The Journey to Contented
Just a girl on a journey to find and keep her happiness.
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Still
It's different, but it's the same. I'm different, but I'm the same. The same little girl lost with messy hair and secrets. The same willful child who demands of others that the madness stop to no avail. The same little girl who feels both responsible and innocent.
Here I am again. Frozen in a still on this merry go round that seems to have no exit. But each turn has given me something more. A little more wisdom. A little more skill. A few more tools. A little more constructive damage and destructive strength. I'm dizzy and tired and this child's game stopped being fun a long time ago.
But it is all necessary. I have to believe that. Each turn has its purpose. Each time I'm thrown headfirst into the ground below, I recover a little slower yet a little bolder. Somehow, the broken parts heal more elastic each time. Somehow, it teaches me something useful to me or others. Somehow, it always changes me for the better. And somehow, I always end up back on the merry go round even when I know I shouldn't.
The pinball keeps pinging around. The merry go round keeps spinning. Here I am again. All rage and dejection and defeat and vigor. Here I am again taking taste tests of freedom, but not quite embracing it yet. Here I am again, knowing how the story ends, but surviving inside it first. The protagonist and antagonist both for and against myself. The other side of the climax, hurling toward the inevitable resolution.
Again and again and again and again and again. I want it to stop because it's making everyone sick. It won't. It doesn't. It never does. I get back on without knowing or wanting to. Again and again and again.
So here I am. Frozen. Dizzy. Unable to move. Catapulting toward the ground. Headfirst. Again.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
Cleaning up the grafitti..
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Honestly
It's been a very emotional last two weeks or so. It has probably been longer, but something in me broke a little bit the last couple of weeks. I'm not entirely sure what it was or why it happened when it did. I just hit a point that the tea pot I'd been trying to contain it all in started to whistle too loud. I didn't explode...much. Just a slowly rising whistle that got too loud to ignore. When I tried to turn the heat down underneath, the knob just wouldn't turn this time. Instead of pulling out my tools to fix it, I just let the whistling go on. And it was emotional. Angry, sad, crazy, loud. I just let it go on. Because it needed to boil over.
And it did. And now it's quiet again. And I have my tools out. The knob is moving again. The heat is bearable and the tea pot is intact. The whistling is just a haunting echo that is teaching me yet more wisdom. I suppose it was necessary. It always is.
But in the whistling, I learned. It's odd the things you learn in your most vulnerable moments. It's not what you expect to learn. It's not the big answers to the pressing stressors that caused the whistling to begin with. It's the subtle notes under the screaming high pitches that teach you. I don't know what to do about the big questions. Those are still simmering. But I did learn.
During the course of the last two weeks, I said some very honest things. If I wasn't so exhausted from all the noise and the heat and the lack of ability (or maybe will) to turn it down, I wouldn't have said them. I wouldn't have just blurted out the words. I'd have considered them taboo, or at least private enough that I only ever needed to say them to myself. I trust myself most of the time. But when the boiling starts, I'm not to be trusted. So, I said them out loud.
And it was scary and awkward. I expected to quickly regret it. I expected to be admonished or punished for letting my inside come outside. That's the way it's always been. Emotional honesty thrown at toxic people who answered with poison. Toxic people were all I had. And it was exhausting to try to detoxify myself onto people who didn't have any room to absorb it. They were too full of poison.
But, something has changed. Even some of the same people who were formally poisonous became absorbant. New friends, whom I feared wouldn't understand and therefore would not accept the beautiful swirling mess of me, saw my vulnerability. They didn't grimace or turn away or kick me when I was down. They didn't exploit it. They didn't criticize it. And when I admitted, far too honestly, that I was afraid they'd do just that, they comforted me. They acknowledged the mess and accepted it for what it was. Without judgment or anger or the all too familiar abandonment. They just comforted me.
No one told me what I wanted to hear just for the sake of it. No one laughed or ridiculed me. No one punched me in the gaping hole that I showed them in my character. No one was upset that I let the super hero cape fall off my shoulders. No one ran from my naked emotion. No one minded at all that I was so honest. They just comforted me. They cared. They expected nothing more than who I was at that moment. And it was incredible.
I often think about how easy things must be for people who haven't had the kinds of trauma and rich experiences that I've had. People who just move around with ease and never worry about whether they'll be attacked or derided or diminished simply for being. How does that feel? To not be on guard. To not have that nagging hypervigilence. I've only ever felt that way once when I was far away from everyone and everything familiar. But it came rushing back in any time I came within hearing distance of anyone I formerly knew.
I also wonder about people who just hold it all in. They've had the trauma and the rich experiences. They've heard the whistling so long that it's a part of every day life and they don't even hear it anymore. I wonder how those people survive every day with complete ignorance of their loud dysfunction. I guess ignorance is bliss. They seem ok with themselves, even if they don't seem ok to me.
But, I'm neither of those. I'm comprised almost entirely from a collection of my experiences and the wisdom gained from the acknowledgement of them. I'm acutely aware of the whistling. I've learned how to quiet it and learned that sometimes I might need to be driven a bit mad by it. I know me extremely well. And I know that I can trust me now, even when the heat gets too high and I go a little crazy. I know how to be honest with myself.
But there's something new I learned in the last couple of weeks of emotional rawness. It turns out that I can be honest with some other people too. I can spew out even those darker parts and still be accepted as more than just those parts. I can be vulnerable and not expect to have salt poured into the painful spots.
