Things to Sort

I wrote this back in July 2012. It started off with a ‘things to sort physically’ paragraphy, which involved getting rid of furniture and clothes, papers and business items. I’m not sure where I was going, given that I am still living in the same house, but I was definitely in a moving on phase.

Once again, I find myself there, and the message I wrote to myself still strikes my heart with purpose, wisdom and compassion. Some of the knowledge I have put into practise, so much of it is still the evolution of myself.

Perhaps you will find a little inspiration within my words, as I have.

Things to sort emotionally: Tell your friends you love them. Leave the pain in the past and be grateful for how it has shaped you. Let your relationships with your birth families be. Visit your parents every 3 months, and make it even sooner if you can. Know that everything had a plan, to get you to where you should be, to make you strong enough to cope, to shape who you are, to recognise that depth of emotions are important, but do not have to rule who you are. Notice how others include joy in their life. Let the small things roll off you.  Let others be who they are as much as you wish to embrace your own differences.  If others judge you, realise it is because they are insecure and trying to make you feel smaller than them, and do not listen to their judgements as they mean nothing.  Accept that you may always be searching for what you want to do, for who you think you should be, and that means a journey full of different experiences, of development, of ability to excel at anything you chose.  This makes you are adaptable and capable far beyond what you perceive to be your limits. Love with your walls and boundaries down, with no expectations, just be with them.  If you lose them, appreciate what you gained. If you keep them, then you both gain.  The relationships you have may change, their declarations of feelings may change, what matters is your response to the change and letting go of who they have become.  If they chose to only give part of themselves, accept this. If you need more, let them know, and find it else where. This does not mean that person has to leave your life, because what they do offer can be wonderful.  Do not expect one person to fulfill all your needs in a relationship.  Do not expect anyone to fulfill you and love you except you. Love yourself. You are the best person to know what is right for you, despite what others say, despite their opinions and comments, their looks, their judgements, it all comes down to you. You know how wonderful you are.

Things to sort externally: Cease external reliance.  Accept that a job is just a job, it does not have to complete you.  Allow it to stay at work, do what you need to do, and come home at the end of the day to live your life. Value yourself, but not to the detriment of getting your job done to your satisfaction. Be graceful. Be firm. Be resilient. Treat others, including strangers, as beautiful people with respect. Be courteous. Be humble. Smile. Accept that others who are like yourself are not competition but just beings doing their thing. Honour your body, with the things you eat, the way you move, the stretches you engage in, the pain it needs healing from. Let water cleanse you. Listen to your mind, challenge it, let it discover and engage in stronger thought than you give it. Express yourself. Gain financial independence, know where your money goes and indulge in things to make you happy, even though you have learnt not to do this. Say yes to more things that will make you smile, say no to things that you will regret. Learn more things that will give you job. Spend less time on the things that don’t matter.  Don’t carry guilt. Dont carry shame.

Allow yourself to be at one with the trees that bend, the breeze that blows, the waves that crash and the heart that beats.

Tick the boxes for now.

I’ve wondered for quite a long time about this ‘being human’ thing that I find my soul in.

For years I have thought I was a fallen angel, the pain I feel in my shoulders is memory of my wings being ripped out. Maybe I was influenced too much by the movie Dogma, but its a feeling that’s floated in my mind for many years as I look sky ward, losing myself in clouds during the day and stars at night.

If not a fallen angel, then I am definitely a soul that is here not for an easy existence, but one of learning and questioning, of contemplating the human reality, dissecting human nature.  I feel apart from the seemingly simple relationships that humans seem to develop so easy with each other. I know I’m not the only one who feels like they don’t ‘fit in’, obviously many humans have this and it does seem strange that so many don’t people live with this disconnection with their fellow humans.

Not that I think being human gives you an automatic right to an ease of companionship with other humans. Far from it. But there is a simple, relaxed way of life that so many people attain with other people, that I have never felt. Laughter happens, it is a non complicated passing of life and time. A lack of self consciousness maybe, perhaps an abilty to be without judgement, a simplified co existence while together.

All I feel is hard work, that I pick up the pieces that other’s leave behind, that I’m the one doing things that other’s fail to do, that I am sense and order and unfailing critque. It is tiring. It is not fun, this life I lead, but I know no other way of living, it feels like my duty.

I think there have only been two short periods of time during my 40 years where I have, on a daily basis, felt free and happy.

The remainder of life, often interspersed with depressive episdoes from wearying and physical circumstances that happened to me, has been one of existence, with little joy or connection. I am silent, observing, not able to find a way to be involved or offer anything that is of value to others. I have, as a result, learned to not connect, to avoid connection, to the point that now I expect no connection with most humans. I exist among you, not with you.

