It’s Good to Be in Love . . . by Frou Frou

Frou Frou forces you to go back to that phase in your life when everything is going right.  “Right” can mean so many things.  It could be in reference to your favorite love story of your life.  It could be the two straight years of such kindred friends and good times that you thought you were your own TV show.  It could be the fluttering of butterflies at the beginning of a new relationship.  It could be the thoughtful gifts that a friend spontaneously leaves on your doorstep.  This song brings to mind a few key moments of different types of love that changed my life and brought me out of the darkness.

After identifying love that comes from others and love within ourselves, we can then maintain the feeling of “being in love” at all times.

To some, this might be the closest thing to heaven on Earth – where loving ourselves is the equivalent to surrendering our lives to God.  To some, this whole notion is unreal and unbelievable.  But I am about to show you the tangible moments in my life, that I have recalled, in order to shine the light on paralleled moments in your life.  These moments are like permanent visions in my mind.  They taught me that ‘being in love’ has been misconstrued with pertaining only to falling in love with someone, but the truest state of being in love is within yourself and ultimately connected to your Higher Power, in my case God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.  For those of us that still see being in love as limited to that person we are falling in love with, I am here to tell you that even THAT relationship, in itself, can be stronger, if you can do the work to get to a state of ‘being in love’ with yourself.  But, Diane, how can you maintain a state of being such as this, especially when you are blocking out everything and everyone?  Or, am I allowed to maintain a level of being in love with myself – isn’t that considered overly egotistical?  The answer is to come, right here as you witness the love that was bestowed on me in a time of darkness and how I utilized the love in the end to serve others – not myself.

Let’s first take a look at the two phases of “being in love” and “everything in my life is going right.”  They seem to always be connected and there is some truth to that.  When we are in love, a piece of our spirit is being met.  A need is being met, in which, loving energy from another person and affirmation from a person you admire, heals that need.  It starts off slow.  There’s eye contact when you needed to be recognized.  There’s a knowing that the person has been looking at you for quite some time.  In my case, it was a sneeze on the sand and someone said, “Bless you.”  That sneeze, forced me to be seen, whether I was ready to be seen or not.  I wanted to close off the attention because for one, I was lying on the sand with a bag full of self help books and at that time in my life my mind was in the beginning stages of being only interested in the spirit within myself – I was not trying to date or be in a relationship by no means.  Something larger was in control.  This person that heard me sneeze decided to enter into my world that day – in fact he walked over and sat down right next to me.  I was so numb and focused on myself that I didn’t even stop to ward him off.  Something inside me told me to relax and make conversation.  Later, after a couple months of innocent dating, I realized this person was meant to intrude on me that day on the sand.

When I first reflected on this relationship, I was grateful for a couple months of bliss and being admired.  This person confirmed for me that even in my darkest time, I was still the highly spirited person that I am today.  He compared me to the world that he was used to, and said point blankly that I was different because I was unbelievably genuine.  He was determined to figure out how I became this way and I was determined to enjoy the ride.  I told myself that I deserved this one and that I was going to embrace every lighthearted flirting moment in order to teach myself how to accept compliments and admiration.  This one solid confirmation of being genuine was exactly what my spirit was trying to tell my ego as I was analyzing what went wrong in my previous relationship.  I took the lesson for what it was and after some time my heart kept telling me that though dating was a great boost, it was not enough.  I knew that even though things were going really well and I was having so much fun, that the true lesson would be if I could take what I learned and apply it to myself – independently from this person, for my spirit’s sake.

It clicked: there is more to being the person we are supposed to be – and it must come from ourselves, not from another person.

I considered this person an Angel who sought me out on his own accord, gave me the boost I needed in the direction of digging deeper into myself, and now it was time to identify my deepest desires for life on Earth.  That summer, “everything was going right” and I “fell in love” for a short period of time.  However, the two phases of “being in love” and “everything in my life is going right” are two separate entities that follow each other after you have learned how to live with an open heart.  To get to a place of “everything going right” we are first in a low place of life that brought us to a high place of life.  To get to a higher place of life, we must then work on ourselves whether it is through prayer, meditation, sports, or creativity.  These are the basic fundamentals of feeding our spirit exactly what it wants, or following the path that we are supposed to be on.

All of these phrases connect with us or we have heard them before, but we must actually do this instead of fearing that “everything is going right” will end.

We create a routine of self-help scenarios that bring us to a state of enlightenment in our faith, beliefs, or just being here on Earth.  This foundation is called a foundation for a reason.  The foundation sets up the stone for the next step and we must take that next step upward or forward – however you visualize it.  Too many times, we stay on the step or we think this step is the last one and we’ve reached our goal. But it is not!

