Walking the world with me while I walked it alone
In stride
Staying in the periphery when my tunnel vision kept me blind
Respecting all the boundaries but toeing, still,
The line
Keeping silent in the vacuum, acts-in-service – practiced mime
Stars are stars
always
steady,
twinkling, in the sky
Sweet serendipity, sweet universe, allowing ours
collide.
Sometimes self hate looks like trivializing your own trauma; comparing your handle on pain to others’ handles, with your superficial understanding of their metaphysical navigation.
Sometimes self love looks like you beginning to understand that you are strong beyond measure because the things you go through are heavy for you. So heavy, in fact, that you are weighed down. And that weight you feel is in your mind but also outside of it because it textures the fabric of your life. Yet, this weight is sometimes lifted. You are able to move around under it. Yes, it forms the clouds above you and that is it’s own grey issue. But the weight is sometimes lifted, and you are the one lifting it.
So the next time you doubt your own suffering, the next time you feel like you should not be weighed down by the triviality you have decided is your life, understand that you are brave beyond measure, strong beyond will, and that part of the measure of a good life is our willingness to continue shouldering our barely manageable burdens long enough to receive our light.
Its this process of “collective” grief.
It’s the feeling like you are not recovering as fast as the rest of the collective. When you feel like your rage is overblown because you do not see it mirrored communally but do not realise that you, too, are moving through life silently, simmering, but only below the surface. Rage on mute. About to boil over but not yet, not quite. When is the bounce back, the recovery? And as you are doing this, as you are moving through with your muted rage, your comrades are moving through with theirs too, maybe not as silently, maybe not very loudly either. Unbeknownst to you. This perceived silence – the sweet, elusive recovery time- is ripe and heavy with the weight of pent up rage. No one is bouncing back. Communally. And sometimes, the only catharsis achieved in these moments is through witnessing the turbulence, the pressure cooker of emotions roiling in the depths of the “collective” eye, in the burdened beat path routed to the reality of connection with the kindred in community. Collective healing, from the vantage point au milieu; the crowd clamoring for justice to remain in full view. Change, unspooling, whipped in old ideas of the “new”.
Change.
I don’t think the process of change is intended to be pleasant. We have never asked the butterfly how it feels to be in the chrysalis. We just rejoice in solidarity when it breaks free and begins to fly. And what was the process like in that shell? Did the wings rip it’s body apart as they formed? Did the caterpillar fear being reborn? What must flight have looked like for one so close to the ground? Are there screams of protest against the metamorphosis with voices too shrill to translate into sturdy vibrations? Are we not paying enough attention to hear them or is the silence it’s own picture of strain. When I feel pain, I curl, I shut my eyes tight and squeeze; tensing muscles till my hands are unyielding mallets and the mounds that clog the barely formed arches on my flat feet, spasm. I experience pain in flows I want to ebb into oblivion. So perhaps there is a tortured silence in a changing pulse. Or maybe this is out of the loop and there is no pain at all. Just discomfort. Just a longing to hold on to the stable we have built before being dragged by our wings into verdant fields of unknown.
Perhaps the caterpillar lived in pain and discomfort every aching moment till it was freed. Perhaps change was the road not taken that led to peace.
Peace.
No justice. No peace.
Rage is rage. Muted or shrill.
Inconsolable, is the collective grief.
Savor it sweet,
Sweetly
Savor it sweet,
Fleeting
As it comes
Savor it, savor it
Moment en moment
It does not softly rain through the snow
It melts, it hardens
The layers beyond are brittle
Cracked with the slightest pressure
Flowered with fluff
Relying on roots that do not pierce
That which does not pierce cannot persevere
It does not softly rain through the snow
It cures, it mixes
the mulch and concrete, serving us
Dirt from the deep
Footsteps wound beneath
Donning unique rivulets to the crevices
Through which the mulch mix
Seeps
It does not softly rain through the snow
It alters,
Waters down many moons, in flow.
Focus on your breathing or some shit
And let the fact that the scab is now a scar convince you that you are healing
(though, not quick)
The pangs will not always echo as long or flow as deep
The earth quaking in your chest cavity when you weep
will eventually not exhaust you
And the dark you so strongly want to deplete will recede
through the fault lines of your lips
Memories seeping towards release
Whispers in the mist –
Breathe, breathe, breathe
Try to visualize how big the universe is- can you see it?
