Category: Self Reflection

Personal essays on self reflection diving into hard truths on personal behaviors, issues and thought patterns to lead to personal growth and development.

Self Reflection

Wasting Time.

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I think about the future a lot.

By that I mean, I try not to think about the future a lot.

By that I mean, if I think about the future too much I spiral out into an existential crisis.

People like to ask you about your future. What are your goals? Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What are you doing this weekend?

My answer to these questions is usually, ‘I don’t know, whatever I feel like doing.’

I wish I was saying this because I am a totally free spirit who only lives in the present moment but I’m not. I’m scared to think I know what my future holds. If the past year has taught me anything, it’s that if you think you know what the future holds, you’re probably dead wrong.

So now I am afraid to know but I’m also afraid of not knowing. And I have absolutely no idea how to answer any of those questions.

I feel like I am in limbo. I don’t move forward or backward. I’m stuck.

I take the exact same road to get pretty much anywhere I need to go. I am usually focused on the road in front of me as I am a diligent and responsible driver.

There are mountains in every direction and on all sides of me. There are rolling hills, plateaus, giant crests in the distance. I see them everyday, they have blended into the overall landscape of my route to work.

Straight in front of me there is a massive mountain, like behemoth sized. It’s usually a giant grey geometric shape outlined on the horizon, it’s easy to forget it’s even there.

The other day I was driving to work and the sun hit in a way it hadn’t before and it was like I had never actually seen it before. It had always been right in front of me but that day, it was magic. It fucking ruled.

I sit in the exact same spot to see the stars a couple nights a week. Mainly because it’s spooky out here in the dark and it has the clearest view while also being close to my gate.

The Leonid meteor shower was last night so I went out to try and catch it before I went to bed. From my vantage point, I was looking up at Cassiopeia. When I went back out in the early morning, I was looking up at Gemini.

It wasn’t even a twelve hour difference.

I have a fun activity I do called ‘sun chasing’. This is where I go on all sides of the property, walk at different elevations and sit on different points of the fences to get the best view of the sunset or sunrise.

It’s a different spot every day. It’s also a different sky every day.

I have sat on those same fences while I waited for storms to roll in. I watched as the clouds moved in different directions, I felt the subtle shifts of the wind as it picked up strands of my hair. I tracked the first few raindrops in the distance to the downpour that came soon after.

I moved when I realized a metal fence wasn’t the smartest place to be sitting during a thunderstorm.

After a day and a half of rain, I watched teeny tiny little blades of grass grow up out of a bunch of old, dusty dirt. I wondered how long they had been sitting dormant, just waiting for the right opportunity.

They died, obviously, this is the desert, but that isn’t the point.

This time period of my life feels like I am standing still. It’s hard to track the passage of time here, there’s no seasons. I didn’t realize it was Halloween until I saw pictures of people carving pumpkins back home. I feel like life is moving forward everywhere else while I am floating along in an eternal summer.

Which isn’t the worst when it comes to hypothetical purgatories.

The days keep passing, they turn into months. I feel like I am wasting time. Like I need to be doing something. Getting out there and meeting someone so I could maybe get married and have a chance at having a baby before I turn 35. Or investing in this blog so it can be something more than a webpage I use to send my thoughts out into the ether. Or trying to learn enough about one thing enough to do something different with my career.

I could observe all of these things and conclude that I am stuck, I am standing in the same place while the world rotates and changes around me. Which would be a shitty metaphor and an even dumber science experiment.

I don’t know why I get all worked up about it. I don’t even know if I really want those things. If I did, I’d probably do something about it outside of randomly panicking about it every few days.

I’m not doing those things.

I’m watching storms roll in. I’m watching the sun rise and set. I am tracking the patterns the moon moves in as those days turn into months. I am watching as grass puts in a real valiant effort to grow out in the desert. I am watching as it dies too.

You don’t learn how to do all of these things without standing in the same place for awhile and letting the world move around you. So I guess it’s not a shitty metaphor at all.

Honestly, I guess most of the time I am just hanging out and doing whatever I feel like doing. And then I sit and listen to music while I write about it and send it off into the ether. Or I sit and write unhinged things I will never, ever send into the ether.

Oh, and I’m alive and actually living. I’m not grass in the desert. I don’t know what I am but I’m not that.

I take that back, I guess I am sitting dormant and waiting for that perfect opportunity to present itself so that’s not really a shitty metaphor either. I’m just not going to give it a solid effort only to watch myself die anymore.

When it comes to the future, I think I should just chill out. I think if I allow myself to move with the rotation of the earth, if I don’t try to cling to an idea, a space or a time, it’ll take me where I need to go.

Resisting it would literally be pointless anyway. I don’t control the damn earth.

I don’t know why I’m so worried about the future anyway.

I think one day I will be bopping along, the sun will hit something completely different and I’ll say ‘Oh! That’s exactly what I was looking for!’