There is no “end” to the steps – they keep going.

The best is yet to come and we must push forward and keep feeding our spirit, following the path that God has so lovingly laid out for us.  You know!  The path with all the signs and angels and coincidences?!  All the while, using the love from others around us and internalizing it for our energy, our spirit, our soul, and human body.

This creates a positive energy within ourselves – a state of “being in love” all the time, that allows us to see the blessings around us, which then opens our eyes, mind and heart to love (noun, not verb), in the world here on Earth.

Now that we’ve reached this level of being open to all types of love and we are able to define this new energy as Loving Energy, how do we maintain it?  And for those who are ready to maintain it, how do we strengthen and maintain it without being in a relationship?  This is where we all have failed many times and jumped into relationships that seemed to match our level of Loving Energy or we jumped into a relationship, just when we were on a roll of finding ourselves and manifesting all that we had planned for ourselves.  I just recently discovered this and am in the phase where I am ready to maintain this Loving Energy in order to listen to what I am called to do and not let distractions in the way.  Distractions come in many forms, but as a familiar example to all, dating is the number one distraction.  It can pull you away from continuing this path of Enlightenment, path of Faith, and path of facing yourself.

It is important to keep recreating and remembering how you cultivated this energy in the first place in order to live life in a focused way so that you can break past that “give-up” point, where most of us start dating someone.

This is not to say that you should be closed off to dating, but you can sense when someone is not compatible with your path at this point or when you need to continue discerning what your desires are in order to better match up with someone who can join the journey with you.  It is important to not give in for the sake of feeling “in love” and know that if you keep going forward, someone else will come along that is more compatible with your desires and energy.

Five months after I left the marriage, I was living at my parents’ house.  I miraculously was laid off from teaching and devoted this year to looking for a more solid teaching position as well as answering questions about myself in depth – since I was blessed with the time to do this.  My routine was strictly focused on the following questions which then turned into goals:  Where do I go from here?  What is here?  Who do I need to be in order to take the next step in life?  When I pray, what am I praying for?  The answers to these questions were all answered swiftly, but first I surrendered in every way, accepted my current situation, and allowed everything and everyone to be a part of my life if they wanted to be.  The first major shift in loving energy, of course, came from my parents.

I have one bright moment that sticks out amidst the first four months of pain and darkness.  My parents and I were at a typical restaurant spot that they always dined at.  I hadn’t been my chatty self for months and my parents were hoping that one day, I would return to them.  I look back and now I can see what they were thinking.  They always like to keep me between them and now when I picture that night in my head, I can clearly see how when we first started venturing out on diner dates, my mom always sat next to me in the booth and my dad across from me.  My mom was frustrated and was writhing in pain because she couldn’t help me.  All of her questions would overwhelm me and I would either go silent or yell back that I didn’t have any answers yet.  She had decided to take on the role of a protective spirit that would never leave my side again and try to fill the silence with conversation about anything.  I can see her making that promise to herself each night as we cycled through their regular eating spots.  My dad on the other hand wanted to keep me in front of him.  He decided that his Babybear would heal just by looking back at him every now and then – that is if I gave them eye contact.

Their prayers were answered one day, when I came out of my head to inhale the love right in front of me.

At the time, I couldn’t see their healing powers and their undying willingness to be by my side.  I am now able to reflect on their faces sitting with me at the restaurant and I can recall their energy.  The energy is recreated every time I listen to “It’s Good to Be in Love” and it showers me with energy of love and grace – but the kind that I saw through the darkness.  Their faces pop up in my mind as if their faces had frozen in time that night and then I painted it somehow and hung it on the walls of my mind.  Frou Frou eludes to the fact that “it’s good to be in love” but I have discovered that this feeling of love is more than a feeling about a person you want to be with.  It took different types of love to prompt me to look within and connect with the spirit God gave me.  Finally, just like how the Angel on the sand came into my life, my parents felt the energy in me change that night and they went for it!  They flowed with the few words that came out of my mouth and treated me exactly the same way as if I had been Chatty Little Diane that whole time.

Before I reveal the end of this scene at the diner, I must explain that as I was sitting there, I was getting a burning sensation in my chest and my hands.  My mind slowly decided to pay attention to it and listen to the thoughts going on in my head for the first time in a long time.  I was in such a daze everyday to where I had no idea that I wasn’t talking.  My mind seemed to be talking to itself all day.  To myself, I would start with the usual, “I’m sad, but I can’t tell what I look like being sad because when I look in the mirror, I look okay.”  My mind wasn’t ready to process, “I’m sad” so then it would go blank for a while and just stare out the window of my mind.  I would see the birds and trees and the sky and feel a glimpse of what it would be like to be normal again.  My mind would say, “Hey.  That looks nice.  It makes you feel good.  Go there!”  But nothing.  I couldn’t go there.  I didn’t want to feel happy because happiness was not going to be enough to bring me to life.