Maybe that's the wisdom of choosing people to have around me that are a bit safer. A bit better. A bit less toxic. Or maybe it's my perception that's changed. Maybe it's the world's. Maybe it's both or nether. All the same, I'm grateful.
And the whistling as subsided. The knob is fixed. Everything is being properly regulated again. Decisions need to be made, but they can be made in quiet, as slowly as they need to be.
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
There are a lot of factors to that. Mainly, I'm not the only person who is necessary to check things off my growing to do list. To borrow the old yet time-tested truth, I can only change what is in my control. I cannot control what others do and do not do. But, when others actions, or lack thereof, impede my own progress, I get a stressed. So, my necessary stress is partially unnecessary. Or, at the very least, prolonged.
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
The Mysterious Universe
But right now, I'm being signaled and I don't know why. There are things happening that are beyond my control. There are things going wrong that are nonsensical and unusual. Things that are small when they happen alone, but are collectively massive. They are a message. I'm supposed to learn something. Something is supposed to change. Something needs to be done. I know this. I know it as well as I know how to breathe and walk and smile and cry. I recognize that the universe talking to me. It always has. It always will. I recognize these feelings of stress, pain, anger and desperation. I recognize the symptoms of my world out of whack. For the first time in my life, I don't know what I have to do. I have no idea what IT is. I can't figure it out. I don't understand.
My life is not in shambles. Things aren't wrong. I'm not pretending to be a champion swimmer while I try not to drown as I've done so many times before. There's no secret horror happening behind closed doors. I'm not faking it. My life is peaceful. Calm. Happy. Good. It's right. In almost every way, I'm in a better place than I've ever been in my life. I've stumbled around in this safe cocoon of peace and normalcy and somehow managed to find forgiveness and healing. I've found a sort of strength I've never had before. The strength to stop being so strong. A strength to rest. A strength to ask for help. A strength to trust. A strength to believe that I am fundamentally ok now. And I am, fundamentally, ok. Nothing is wrong.
But the universe is throwing its message out there. It started in a low whisper. I heard it then but thought it was just hypervigilance. I was imagining a message where there was none. The message coincided perfectly with a change cycle that has been consistent throughout my adult life. Every few years, I finally stop ignoring the message from the universe and make the major change I know I am supposed to make. I thought I was just restless, but I have gained enough wisdom to know I can't ignore even a whisper from the universe. And I didn't.
I took a long road trip. I spent almost a month with no one but myself, all day, every day. I went places I'd never been. I got out of my comfort zone. I ate alone. I drove alone. I slept alone. I relied on no one but me. I sat. I walked. I listened. I thoroughly explored what the universe might be whispering to me and came up with nothing.
And then, I came home. I came back knowing with certainty that I was ok. I came back grateful that I didn't need a change. I came back with a certainty that I'd only felt one other time in my life, my time in Mexico. I came back from that trip and let myself be immersed in the peace I felt. I forgave myself for all the mistakes I've made. I forgave myself for the fumbling about I'd done in my life. I forgave everyone else as well. Everyone. People I didn't believe I'd ever be capable of handing my forgiveness. I decided that was what the universe wanted from me. It wanted me to know that I was truly ok. It wanted me to forgive.
But it didn't stop. The whispering became a low rumble. The low rumble became louder, then louder still, until it became a scream. And I don't understand. I don't know what the message is. There's no denial. There's nothing I've missed. There's no bigger picture problem that I'm avoiding by focusing on little things. There's no false facade I'm maintaining to hide the deeper problem. There's nothing. Everything is good. There is nothing wrong. So why isn't everything working like it should? Why are things crumbling like they do when a change is necessary for survival? What is happening? And WHY?
In my world, there's no such thing as a "run of bad luck." There's no such thing as coincidence. Everything happens for a reason. My path is exactly as it should be and always has been. Every decision I've made, good or bad, had a purpose and a reason. I was to learn something. I was to make an impact here or there. I was to become everything I am. I will continue to become more with every experience. This is how it works. This is what I call "the universe" because I have no other word or phrase for it. Most people I know call it "God."
So, what am I to learn? What am I to change? I've explored every option. I went and talked to the ocean. I've meditated. I've even gotten good and drunk to let any pretenses or denials I might have had fall sloppily to the ground. Nothing. I am digging deep. And it's only made me surer that everything is as it is supposed to be. More positive that I am ok. But the universe keeps screaming louder and louder. It keeps throwing things in the way and refuses to stop.
I don't understand. I cannot understand. What does it want?
Thursday, April 5, 2018
Am I?
Are we meant to be together with one person forever? Thats what we are taught. That's what society hands us. And isnt that the goal, socially and inherintly? Isnt that why we flirt and date and seek and marry? To find a mate. Procreate. Reproduce. Find love. So we can be with someone, forever. But does that work? Are there really any couples who are celebrating 50 years together that can say that theyve all been good ones? That they have no regrets? That they wanted to be there all that time? Or were they there because they honored a commitment society told them to make.
Friday, November 3, 2017
Cracked
Still
Here I am again. Frozen in a time that's both familiar and new. The merry go round has come around again and I am captured in another ...
-
Dear You Know Who You Are, I hear you. You may not think I hear you, but I hear you. You may think that your words are harmless. You may th...
-
Here I am again. Frozen in a time that's both familiar and new. The merry go round has come around again and I am captured in another ...
-
It never occurred to me to want be anything but what I was until I was an adult and people started telling me I needed to be something else...