The sky is different every single day. I don’t need to know what it will look like tomorrow, next week, or next year.

Thankfully, I have all this time to wait and see. Who knows, it might even rain.

Then it will be this grass’s time to shine, baby!

Heartbreak & Loss

The Choices We Make.

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I fell asleep outside last night. I am someone who falls asleep outside now.

Not for very long though. I was looking at the stars, sitting in a reclining chair at the bottom of one of the small dips in my yard. The sun had barely set but it’s dark out here, they pop up quickly. It’s like your own personal planetarium.

Sometimes when I see something so beautiful that I can’t even believe it’s real, I have this twinge of sadness. I usually ignore it and hope that one day it goes away.

When I woke up outside, I had that same twinge but it brought with it the memory of the last time I could see so many stars, the last time I fell asleep under them.

We were in Joshua Tree. 

The first time I saw the desert was on the back of a motorcycle, riding from Prescott to California. We spent time with my Mamaw in Santa Monica. We saw Tyler Childers in Inglewood. We spent three days in Joshua Tree at the end. 

When we were in Santa Monica, I thought back to the last time I was there. I wrote about it, even. It was when I was looking at the ocean and thought about how nice it would be to walk in and let the waves take me. I was, obviously, so fucking miserable at that time in my life.

When we rode by, when we went to that same beach, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to see it all again from these eyes. It was so healing that it was borderline overwhelming. 

We went to the national park. I had seen the desert landscape from the back of the bike but seeing it up close was something else. It was just so fucking funny. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at anything in the desert up close but I would absolutely recommend it. I couldn’t stop pointing at things, dying laughing and saying, “What is that? What is this? Look at that guy!”

I hadn’t laughed, really laughed, in months. But I couldn’t stop. In between my gales of laughter, he told me the names of the plants and animals. He showed me how to climb up a rock face and he scaled up a tower of them. I was too nervous to try after I slipped at the bottom.

Later that night, we laughed even more. I laughed so hard that I couldn’t get any words out. Everything was just so fucking funny. 

That night was the first time I had ever really seen the stars. Laying on our backs, he pointed them all out to me, he told me their names and we counted the ones that shot by. He showed me how to identify satellites and planes by their lights. He showed me how a few stars can become a whole constellation.

It was the first moment, the first place, that I felt like everything could be okay again. 

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with nature. I had old science textbooks I would spend hours looking at, realistic stickers of bugs all over my desk. I lived in the city so I had a small backyard but I was always out there poking around and trying to identify the different bugs and animals. I collected worms and threw a fit when I had to wear a dress that couldn’t get covered in dirt. I was usually by myself but I was always on an adventure. 

The best times were with my Dad. He knew so much about the woods and he showed me it all. He knew how to bait the hook, where to cast and he knew how to follow the creek bed. If I was an adventurer, he was the tour guide. I was just happy to be traipsing around at my dad’s side in the underbrush. I liked to be taught things just as much as I loved learning them.

When I was in Joshua Tree, he knew everything about the desert. He knew his way around, it was all familiar to him. As he showed me all of it, I was just happy to be traipsing around at his side. I liked to be taught things just as much as I loved learning them. 

You can see the parallel I’m making here. I didn’t see it until I started typing it out, to be quite honest. 

I always loved to learn and adventure by myself. But it was my Dad who really knew how too. He was the one who paved the way, the one who knew where to go and how to do it. He was the brave one, I just tried to be.

One night, we were riding bikes. He was doing tricks and I followed him trying to do the same. It was fun until my tire hit the curb and I fell face first into the pavement, scraping off quite a bit of the left side of my face in the process. I cried until I went back to my mom’s house. Trying to follow in my Dad’s footsteps, trying to embody his fearlessness, ended in my own pain.

I feel like I can feel that scrape on my face. 

When I was looking up at the stars last night, I remembered being too nervous to follow my partner up the rocks in Joshua Tree. I thought about how I got bolder once we got home, following in his footsteps, climbing trees and sitting on our roof.

I forgot how pure I felt back then, how I felt like the best version of myself. Being with him, living in our house in the country and going on all of our adventures brought me back to that sense of childlike wonder. It brought me back to how it felt to be stomping around in creeks with my Dad, nothing to fear, as long as he led the way. It felt like coming home.

It felt like everything could be okay again. 

Until I fell off my bike. Until he tried to go out the same way my Dad did. Until all those same wounds got ripped right back open.

I spent a summer remembering how it felt to be walking in the sun, nothing to fear, with my Dad by my side.

Somehow, I had forgotten how the story ended.

It took a few years after my Dad’s suicide for me to really grasp the fact that he had died. I didn’t really understand the true pain it left me with until I almost experienced it again with my partner. I understood it even more when I found out I was pregnant a week later. Carrying my own child, I couldn’t escape the gravity of it. 

The summer didn’t last long. It was always brief back then too.