I see this reflected in my inability to be considered by people I know, even ‘friends’ when it comes to regular connection. I am not someone who enters their mind. Despite my large body, I have felt invisible through this entire life, and therefore I am existing now as if I am invisible.

It matters not. One day I will be invisible, I will cease being human. My soul will hopefully live on in a better, happy place.  Perhaps no one will notice until they need me for something. Others wont notice at all. I do hope that before that time comes, I manage to experience another period of happiness, if not for my human being, but for this soul of mine that feels trapped in a nightmare punishment.

To be a soul that is so full of love, a soul in awe of the world, blown away by nature, dumbstruck by the planet and the universe, that animals can make me cry and my gut aches deeply when the sun sets upon the horizon, is an amazing experience; yet to be a human stuck in a life where daily routine to work, tick boxes, smile and nod, not speak of the passions in my soul, not connect my inner being with practially 99% of the people I interact with, it is almost too much to bear. How can you all stand it?  Where are all the souls in the humans I encounter?

I can’t see you, I can’t feel you. I am almost all alone.

Space Invaders in my mind

Day 2. Subconscious repositioning.

I’m flying through the air and over the earth, looking out at the beach on the west coast at sunset, near the edge of a gradual cliff. The sky is soft and bright all at once, the air is warm and refreshingly chill. I am still. I stay here. It is as if time has stopped yet the earth still moves. Then suddenly it as if I have blinked and opened my eyes upon a different scene.

I have moved countries, yet still looking west towards the sun, it is still sunset, and as it sets below the horizion I feel myself zoom backwards and up into the sky. I am flying over a green jungle into a clearing, it is lush with life and the greens are so bright it looks as if the entire jungle as been polished. The soft light in the sky is pastel from the set sun. I hang below cloud level, like a bird hanging in the breeze. I feel the warm air rising from the earth and the coolness blowing upon my back from the sky above. Suddenly,  I soar backwards up through the sky.

Stillness. We float.

We are in the cosmos, in space.

It is blackness and light all at the same time. The air is cold. I am at peace.

It is quiet.

I can barely breathe.

Then I realise, I don’t need breath any more. I am a part of the universe, I am not a body of human flesh, but an energy that needs no fuel to sustain life.

I am at one with every far-reaching particle of everything that exists. I have never felt more whole.

I make no effort to move. I want to stay here, I belong here. Don’t make me move anywhere.

Stillness and peace.

Don’t make me move.

Let me be. Just be. Right here. Always.

Let me be.

I realise I am moving in a floating state. It is quiet, so very quiet, and the stars seem close, I feel like I belong to each one of them, yet I look around and through the galaxy and suddenly all the planets and stars seem so far from me. I look toward earth, the blue, the white, the green. Home.

My being wants to go home.

We zoom through the galaxy. I plummet and feel the weight return to my body, the air transistions from being a part of me to a being a force against me.

Then stillness. Just floating in the mist of dark and light. I have reached the cusp of earth’s atmosphere. I have stopped. I long to be in both places, to be a being, to be everything, to be nothing, to be all that is and was and to become more. Then I plummet faster, full speed back to earth.

I breath deeply and suddenly am standing by a large river. I walk. The grass is long and dry. The river is wide with a slow-moving current, reflecting the clouds. This body I am in has no pain, this is freedom for my earth-bound being.  I walk along the side of the river then head inland. There is forest. The air is calm. There is no fear. This is where I am meant to be.

Then static. Grey static. Transmission lost and a baby’s face in the static. The end of today. The end of day 2/100. 11.58am.

Words from my subconsious

Now is not the time to feel weighed down by the pain, weighed down by the movement of life. It is a time to flow with the daily mundane, the daily chore, and let it wash over and through you, as it is part of life at this moment of where you are.

The lightness comes in the sneaky corners, aware from the focus of doing the day, waiting for you to grasp it, to hold it. Allow light to wash upon all that you do, so that each day, each chore, each task you have to do becomes lighter and lighter, causing less impact on your body, on your mind, and on your soul, until they become a pleasure to do.

This is how one must release the pressure and weight of modern life. When the activity of doing becomes an activity of being, the heavy ache of doing becomes the light act of being.

Soon the light will begin to not just sneak in, but be allowed in. You will invite it to shed its glow upon each thing that you do. As everything lights up, it will not only become light from brightness, but lighter in weight upon your being. Even your pain will lighten upon your being, and ease itself out of your cells. You will know what it is to be free of pain more and more. You will let the weight out and light in.

All you have to do, is feel fresh illuminating vibrancy to your core of everything you do. Alluring energy. Let it become your way of being.

 

Another end of year reflection blog

I was resisting doing this blog.

