If eyes cleansed with tears see the most clearly, then today, I have perfect vision.

Sometimes, I think that I’ve gotten really good at confessing my tiny faults in hopes that no one will ever suspect nor discover the big ones.  But lately, I’m not very good at hiding them – and as a result, have been pummeled with my rather large, rather imperfect, imperfections.

I guess that’s bound to happen when you exist in relationship with other humans.

We are messy creatures.  I am a messy creature.

And sometimes, it brings a lot of tears.

But I’m learning that the people who stay – the ones who don’t run away when the going gets tough, the ones who listen without trying to fix, the ones who forgive ugly words and flat-lined attitudes and the same old shit that you carry around no matter how your life changes or morphs or moves – are worth anything and everything it takes.

Communication.  Honesty.  Vulnerability.  Compromise.  Effort.  Forgiveness.

I am learning a lot.  And I don’t call them my “starter husbands” for nothing.

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My friend Heather (SHOUT OUT – hey girl heeeeey) recently told me that this blog is the only “Dear Diary” blog that doesn’t make her want to vomit.  Well, that kind of made me want to vomit, because wait – I don’t write a “Dear Diary” blog, do I?

Who am I kidding.

GAH.  Enough about my feelings.  I’m changing the subject.

I woke up this morning with 7 spider bites on my thigh, abdomen, and armpit.

I never go to movies, but all of a sudden, I want to see a ton: “Away We Go,” “Harry Potter,” “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Julie and Julia,” “The Time Traveler’s Wife” (you know during the preview where he says, “You have a choice,” and she says, “I never had a choice”?  I LOSE MY MIND), and “500 Days of Summer.”

I wish I had a cute lunch bag.

My friend Matt is in his second year at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey, and the other day, he emailed me saying, “I miss Seattle more and more. Yet, sadly, it’s becoming more of a memory than an old reality.” What an unfortunate truth – and one that has been sneaking into my own way of thinking in recent days. Seattle will always, always be home. But all of a sudden, it feels further away. I hear about the things that my friends are doing, and the new people that they have met, and I see pictures of them having fun in my favorite places, and it all just feels so… far.

I know that my friends will always be my friends. But space changes things. Distance changes things. Time pulls certain people and circumstances away, away, away, like taffy – and the longer we try to hold on, the more stretched we become.

But when we learn to let go – when we choose to let go – we find other hands to hold. They are not replacements. They are not the same. But they are wonderful and beautiful in their own unique ways – ways that no one else could be – and they are walking a parallel path to mine in this new chapter. I have found some of these people, and I am so grateful. And as my friend Emily mused about her own life in a recent email, “I don’t want to miss this good season because of selfishness or envy.” Me neither.

My friend Joel wrote to me, “I think that if you take steps, at every opportunity, towards your dreams, you generally find that somewhere along the way, you’re actually living the dream.” All of the little steps that I have taken since leaving Seattle have led me to where I am now – 10 months into a new life in Nashville, new relationships, a new perspective. I am not the same girl that I was when I arrived – this time has changed me. I have seen sides of myself that I never knew existed – and some that I would never care to see again. I have doubted and despaired, and I have lived and laughed. Many, many times, I have cried – and I know that I will cry again.

But today – beautiful today – the tears are nowhere to be seen. And today, I feel like I am living the dream. So take it from me. If you are thinking of making a life change or taking the plunge or chasing a dream, do it. It’s never easy. But it’s always worth it.

And my new friends are making this whole thing so much more fun.

I woke up late again. Therefore, it is a “lick my palms and smooth my hair in my reflection in the microwave door” kind of morning. I suspect that whenever I think back and remember working an 8-5 desk job in Nashville, the words “not” and “cute” will be associated with my appearance. It’s just too early.

I’m taking a wee break from playing writer’s nights in order to work on my guitar skills. Being self-taught up to this point, I decided that lessons would be a worthy investment, so I had my first guitar lesson last night. I had visions of walking in, telling my teacher exactly what I wanted to learn, and walking out Slash – but of course, it doesn’t work that way. I have been doing music long enough to know that you have to start with the basics in order to have the capacity to improvise or extemporize or appear effortlessly versatile – and never having gotten the basics in the beginning, I have a lot of back-tracking to do.

But mixed in with the C-scales and proper posture and music theory, there is a bright and shining light. At some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future, I will be flawlessly playing the opening lick to “Pretty Woman.”

Can you say party trick?

I spent two hours practicing last night, reminded of the hopeful, burgeoning feeling that used to occur for me at the beginning of each school year. A fresh start! A new resolve! The possibilities! I’m going to master this! Nothing can stop me! I am disciplined! I am capable! “This is my nooooooow…!”

I wish that I could bottle that feeling. Eventually, it always fades, and I fall back into the darkness of passivity and lethargy. It’s why I have never yet run a half-marathon – a long-time goal of mine – it just seems too hard. Too far. Too much. I honestly do not believe that I can do it.

Which is why I have to do it.

Consider this my formal announcement that on April 25, 2009, I will be running the Country Music Half-Marathon. If I say it on the blog, then I have to do it, right? And this gives me plenty of time to, you know, become a runner.

And hopefully before that, a “Pretty Woman” guitar player.

This weekend, I talked to a 7-year old girl who had recently lost her first tooth. A gap in her grin, Claire told me that no, it didn’t hurt when the tooth fell out. Something about the momentous occasion that losing your first tooth ever is took me back to my own experience of the occasion.

I remember having that tiny bottom baby tooth, no bigger than a Tic-Tac, wiggling back and forth, back and forth. My tongue would push it around each day, loosening its bond with the gum, fretfully anticipating the day when it would finally fall out. My older brother Jeremy had already lost several teeth, and he assured me that it was a crazy experience – painful and traumatic – a right of passage that he had survived, and valiantly, but not without agony. He encouraged me to tie a piece of dental floss around the tooth, and attach it to a door, which he offered to slam; this would be a far less torturous experience than the slow, natural process.

I was terrified.

In my limited knowledge, I believed my brother. My fear forced me into trusting that his experience would be mine, too – that this was going to be the most harrowing event of my young life. And there was no escaping it. Unquestionably, the tooth was going to fall out, like it or not – and I would probably lose a lethal amount of blood in the process.

How often do we take someone else’s word for it? I know that I regularly listen to other people’s accounts of their exploits, good or bad, and assume that if I tried the same thing, my experience would be identical. My fear keeps me firmly imprisoned in settling for the truth that others have experienced, and not challenging myself to test the waters on my own.

But I am relishing my new-found callously courageous existence. I am learning to trust my gut, and make bold moves simply because what if it works? I am finding the balance between listening to the advice of those trusted friends who have earned the right to speak into my life, and letting go of the inessential pointers from the peanut gallery.

I think this is what “growing up” feels like.

When my first tooth finally fell out, it was painless. I felt around with my tongue, detecting the vacant hole where the tooth had once stood, and thinking that the gap that was left felt impossibly large. I lived. And the next time, I wasn’t so afraid.