Cookies and Gold

I feel heavy now. Heavy and somber. Like my heart is too much for my own skin. Ready to burst out and run away. Leave me, as I've been left. Maybe I left myself or maybe never knew myself. Learning, learning as I go. Why is there such pain in the teaching? Because it makes it stick-the lesson becomes imprinted in your being. I do wonder if you ever reach a quota of scars, of too many lessons learned the hardest ways. I like the quote that your heart keeps breaking until it stays open. When really I fear that my warmth and wellness has become and is further becoming callused and frayed. Broken and misunderstood. Never to have been or will be. Why must we be so alone? Forever we begin and end, alone. There could be a million around and yet we remain, alone. It shouldn't be such a saddening fate, but it just is. Even as we open ourselves in the deepest ways to others, we remain alone. With ourselves. Does this mean we are never, in fact, alone? It's merely a matter of getting to know the one that is with us, always. I can't and shan't be saved or found by anyone other than myself. Grasping and executing that has proven one of the most challenging of life. This day, this lesson. And on and on. To tomorrow or maybe just this next moment and the one after that. I live even as I feel deadened by the heart wrenching reality of living this life as it be. Learning to sit through the cracks and shards and piecing them together with gold or cookie dough. With a wooden spoon, I seek to mould the contentment of now. Whatever that means-it just came out like that. The same and all together different as I've been any other time. Right now, with my nut cookie soul.

These Zen Questions

With an unsure pace
she slowly proceeds out her room and down the hall.
I grab her hand and guide her towards the back door.
"Which car is yours?" she asks. And again once more.
"It's the silver one," I respond, pointing towards the car.
She opens the passenger door and sits in the seat.
"Where are we going?" she asks with a slight smile.
I repeat the plan, as I have numerous times in the last 2 minutes
"We're going to visit your son, my brother. Do you remember his name?"
She looks at me with a puzzled smile, "You know his name," I say, "it starts with a W"
"William," she says. "That's right," I assure her.
Conversations like these are common place and may seem simple.
But they are everything.
She is my Mom.
Some days she can't recall who we are or our names. She never can quite remember our birthdays, though too true she brought us into this world.
Often I regret the questions I never asked before her memories got buried.
Questions like what it was like to have 3 kids, to have so many untold secrets, to build your life around so many others. I miss and grieve for what I wanted us to have.
But it's not about me most days.
It's about these simple questions.
Guiding her through uncertainty and panic.
I grasp her hand and tell her I love her.
She smiles back at me
and even though she'll forget this all in another moment,
I relish in this opportunity.
She teaches me to be present in that way.
A zen master in her own right.
She only knows now and some of the past.
Some days she seems broken, as I feel broken
but other days she is the smartest person I know.
Teaching me, even now.
To live this life the only way we can-in this moment. In these simple questions.
I turn the key in the ignition and shift the car into reverse.
"Where are we going?" she asks me.
I smile, in this moment.

9/18/15

Decimated into so many pieces-you think I'd be accustomed to this place. But it hurts. It hurts like hell. Trust and time. Time and trust. We invest so much into projected happiness and well being. I'm not mad, so just so sad. The ways we mold ourselves for love.

Wednesday Musings

I guess I wish that I had more to say. Something more profound or relate-able. I wish I could take this moment and paint a beautiful picture. Maybe not famous, but definitely seen. I want to be seen. I want to be a special snowflake and want to not need to feel special. What if I just was? Just am. Somehow I believe that inability to be special equates to inability to prove worth. What must I be worth? A damn. Somehow maybe I'm not enough or never have been or will be. It's troubling to accept thoughts as they are, but what else can we trust? Trust requires confidence and confidence in much of anything feels distant. Confidence in death and taxes, perhaps.

Cracks and Daunting Tasks

I often wonder if I am destined to be alone for the rest of my days. Relationships feel complicated in a way I don't understand and have yet to garner skills necessary for ultimate success. Alone in all my messy sickness and cracks. I shall not have children and even pets feel a stretch, I barely engage my cat and it feels awful. Still, he loves me and that feels enough for now. Once I lived in a studio and though, at times, I recall feelings of loneliness, I also remember being at peace. It is, however, saddening to truly believe that the only means for peace might involve catering my environment to only myself. Perhaps these feelings evolved after a life of being taught to best meet the needs of others, sometimes I believe now is a time for myself. For a bit or maybe forever, either way would not be bad. I do not necessarily wish to be defined by damages up to this point in life, but rewriting the pathways in our brains seems a most daunting task. I am not contented with the current status, but often feel overwhelmed by perceived pressures to mend myself sooner and not later. The knowledge that I could be hurting others and even myself presents as unsettling. I do not like it. For now, I just sit with it.