I knew that facing the pain was the only real way to bring me to life.

 So then, Diane, finally would come back for a moment and tell me, “You know you want to make something.  You always make things.  What will it be this time?  More jewelry…build a birdhouse!?”  I left these thoughts pending…and then more came!  “What would I create next?  I always create something new.  I’ve always had three projects lined up.”  This time, I felt my hands needing to do something.  There was energy in my hands that I couldn’t get rid of.  It was as if, this was the only place I could give or feel love.  I had kept my hand on the remote control for about two months straight and stared out the metaphorical window of my brain as well as the real window to the side of me that allowed me to glance at nature every now and then in the form of our backyard, or “the wilderness” as I like to call it.  But my hands…when I try to sense right now what alerted my hands’ energy, it was my rabbit, Marley.

Marley and I had gone through the fighting, the divorce, and the pain together.  If you don’t believe in animals as spirits, you will now.  My ex-husband and I had bought a rabbit around Easter time, seven months before I decided to leave.  When I left, in October of 2009, she was the one thing I couldn’t leave in the apartment of doom and negative energy.  I could care less about my belongings, but I couldn’t stand to let an innocent living life drown in the muck that stuck to those walls and filled the air.  I literally thought, “She will die.  All life will die in that apartment if I don’t save it.”  So, I packed up my things, but placed her in the car first.  Strapped her cage with a seat belt in the back of my 99’, white, Nissan Sentra and drove over the hill back to my parents’ house.  While recovering at my parents’ heavenly home in Anaheim Hills, I would occasionally step outside to sit in the play-pen area of the home I had made for her.  She would sense I was in the room, come slowly out of her cage and immediately smell me everywhere to confirm that it was me.  I would sit down, criss-cross applesauce, and place a towel that I had always used to hold her, on my lap.  She would sense the towel with her nose real quick and know it was time to cuddle if she chose to.  Marley would first nudge my arm and I would open my arm so that she could climb up under my elbow and arm to assume a cuddling position in my lap.  There, she would settle in with her hind legs and relax her back.

With this, she would send me the vibe of expectation, which expected me to place my hands around her and work on keeping her loved and calm in my lap.

When Marley was done relaxing, she would hop off and go about her business, but if you gave her the opportunity to cuddle more she would feel you out again.  Sometimes we would sit together until my legs went numb.  Sometimes it was a quick pet because she wanted to bounce around instead of cuddle.  But, anytime she gave me the opportunity to cuddle and hold her, I didn’t refuse it.  Somewhere in me, I knew I needed this.  Here, I discovered the energy in my hands.  At the time, I just knew I was petting an animal and I knew that I needed to, but I had no idea that my hands were building the energy to create again, which would then ultimately lead my mind back to sanity, back to love, and back to me.

Going back to the diner booth with my parents… I swam to the surface of reality and chimed in on their conversation.  In Contreras world, this means that I had cut them off mid-conversation.  Normally people are upset when you interrupt their conversation, but my family majors in interrupting and consider it a perfectly normal way of conversing.  We all have been known to take each others’ stories and peel off into a new direction with our own stories.  We take the cake in fighting to voice our thoughts and opinions, but when amongst the Contreras clan, an outsider would take not on how even though we are interrupting each other left and right, there is a system to it.  Like shooting pool, we leave the ball set up for the next shot.  We are always thinking of how a story will lead into someone else’s story and thus, that is our way of passing off the stick to the next player.  And that’s just how it has always been.  You can try to come in and change it, but you will find that the only way to connect with the Clan is to jump in and tell a story or two, or throw in a dig or three.

Now, when I look back and see myself interrupting their conversation, I remember neither of them looked shocked that I interrupted them and unlike my family, they gave me their undivided attention for a brief moment.  I can see my mom thinking, “She’s back!” and I can see my Dad saying, “Haha!  Here she goes, I missed the ‘Specials’ talking too much.”  I started off slow, like when you wake up in the morning and you are not sure if your voice works anymore.  But I came out with a slight boom, whereas if you know me, I normally come with a BOOM of EXCITEMENT in your FACE!  I began with, “Let’s re-do the rooms in the house!  I took over all the rooms when the boys left for college and I never finished the job.  We changed Michael’s room to the computer room, to make it an office space for Daddy, but we need to really make it scream you Dad!  We might as well make it a Dodger room slash office and then we can decorate it with all your collectibles and pictures.  I could design the whole thing and paint it the color of their vintage uniforms – you know gray pant color and Dodger Blue accents?!  And then I can paint my room and make it like the ocean or something…”  It was so easy for me to identify that my Dad would be happiest doing his work in a place that defined him and in an atmosphere where Vinn Scully’s voice soothes the soul, but it was hard for me to even finish my thought about myself and my own room.  To show love for myself and to care for myself actually hurt inside.  I can feel it now.  I can feel what I felt then.  I was hurting with pain that you don’t wish upon anyone.  I was destroyed inside and this was the one spark of love that I had left in myself and for myself.