I feel like I have spent my entire life looking back and contemplating, examining and reflecting.

Quite frankly, I have got damn bored of it. But it is the end of the year, and everyone else is doing one of these blogs. Plus, I’m trying to imagine how I can move into the new year with faith and hope, without a tiny reflection about how to have a different perspective on life. 

I have done an awful lot of growing up this year. In fact, I think I finally found myself. Which, considering the year started with me losing myself, is probably to be expected.  

I have been the brokest I have ever been. and that is saying something.  It has truly taught me that without money, few people want to know you, have anything to do with you or invite you anywhere. Gosh its a fickle, superficial world we live in, New Zealand. 

There is an entire sector of people in our community who think that because you have a degree and are earning a great deal of money, then people who don’t have a degree and are doing ‘unskilled work’ are actually less human and less worthy of being treated as human. I don’t like the people who think this. My unskilled work does not reflect my level of intelligence, I accept that. But it doesn’t mean unskilled workers don’t have intelligence nor does it mean they don’t dream of the life they would have had as a doctor or astronaut.  Show your waitress respect.

OOOO nasty bit of reflection. 

I learned that some people are there for you no matter what. They promise nothing. They don’t say things and then never follow through. They just know that they need to be there when you need them, and you know that they are. There are very few people who are this wonderful, who think beyond themselves and extend their heart with utter love. I am incredibly blessed with the people in my life who are these people. I have been taught what real friendship is. 

I have learned I don’t like working on my own. I am a people person. Given another chance at life, I would have gone in to Human Relations, Marketing or PR.  I would excel at this. But because I don’t have the experience or a degree, this is practically unachievable. So I will pump my own fist at knowing how awesome I would have been in this field. Also, that I hate sales, and that those job offers as a Sales Rep were the right thing for me to turn down. I would have been an awesome Pediatrician too. 

I have learned that family is what you make it, not a blood tie or a legal document. I lost a family member this year. I couldn’t attend the funeral. That was a sad point. The same family gained a wee cherub. That was a happy point. 

I have learned to catch curve balls when they are thrown at me. Also chocolate bars, which often fly through the air at the greatest of speed. 

On reflection, not having the money for a facial every few months hasn’t aged me as much as I thought it would. My hair hasn’t fallen out because I have returned to cutting it to save money. My friends don’t ignore me because I’m wearing knickers so old they are in holes. Nor does my dog cuddle me any less because I can only afford supermarket food for him instead of specialised breed vet food.

I broke my heart. I gained a backbone. I gave the universe an ultimatium and in return it gave me a love that will be here for the rest of my life. I learned to fight, to speak up, to get angry, to use my anger to let my voice be heard and my needs met. I let go of what could have beens and should have beens.

I realised that some people will stop at nothing to damage people, to manipulate them, to hurt them, purely for their own amusement. These people are to be ignored. The end.

I learned it is okay to walk away from someone in the middle of them talking to me if it does not serve my mental health well to stay there. 

Ultimately, I have done my utmost to make people realise that having mental health issues does not mean you are crazy or insane, as much as bleeding after cutting your finger with a knife does not make you a haemophiliac.  

I see a counselor every week. If you chose to not see one, you are chosing to stay stuck in your pain and I will not listen to your problems any more. You only want to hear and indulge in your pain, you do not want to leave it.

I have learned that driving half way across the country to have a drink with a stranger was the best way to see in the last New Years.

Which brings me to this New Years.

My boyfriend is the highlight of my year. He arrived in my life as I was going through hell with my career. He makes me laugh every day, he and my Dad get on as if they are family already, and he misses my dog as much as me when Angelo is away. It has been me who questioned commitment, as I realised I fear it as much as I avoid happiness. Lucky for me, I now have both. The boyfriend is here to see in the new year. We will smile. 

A big year. My career went no where, yet ironically, it is because of this, that I am now returning to my beloved career as a self-employed massage therapist.

I have accepted myself as a true resilient, loving, caring soul. I am not as kind as I used to be, yet this stops me being used as I have been in the past. I have learned to say enough. I have stuck up for myself. I have assessed my own sense of what I have done wrong and right. 

Finally, 1 year and 14 days before I turn 40, I love me. Now that is a good self-reflection.

 

You are beautifully imperfect.

Little bird 

high up here in your nest

safe in the branches

bending as they sway.

It is the day

when you need

to spread your wings

and fly away.

As you go

you may fall on the ground

you may get hurt

you may get it wrong.

It make take a few goes

you may get scared

but little bird 

you are strong.

Soon you will soar

your wings fierce

you are not broken

your path is direct.

Others will watch

you fly past them

you uplift their hearts

you are beautifully imperfect.