Wisdom of Trees and Imperfections

More than anything, perhaps, I want to be seen. We all wish to be seen. As alive. As humanly. As worth a damn. To have some larger purpose. Or even a smaller purpose, any purpose that feels like anything. Feeling like I'm going through the motions of living, just trying to grasp for even a moment of joy. I think I used to know joy. I think I used to write more eloquently or perhaps, not at all. Reflections on the past are a tainted means for gauging the present and future, I realize. Still, my brain seems bent upon reliance of past experience.

All the days off work have blended together and though I've done things, I could not tell you much of what has happened. I envy those who find ways of enveloping their pain into creative productions. At least there is some visibility of existence. I'm worried I'll fade into nothing, though we all do this some day. Dust to dust or something.

I'm sitting in the new extra room we rent and remember I hate this couch I'm sitting on. The cushion smashes down unevenly and sloppily under my weight. I like the visible filament of the light bulb, but the output of direct lumens agitates my eyes and by extension, my brain. Everything feels like a damn agitation and I feel exhausted by my own self.

This is only but a moment, but it's all I can gauge. It's difficult to trust my perceptions of anything, even of myself. I wish that life could flow through me a bit more simply, for as of now each minute can range from complete agony to moderate tolerance.

Yesterday I biked outside among the trees and didn't think of much of anything beyond what was in front of me. I long for more moments such as those, and for now I focus on the gratitude of that experience. It's a reminder of what could be and has been. Good things, even within a soul that feels like chaos.

I aim to be operational within imperfection. This writing, perhaps, just is. Not perfect and maybe not anything beyond a capture of my brain space in this exact second. Imperfectly perfect, I've read it to be called. Here I sit, agitated by the lights and sounds and business of my mind.  I sit.

Am

I am a somebody, even when I feel like a nobody. Like nobody special, nobody recognizable. I work on trying not to label my existence, so just remember that "I am."

I am a person.
I exist.
I breathe.

Not sure that I know much else beyond that.

Rebel Hearts Do Exist

Such an infrequence of things to say. This brain seems to function this way. Now, at least.
Perhaps the usage of medication stifled the spirit, rendered this heart a bit less rebellious. And yet, coming off the medication for which I'd essentially utilized to sedate myself into submission, I feel the spirit alive and well. The struggle has been learning to sit through the madness and intensity of passionate awareness. Life feels good and I am attempting to avoid taking rash action. Important, perhaps, to maintain a roof over my head.

Jobs are odd things. I wish my job didn't feel like work. I do not mind putting in effort or hours when it feels seen and appreciated and feeds the soul, but that is not this reality. I miss the dedication and optimism of being a freshly minted employee. Miss believing in what we stood for and all the walls we would crush. Now the only thing that feels crushed is my drive.

Realize I do now this job is proportionate to being in an abusive relationship. "Why don't you just quit?" they ask. And truly it feels like the rationale so many find infuriating when trying to understand the cycle of domestic violence. For me, quitting or leaving would be akin to admitting what feels like failure, slandering the representation of a person I have for so long admired and loved and longed to be like. So when you ask why I don't leave, it's not that simple and I don't expect understanding. That said, it's not to imply I don't recognize the flaw of staying in a place that triggers my deepest insecurities and almost revels in feeding a world view of limitation. As if to say, be grateful for what you have. Don't challenge this status quo and don't you dare speak ill of those in power unless you're ready to leave. And not only as if to say, but do they. They say these things.

I find comfort in knowing I'm not alone. Not in this work place, not in this life. Discontent abounds and reveals the notion of perfection to be a false messiah. I do not feel the desire to continue worship of this demeaning arrival fallacy. It might never be ok and yes, life is suffering and sometimes unbearable. But I don't know if I can, in clear conscience, continue to commit to the abusive destruction of this job. I am a human being with feelings, dammit. Maybe I can refer a robot in my stead.