But I got it out there and my Dad finished the sentence – he went for the chance to boost me in the right direction.  The direction in which my soul, my spirit, my hands, and my heart were calling me toward.

He cut me off with, “Ya, we’ll get the paint tomorrow and you’ll go with me.”  And that was that.  Mom didn’t say a word, which is unusual and Dad made it a reality; I had no choice but to paint.  They were going to make sure of it.  Just like the Contrerases, they went right back to storytelling about what happened at work and what my brothers were up to and all the family drama and how much weight my dad lost and my mom’s celebrity updates from Access Hollywood (gotta love it).  Today, the room that I painted for myself is still there.  We call it the Healing Room  – three walls of gray-toned blue, like the ocean water on an overcast day, and the wall with the window is sky blue, only letting through rays of sunshine and fresh air.  The curtain around the window is sheer white with designs of coral and bottom-of-the-ocean swirls.  The walls are covered with white shelves, holding starfish, shells, jewelry that I made during that time in my life, and candles.  Two years later, my mom was critically ill and after a few surgeries she recovered in the healing room as well.  Today, my Grandma Irene, where I get my middle name from, is comforted by these walls of love and resilience.  I know that she feels completely at peace when she sleeps there at night, as she, my mom, and I have all experienced the peace of the oceanic walls and listened to the same thoughts as we drifted away into a reverie.  A seed of love was planted in this room for all to see and feel.  Now, the memories of this room bring love and joy to all who stay in it.

Such a simple act of love from the Angel on the sand, to the love I had left for myself, to the grand love of my parents that I couldn’t even sense back then.  I had just considered it a usual family moment where everyone talks over one another, but embedded in that typical night was a conscious act to love, made on their part.  You can see the energy being passed from one person to the next when you break it down like this.  But, I wasn’t able to do this before.  I wasn’t able to face these moments again, unless I played this song and recreated it for myself.  I allow a song associated with a memory to play on repeat and it prompts me to stay focused on the message I am trying to work out or reach.  I do this especially when I can sense I am in denial or avoiding the truth about a particular part of my life.

The whole time I have faith that if I can recreate these moments and watch them in slow motion according to the feeling and energy that I remember, then I can break it down for all to see. 

I know that if you are on the same page, you will be able to look back and break down these scenes for yourself.  Sometimes these moments in life are prohibiting you from understanding something about yourself right now.  Currently, I am facing the next phase in life where I have defined love for myself and love for God.  I am open to relationships, but I can tell when someone is a distraction or when someone gives and receives love with the same light as me.  As I observe and discern about the energy in these prospective people, I continue to go back to these memories in order to solidify what love is for me and how I plan to share that with the world.  Though this is a great plan for a relationship, this is NOT a front and center desire when I’m walking around the streets of Santa Monica.  Maintaining “being in love” is to keep us focused on how this path is FOR US and that we can apply this energy to ALL the parts of our lives; therefore, dating should not be a front and center thought or desire…

Focus.  On.  You.

You are the desire, the variable, the change, the seeker, and the inspiration.  I apply this concept to all of the relationships in my life: friendships, family relationships, co-workers, dating, strangers on the streets…in the words of my Aunt Margie, “It’s all about me!”  Not everything is an ego trip – spend some time with your soul.  Now that I apply it consistently to all the areas of my life, I see the change in myself and in all the relationships in my life; when one blooms, we all bloom!  It isn’t easy to face these loving memories, which is the whole point.

The loving memories are the worst ones because they define the love that you feel so unworthy of giving to yourself.

We must accept that we are worthy of all types of love in order to fully face our fears.  If we can get here, then this is one huge step in the right direction to manifesting everything for yourself through God and your divine belief.  When I pray, I can sense when I have doubt or that I’ve hit a wall.  This is when I must go inside and do this work on myself.  I must face that particular energy connected to the love and allow myself to be filled with it.  We then must take this foundation of love from others and of ourselves to truly paint the walls of our lives with our own mantras written all over it.  I pray that this will serve as a solid foundation as you look into your soul.  Let it be the ladder that I have sent down for you, to pull you up from wherever you are.

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“It’s Good To Be In Love”

by:  Frou Frou