Machlemore and Ryan Lewis, Tom Waits, and Brandi Carlile take turns today inviting in the grey and the cold into a porous mind through their songs. Sticky leaves on the sidewalk and a brisk chill that, after an hour of walking Tilly made me wish I'd worn a hat and gloves. Spring is fickle with warm days that turn quickly to sweater weather and then jacket weather. Fast music turns to slow…and thus…my tempo.
I was listening to a lecture online today about self-sadism and how we can be the greatest abusers of ourselves. We so often take notice of biological death but forget that a person can indeed die a spiritual death through negative self image, breeding a need for validation from unhappy sources, living in an endless cycle of need and desperation. This creates depression, anxiety, and an inability to feel one "measures up." An unhealthy cycle perpetuates in accepting unhealthy relationships that we endure because they are slightly less abusive than our own self-abuse. Deep shit. Woke me up. Made me want to write...
Set the wheels, ignited a chemical reaction in the magnets bouncing in my brain, made me want to go back out into the rain, walk it out, think it out. How does one return to one's TRUE SELF? How to stop living unconsciously, not be ruled by unhealthy answers to need and desire…how to engage in silence in quiet thought in a healthy manner? More crunching of leaves, hands wringing, heart singing with a mind willing to be open and accepting to the bells that have just begun their ringing.
True Self. An interesting couple of words. Pura Vida. Sincerity, truth, saying who I am, saying what I want and meaning the truth I give to others. So many of the nights at work, out in a group, answering phone calls from loved ones…it is hard to not paint a smile and say everything is alright while running from being smothered. It is so much harder to be sincere. I feel my face twitching uncomfortably, my eyes looking pained, while I wait for the moment that requires my sincerity to pass and I can start being real . End it with a joke or witty jab to wrap it up in a comfortable bow so no one will know.
Why is showing you are alone a weakness and why do I replace it with an imagined whirlwind of greatness? So many searches in these moments of unhappiness churn my stomach and my imagination as I try to figure out the meaning to becoming happy again. Because I am not happy.
I am not happy with my shallow choices and searches for warmth in temporary flames. The ashes in the morning are a symbol of the death, the inevitable and eventual state of loss, withdrawal and shame. To be alone in the presence of so many people and so much noise…I am asking for something from the world I can only give to myself and enjoy.
I feel another change, another insight in my view that is the ironic blessing of adversity and pain. It takes a steady willingness to walk up the hill, mingle my own sweat into the rain. These days in the dark and cold moments, I grow so much more than in the sunshine because there is no one but me. Just me. As much as it sounds like a breaking it is a growing, like the slow evolution of a tree. It is a realization anew of responsibilities to myself I have neglected. I am like my yard, overgrown with dead branches and forgotten flowers, vegetable gardens feeling rejected. It is a realization that change must come from within, a clearing of the overgrowth that releases all hostages of my blame.
And all it took…was a simple walk out in the rain.
