Seeking Peace

I accomplished a lot today but it was mostly boring. I spent 4 hours doing homework. I don't like to think of it as homework since everything I do for school is reading books I love to read and writing about the things I want to write about. Nonetheless, it took up most of my day.

By dinner time I was eager to get out of the house so the boyfriend and I headed to a local bar/restaurant. Of course, like every other restaurant menu I come across, there was little available that I could eat. Everything I order has to be modified. (As a former server, I know how annoying this can be!) I settled on the Pear & Blue Cheese Salad with Candied Walnuts, sans the blue cheese. I discovered there is a strictly vegan/vegetarian restaurant in the city I live in that I've never had the chance to visit before because it's in an odd location that isn't really near me or any of the places I frequent. I think it's time to give it a try.

I talked to my mother on the telephone on the way home to find out she is having a lot of issues going on in her personal life that make me sad. I wish I could help her. I wish I had money to give to her, a magic wand to swoop over her head to erase all of her problems. She has taken good care of me my entire life. It's hard being powerless to help her now.

For my entire life I've had a tendency to be sad when others around me are sad. It's my nature to withdraw from life and turn into myself when things go wrong. Once, during an argument, my boyfriend told me I enjoy being miserable. He was right about that, but I'm learning that being miserable doesn't help anything. It may sound like sunshine and rainbows and butterflies, but I'm learning that a positive attitude really does make a difference in life. I have never been a bubbly person. I've always sulked and complained and reveled in my misery. But what is the point? My days on earth are limited. When I'm 30, 40, 50, 60 years old, do I really want to look back wishing I had been happier and healthier when I was young instead of wasting my youth miserable, hungry, and afraid? I don't.

I read this quote tonight that made me think: "First keep peace with yourself, then you can also bring peace to others." Thomas Kempis

I haven't found peace for myself yet, but I'm looking. I'm getting closer every day.

I just recently moved to the east coast, but before that, I lived in Las Vegas for the past two and a half years. When I first moved into that apartment in Vegas, I was scared and broken and miserable. I wasn't eating regularly. When I did eat, I retreated to the bathroom and made myself throw up until it was gone. Somehow, by the time I moved out of that apartment (in May of this year), I was eating every single day and hadn't thrown up in a very very long time. The name of the street that I lived on is called Peace Way.

Anyone believe in signs?