Do you have the scope?
And that moment when you realize that the task you have just been set exceeds the bounds of your imagination- that submission to the impossibility of the Sisyphean?
Do you feel it? Have you manned the slope?
It is in that moment that you might understand it’s totality. And then, like me, all that will remain is the surrender of control to its unconditional being.
Have you learned it? Have you mined it’s hope?
I opened my arms as wide as they could go
Then imagined that I was throwing them even wider –
Wider than they could throw
I set about to gather the galaxy in their midst
But first I had to see the galaxy’s limits,
wrap my hands around it’s borders, and squeeze
them into the labyrinth of my ribs
I breathed out to remove the excess that would impede this feat;
Lungs and air excessive in the rift
that I had created to hold the universe within
And I should have understood at the end the same thing
I wish I had known at the beginning-
That I could not see this galaxy’s limits.
So I stretched and stretched
and hoped to stumble upon its size within my mind
so I could then follow the map to its sides
When I realized I did not even know
the borders of my own mind
I could not touch the edges of my imagination. Yet beyond that lay the universe, HER own initiation, so I froze as it came to me that arms out wide, they lay short of reconciliation –
Are you living it? Is this ship afloat?
Try again to visualize how big the universe is; try to understand that this cannot be achieved.
The impossible task was comprehending its very magnitude, understanding that I could not hope to reach it’s resolve; the moment when I finally let go. This is the only moment you need to understand why I closed my arms and accepted the vastness of the universe in loving you.
In relationships, where is the marker between ego and self respect?
In respect, where is the marker between ego and sense of self?
What do we know about sense of self? My sense of self shifts everyday, from its very foundation. I spend a lot of time oscillating between an understanding of my scope of self and then an understanding of how many of those parts are interacting on a daily basis.
How many people are convinced that they haven’t looked deep enough into themselves? Like they haven’t peeled back the layers far enough and what they understand to be of self might very well have left a few layers unexplored. What if you’re only a talented liar when it comes to lies you tell yourself?
I’m convinced this is the case with a lot of people who harbor the fear of being hurt, or who have at some point or the other in their lives, decided against the long hard road of emotional unease, opting instead to pretend that something never mattered that much, never got deep enough to hurt them to distraction. That fear of vulnerability is an acceptance of self deception; a contract to lie to oneself for as long as necessary and maybe till the day they die, a bed of uncertainty made that will grow doubt and confusion for a significant portion of one’s life. It’s as simple as this – if I fear my hurt to the point where I am unwilling to feel it all the way through, I will throw up blocks with varying levels of dishonesty in order to build a solid enough labyrinth in my mind to prevent my access to the truth aka the pain. That labyrinth will only serve as the shaky foundation to my continued perception of my self and my values and my strength. This foundation will leave cracks wide enough for anxiety, self doubt, self loathing, and depression to seep in and find purchase. If one is susceptible to these things, at least.
Whenever the day comes that I then want to dig out, break down this house on its shaky foundation, I will find that it’s been welded with a variety of stuff I had no business gathering. Now the chaff and grain are identifying as self, now I identify as part chaff, now I’m doubting my worth. Now I’m doubting me. How does one go about untangling that? And how does the building’s demolition not feel like self destruction? How do you start from scratch when the scratch you’ve so far come to understand has been a lie?
Where is that marker exactly? Where is that sense of self?
Anyway, I’m a stone in this quarry, a sailor on this sea. I’m currently struggling with these questions. I’m on a constant search to find me.
“The next time he sees me, he should look the other way, pretend he never met me one day in his sorry life. “
He looked up.
“Nooo, you don’t know. You haven’t seen. He’s different now. Calmer. The last time he saw me, he bowed when he greeted me, bowed! He’s seen things since then. Different roads- life has humbled him, you’ll see.”
She snorted.
“People like him aren’t humbled. The soonest they get a chance at recovery, they jump into their old bullshit, treating people like dirt because they believe they are better, deserve better. That’s how you know his circumstances may have changed but they haven’t changed him.
Life has halted him, not humbled him.
For humility, life would need to have taught him some lessons, ones he actually learned. But he didn’t come to be a student of life. He came to conquer it.”
You shouldn’t block it; you should feel it. It should hurt.
For if it hurts, it heals…
In-Threes 