About once a year now I find myself there. It takes me a while to recognize it because I’ve tried to intentionally and unintentionally not remember the path here. To allow mother nature to take over and hide the way because I refuse to use it…. But for the far and few times I make it here now, I find myself skimming the edges of the charred forest where we once tried to grow things. It’s still black, never grew back. Scarred. When I walk the edge of this land, I can’t tell if I’m revisiting it to try and remember the touch of my hand holding your face or your smile that shot a thousand stars into my night sky, or if I’m coming there to remind myself that I never want to feel that way again. So much good on the surface so much pain on the other side. When I trace this line of land with my bare feet and navigate this flood of emotions and skewed memories, many I think I’ve forgotten, or hoped to, I swear I feel the heat under the ground. Little embers waiting to turn ablaze and burn again. But I like greenery, and I want to protect that that which remains here. So, I try to not acknowledge their existence too much as I pebble along waiting to be drawn away from this dark place again. Eventually, I seem to always choose that.
Tag: journaling
Rage’s paint brush and compass
I think for the first time, at 27, I’ve been encouraged to really feel my anger. Been told that it was okay. That there was beauty and lessons to behold within and from it.
Honestly, it’s a weird, fiery, but oh so elegantly beautiful chaos here. The first time I’m looking at the red sky of my own purgatory,. Rather than running from the monsters here, I’m just looking up, noticing the strokes of red and black. No longer feeling fear. Just feeling. It’s bizarre, somber. Not static, just… dark. and that’s okay. There’s a weird peace in facing it. Greeting it. Finally acknowledging. And now, writing this, looking at this beauty, realizing it won’t engulf me whole if I don’t want it to… I wonder why I’ve been running from it my whole life, why my parents ran from it there whole lives. What a tireless, endless, and false hoped-marathon that is. To not acknowledge true pain, curiosity, trauma, to allow ourselves to fear the rage that comes with tthat. That we’re allowed to have. That is so natural. WHy do we fear this side of our nature? I think with less resistance, and with respect instead, we won’t take the very actions we imagine would cause us more pain and regret from these raw emotions. OUr samsara, maya has such a way about it doesn’t it? Such a strong face and yet the most misleading and hollow. ANd people spend their whole lives running from that false representation and even build entire empires on that ground, a ground that was flagged wrong, filled with toxins and dumpster waste, radiation, killing us slowly. A land they thought was bountiful… but what if the most bountiful view, the one you most bountiful to you ,whatever that means, was actually somewhere different? had other things, ones that you decided personally brought you peace, and that was somewhere very different?
A snake shedding skin.
We pay for wisdom with innocence.
May we come back around enough to not be jaded.
May we remember what it feels like to remain compassionate.
Shreds.
Every unturned rock within ourselves turned into a landmine for the other. we were trying to navigate through the explosions in real time. A hole within me became a bruising on you. A beating wound within you became scars on me.
Fire.
to ashes.
We burned.
Awareness and Acceptance
Do you think… if we would have had more words then, it would be different now?
Bonded
I look back at the pictures and at first I see so much joy, longing piecing into each other… then just below that, waves and knots of pain, unraveling down deep into Marianas Trench… and somehow we found a point of connection down there too. Hearing each other’s echos… maybe that’s where we comforted each other most. Both hoping that we descended further to the core of the earth where maybe true, unconditional love was as pure as heat is organic there… Maybe that’s where we thought we’d meet. If we could just swim through the darkness more. But when I heard and you heard me were always at different levels. Ships passing in the night down there. I guess how could we have met we were broken differently, healing different wounds, swimming in different patterns with not enough tools to bring us to a point of common ground, empathy.
Something I know for sure though is that if we didn’t find the healthiest of love, there was love there. Twisted and gnarled and sad but it was. And that connection will never be forgotten. It lives.
Messy humans
And for every moment I see that I was wrong do I color in another line in the drawing etching itself from my hand, almost as if to get free of me. I can’t separate the shapes and colors at first.. and while I try to make sense of it through my eyes, instead I hear it sing to me “… two insecurities don’t make a right.”
Un-
There was just so much more …
Between you & me
I. Hate. That you made me choose.
As I love and breathe, I cry.
I feel like an oil painting that never dries. My colors are changing or they are bleeding from one to the next. Sometimes taking shape, sometimes looking like noise. The salt water keeps everything wet. Sometimes, I think… that says more than the words I can find to describe it.
