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.
Hi you. Yes, you.
You’ve been telling yourself that you aren’t strong. A direct contradiction to the face you put out every morning; the one others filled with their own expectations and emotions judge you by. And that contradiction is killing you. Slowly.
You’re strong! You’re strong. Not every time, now. Not every hour of every day, and certainly not every day of every week.
It’s okay that you struggle with yourself and your mind, and the anxieties of work, which you can’t stop conflating with the anxieties of life. It’s okay when you feel like the people in your life with whom you can be vulnerable for their strength, no longer have their own secure foundation and so cannot carry you. It’s okay to want to take a break from them then, as you learn. It’s okay, too, to forgive them for being human, even as you forgive yourself for being the same. But then, remember, you are strong. You’ve just gotta pick yourself up.
My iPhone has had this little problem ever since I got it – it doesn’t sync with my laptop. It never has. Whenever I plug it in, it asks me if I would like to “trust” this computer. MY computer (Yes, damn it, I said yes the last plug in as well, and put in the passcode to prove it!). Now, I got it in my head almost immediately that I would not be able to retrieve my phone memory if I went to the apple store to have it looked into; that they would do a factory reset and that would be it for years of obsessively preserved (and sometimes stolen) photos and other random virtual memorabilia. Did I ever actually go to to the apple store and find out my options? Nope. But somehow, every time this point of frustration has come up over the past year, I’ve treated it like some given part of life; some fixture that will never change as long as I own this phone – like when I dropped the 1000 dollars for the purchase I had also signed some very small dotted line agreeing to a couple years of growing pains.
I say that last part like a joke but in the end I actually had. My brain had jumped and jumped from mental block to mental block; skipped one mental hurdle just to trip over another, only to arrive at this absurd conclusion. And now? I’m the individual in possession of some really stodgy alternative facts simply because I refused to do my research. More absurd than that was the ease with which I allowed my brain convince me that I did not have the 30 minutes of energy or time to stop by the apple store on my way home from work one day to ask the question and perhaps get it fixed. Even more absurd, if one could believe it, is the certainty with which I accepted this fact. The phone trust issue became a “known” precept, something around which I had to adjust myself if I intended to feel more at ease. All it did was increase my resting sense of discomfort. Yet I knowingly (most days really on this subconscious level) and willingly allowed this to continue for a year. And there are so many other things and areas of my life that have lain dormant and unquestioned for eons past their season simply because of this passive mindset I’ve kept.
I say passive because it has surely not been something I’ve actively thought about in this manner. If I had earlier, perhaps I might already be a few steps down the road to remediation. It is, however, never too late. It’s just still crazy to me how we sometimes let ourselves be our own biggest blocks in what are, sometimes, the seemingly most innocuous ways. All we can hope for is discernment and the spirit to tell your goddamn lazy ass to get the hell up and keep pushing for you. To come through for you. To love you enough to BE you, fully exploring and realizing all that potential, all those possibilities.
The hope is that we do this always; that we manage this without wasting accumulating minutes repeatedly telling one inanimate object to display the very animated, human emotion of trust for another similarly inanimate and decidedly non-human object. Over and over again. My God. What a bloody waste of time.
In-Threes 