I wanted to write about a lot of things this week; a warrior women’s manifesto, thoughts on the injustices of life and all the horrific ways it hurts us, the fact I finally cleaned my apartment (I assure you that is a blog worthy feat), the nuances of community, the nature of sadness, the beauty of travel but the truth is I can’t. I can’t because some days I can’t hold conviction about any one topic because I’m uncertain about the one element that filters them all; me.
I view myself, on the whole, to be a strong, independent, warrior of a women with a decent amount of style, pizzazz, and general enthusiasm for all things glitter. Lately, however, I haven’t been feeling that way. I didn’t want to acknowledge that truth to myself, let alone the internet, but then it occurred to me these truths, the ones that are hard to swallow, these are the ones we need to hold open to others so we can know we’re not alone.
So here’s my truth over the last week:
- I’ve been feeling insecure. In every arena of my life; physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and in relationships.
- I’m doubting my ability to manage my multiple commitments.
- I’m struggling with the ways life hurt me and at times, this week included, that makes me feel deep, profound despair
- I was rejected this week and that caused a chain reaction of emotions; anger, sadness, insecurity, doubt, confusion, fear, but most potent, loneliness for reasons I can’t disclose here.
- Things happened that cut at my soul. These things didn’t happen to me but they happened and they shouldn’t have. It breaks my heart and make me feel useless because I can’t undo these things and the fact that we live in a world where they happen makes me sick.
- I have no idea where I will be in May and the anxiety and grief associated with that grabs my heart and squeezes until my lungs feel equally confined.
Someone I love said to me that I don’t have to be strong all the time so when this week drop kicked my heart into the above truths I wasn’t strong and I felt it. I lived it. I cried it, painted it, kicked it, hand gesture yelled it, accidentally-sat-in-gum-laugh-cried-yelled about that, scared a teenager on accident with laugh-cry-yelling and now I’m writing it.
The truth is life gives us a million reasons to give up. I get angry, full blown, enraged when I think about it — about all the reasons I could give up, logically should, because by keeping my heart open and present I am subjecting myself to this experience.You have your reasons to. We all do, logically we have more reason to close off and autopilot through life than to engage with it.
Here I am, feeling like a real putz, volunteering to feel all of these things. Plus, here’s a thing I didn’t realize until recently, to engage takes so much damned effort. To love takes effort, to care, to connect, to create, to be present takes all of my time and energy. Literally, all of it, it’s ongoing, as in never ending, and that is an overwhelming revelation my autopilot past was unaware of but I’m trying; doing the best I can.
I do it for me to process and have some level of catharsis, yes, but I also do it in the hopes that something I experience and allow to shape me into creating and that something I create will speak to you.
You are part of why I write, paint, talk, present, love, because if in all that pouring my heart out it finds you maybe, just maybe, it gives you the message you are not alone. If it does, ever, even just once, then it becomes worth it, every miserable, uncomfortable truth part of it because then you and I stop being separate and we become us.
Even if it lasts for one blog post, we become united, in a connection. I haven’t been able to find all the words to dedicate a post to this just yet but together we are creators of my favorite works of art; community, and through that we find hope.
My hope to you, dear reader, is that as you read this post you feel comfort in the knowledge you are not alone and that I am extending my heart to you, in the moment, so that you can feel a surge of unconditional connected love.
The final thought I offer is that we keep holding out against that sweet talking charmer, logic, and we keep engaging because as Ray Bradbury said,
If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
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