is the album that this song is from. She said this album is about the story of her first real "grown up" relationship.... The first relationship where nothing happened, or no one cheated on the other. It ended simply because they fell out of love with one another. She goes on to say that sometimes that hurts more because there is nothing you can do about it and how she felt like a failure because of it.

"Nothing compares, No worries or cares, Regrets and Mistakes, They are memories made. Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?" ........ I love that line because it truly hits home with me. No matter how much I try to be angry or try to find reasoning for why things have to be the way they are...There IS no explanation as to how you can just fall out of love with someone. Love is the one thing that is supposed to come to you naturally. It's the one feeling you put into all things dear to you. There is no greater pain than feeling like you have failed at love, to me anyways.

But life will always move forward and things will always change so all we can really do it trudge through the troubles. I'm sure I will face greater pain in my life (not that I want to) ... but for now, I'm still in the process of learning from this pain.

........... At this point, the greatest thing I have learned in life is that you can not truly appreciate life and love until you have lost the one thing you felt made you who you are.... I appreciate those things in a whole different light now.

.