Monday, July 19, 2010

Truth or bust

"Runnin over the same old ground
What have we found?
the same old fears
Wish you were here"
-Pink Floyd



I pictured an exciting sassy trip, where I would write cutesy blogs about my adventures....and I did do lots of fun things, and I do have lots of stories to tell about my trip. Just not here because really when the dust settled in Charlottesville, I realized how much healing I have desperately needed for so long, and the hard work of facing all that hurt began. It's excrutiating to be alone mentally when you just keep uncovering more bullshit that you need to let go of. I laid around and read Clarissa Pinkola Estes to learn about regaining my inner wild woman....I drank whiskey and listened to a lot of Jeff Buckley, and Ryan Adams, and of course Ray LaMontagne. I playlisted tortured break up songs, love songs, and ultimate sing along songs. I cried, which I rarely do. I ran some. I ate delicious food. I missed my kids and the closeness and joy with them I used to not take for granted. I shared many cherished, heartwrenching and hysterical conversations with Jenee...who simply loved me despite my quiet distance and nursed my weary spirit back to health.

I have tried to write many times since that last blog, because I feel as if I should have an answer after taking off for 6 weeks. My time was saturated with many conversations about happiness, and finding your place, and your one true love, and the end all that we are all searching for I suppose. A perfect fit of all the parts that could be right in ones life...only I dont think they are ever supposed to just fit and stay there. Where's the fun in that? I left home with emotional fires burning me alive, searching for bliss. That's a bit of a quantum leap, especially if you assume, as I did, that bliss is an absolute destination...like a magic answer to my life. The harder I look, the more tortured and jammed up I become.

I must say that I should rename my trip "truth or bust" because I found many truths that I couldnt find my way around...and I have different ideas about bliss and where it hides...My voice has changed, and my life has changed so drastically that words seem ill suited sometimes...but I can't get on with things until I write it. I'm a keep it real kind of girl and if I wrote about bliss with some absolute, starry eyed, clear blue answer I would be full of shit. So here is my authentic run down...

I ate and drank my self into oblivion and I loved every sip, shot and bite. I barely exercised and throughly enjoyed being useless. I gained 18 pounds...all in my ass. I can no longer button any of my size 4 pants, I am now a solid 8 and I don't really give a damn. How's that for loving myself?

Nearly every trunk show cancelled. I left broke and returned home even more broke with bill collectors calling. I was afforded this trip by the generosity of friends and family that Mother Theresa probably doesn't deserve. I am loved, and insanely insecure that I don't give back a tenth of what the people in my life give me, and that I am a self indulgent flake. But a flake full of gratitude and that's all I can say about that without getting wordy and over the top.

When it comes to men, I have been a complete and total idiot. That's my biggest and most debilitating weakness and the only truth about me that is absolute. I have a lifetime of scars and heartbreak blogs to prove it. My strength lies in my ability to overshadow beautiful uplifting scenery, precious time with friends I dont see nearly enough, showering, eating and breathing with obsessive thoughts about those scars and heartbreak stories...so much so that it effects and infects the mother, daughter, sister, friend, niece, cousin, co worker, and.....girlfriend that I want to be. Not fun to admit you are a stupid girl. That girl. Here is my song to that girl, I want her to let *me* go and let me be happy, and be in love, and not be scared, and trust herself to choose someone inherently good to share herself with.
"Bring me
Light from where I thought it was dark
Be the spark that has a chance to
Light the candle
Love, that I can handle"



At The Libby Lodge for Wayward Women there is a bird that flies into Bruce and Jenee's windows, over and over and over and over again. They have tried hanging posters, but the little guy just keeps doing it. He doesn't learn. I spend an awful lot of time flying into windows myself. Trapped in loops of being me, thinking about being me, loving being me, recovering from being me. Same old fears. I wish I was here. Because the bliss, for me, is feeling free enough to stay right here, right now, present in the moment. Free of all the things I have been through, and free from my expectations and fears of what might happen next. Free of standard definitions of happiness that add up to having more stuff, and the act of faking it through having a bunch of empty stuff that doesnt make me any happier. The shape of happy is a fickle thing, changing like the weather, and the only way to find it is to be here now. That sounds new age-y maybe, but its my truth.

It's the lemons that I chose to write about, and the lemonade made it onto facebook in real time... they happened simultaneously like always, I'm just not feeling morphing them into a perfect piece this time. I don't like this blog but it's authentic, and authentic is free as I have now learned, and free = bliss.

1 comment:

  1. You're not an idiot. You're learning. Baby steps girl, baby steps. It took me 20 years to learn how to be with a man, how to appreciate a man that didn't shit all over me. Now I'm taking another 20 to learn how to be a friend....and a writer.....when you know better you do better. And now you know better.

    This blog is your best because it's the truth. YOUR truth. <3 <3 <3

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