Layers upon layers upon uneven layers. Placed and thrown about at different moments in time, the spaces in which I've existed throughout. And often the layers are little to do with me--not me as me, per say. It's how other people and situations intersect us and augment our realities with their bits and pieces. At least that's the lens through which for so long I've come to be acquainted with grief and anguish and all the rest of it--and perhaps that's the crux. Is it others, is it us, is it our own expectations, or even just the nature of existence? Existence is suffering, I write that to remind myself and reflect yet still.
Today was already heavy. Started and ended weighty. In ways I see how I got the story I thought I always wanted--of being so afflicted I'd remain stuck in bed and touting sonnets of melancholia. To learn the topographies of emotion, big emotion. Big friendship. Gray spaces. Losses and gains, but mostly all that is in between. Indifferent and often unseen.
This day was a day of re-introductions. "Allow me", said the layers of gray and gloom. These days I open the door most times, I instruct my psyche to entertain fear insofar as it might be impactfully utilized. Yet there are places I get so stuck, frozen in numbed seconds or the span of full days. The full damn day feels a waste, but I conjure up as much patience and presence as I might know. I slip into a yellow garment and line my lips with red and if need be, dig through the tool box of reliefs that have been elicited over as many years. Did you know that when you find yourself enveloped in big sadness, you're advised to bite down on a pencil? The act of biting on the pencil forms your face into a perhaps unintentional smile that tricks your body into releasing endorphins. I've done that and been there, and I'm not so lofty that I'd envision not being there one day again. Resorting to biting pencils and watching videos of baby sloths as tears stream and I rock back and forth in the shower. I think rocking back and forth gets a bad name, it for me has felt a means of dispelling tears and tensions.
So as all that remains swirls and churns, I label sadness and solace with a name. Let it exist and be holy. Less and less do I feel an urge to protest these realities, demand fairness or justice. For if not my own, I would have some that were another's. Along with the joys and less hapless emotional signposts I've come to know, the sad and heavy ones instruct me all the same. Just listen and attune yourself to their pitches and peaks, come to decipher best practices and advisable routes. Books and blog entries may only guide us so far and after that, you're off the map. More these days when I find myself lost, I sit down and feel the ground beneath my own body. Breathe deeply and belay myself to the board. I did that in ways just today. Sitting still isn't always what I'd imagine it to be, it's not grand and revolutionary--mostly I sense myself suspended in a solitary somber wheel of freebased emotional analysis.
I reflect a fair number of my broadest smiles have emerged at the same time as tears, in the complimentary seconds of observing some massively consuming anguish. For I have found that in sorrow I am often transformed into a human of gratitude-filled acknowledgements in all that has been a blessing. I don't want to feel sorry for me, not because I perceive it weak or anything of that ilk, but rather that it's limiting and useless after a stint of marinating. No doubt in varied dates throughout my history I've been both the vinegar and the wine, unsure of which might be most befittingly useful.
I truly cannot attest to being grateful that this or that has happened or that things unfold as they have or will. I am, however, glad to be continuously crafting myself into a truly skilled navigator. I'm wearing sweatshirts more because there are far more frequent cuuute options than I realized and they mesh decently well with kooky leggings and sensibly spunky tennies. And not to forget the accessories--a long draping necklace or big bold earnings and a pop of bright lipstick. It's all necessary on certain days, but often I find comfort in the mashup of stylings and functionality--feeling truly rounded and grounded and wise, ready with a chic but utilitarian (tool) bag. Lastly, some swimmers and floaties. To rest as I must, float on as I can, and strapped in for the ride. Because truly, it is one helluva dang dong ride.