The winter my Dad died, I didn’t try to be brave. I didn’t think I could do it by myself. I was too afraid to do it without him showing me how. I let my face heal and then I packed up all of my adventures into a box and I put it away in a spot where I could act like it, and my Dad, had never existed.

This spring, I wanted us to move out west. I begged him. We were dying in Indiana, it was sucking the life out of us. I thought it was our only chance, the only way we could get ourselves out of the deep dark hole we had found ourselves in. I thought if we just moved, everything could be okay again.

I am embarrassed to say that I begged him to come with me even after everything blew up. 

But when it did, I had to make a choice. I knew after everything that happened, I couldn’t stay in Indiana. I couldn’t pack it all up in a box and pretend it never existed. 

So I didn’t.

I went to the first place I could remember feeling like everything would be okay, the first place I could see the stars. I went where he showed me.

I went out west.

This summer, I built the life I had begged for.

I was my own tour guide and my own adventurer. I kept climbing rocks after I slipped on them. I learned the names of all the plants and animals. I caught the scorpions in my house. I found my own place to sit and watch the stars. I cried when I scraped my knees, I cleaned my own wounds and I watched them as they healed.

I can tell you quite a bit about the desert. I can tell you when the prickly pears produce fruit, when the saguaros bloom. I can tell you which holes have tarantulas in them and which ones have kangaroo rats. I can tell you about how calcite comes up to the surface after it rains and why. I can tell you which feathers in my collection came from what bird, which shed came from what snake. 

I am walking in my own footsteps, paving my own way. I have become who that little girl, happy at her Dad’s side, always wanted to be. But this time, I’m the brave one, not just trying to be. It’s an inspiring story, of course, it’s my story and it is all true.

Sometimes it just feels like something is missing.

When I am traipsing around, there’s no one happy to be by my side. When I learn something new, there’s no one here to share it with. There’s no one here to laugh with when I say, “What is that? Look at that guy!” 

When I see something so beautiful that I can’t even believe it’s real, there’s no one here to look over and know they’re seeing it too. 

I built the life I begged for. I built the life I chose.

Being brave just doesn’t always feel the way you thought it would. 

Self Reflection

The Sun, The Moon, and The Stars.

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I live in what I would consider to be the most beautiful place in the entire world. I am floored by it daily, I can’t believe a place like this exists. There is rarely a day that the sun isn’t shining. At night, I can see the moon and the stars so brightly that it feels like I am legitimately in outer space. Stars shoot so frequently through the sky above me that it’s inspired me to diligently study astrology to see how all of this beauty could translate into my life. I spend so much time learning about the mountains, the rocks and the animals. I love every last bit of it. 

Writing my last blog, just a moment in time., sent me into a two day spiral. My body was an animatronic robot going through all of my normal activities while my brain was somewhere else. My head was wrapped in cotton while simultaneously going up in flames. Writing that blog poured lighter fluid all over me and posting it was the match that set it ablaze.

I was in the place that tells me this will never, ever get better. It sneers at me that I will never be free, I am cursed by it. There’s no sense in fighting against it, it is hellbent on dragging me into inevitable madness. 

Outside, the sun shone so brightly that it was boring into my skull. The mountains loomed over me, I was looking at them but I couldn’t really see them. They were ominous and even the moon felt like it was judging me. I can’t see the beauty around me when my mind is in the past, it doesn’t compute. My surroundings aren’t familiar to me, I hadn’t seen them yet.

Inside, I obsessed over every detail. Every moment in time that I might have been responsible for how everything turned out. Trying to fill in the gaps of what I couldn’t remember. I oscillated through outward rage and inward shame. I berated myself for wasting my days off by being in this headspace, for not being able to get it together and felt disgusted in myself for pouring out my vulnerability on the internet. 

I don’t really remember what I did Sunday. I know I did laundry and I cleaned. But I don’t remember anything else. This is par the course for episodes of this magnitude. I will be so deeply entrenched mentally and emotionally in the past that, later, my brain can’t even bring the actual details back up. I’m grateful there was only one day of this. Last year I lost a full month from December to January. There are only some details I remember from the time I was pregnant, most of it got thrown out completely. 

Monday was more painful but it’s also crystal clear. This is a good sign. 

I knew I had to take some sort of definitive action in order to leave the mental state I was in. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. I am always scared it will be one of the times it doesn’t. Those are the really dark times. But alas, we must persevere.

I have been journaling a lot recently. I have different journals for different purposes. My favorite one is used for writing down all of my nature observations in between the thoughts I have at the time. It’s grounding. I also have one for dreams and I have one for rage. 

It’s tiring to write it all out by hand. I have multiple dreams a night so I switched to cataloguing them on my laptop to better reference repeated themes and make connections. They have been extra vivid recently. They are abstract but loaded with meaning. They touch on the deepest parts of my psyche that I struggle to look at. They dig into the roots of my life, they aren’t concerned with my most recent past. 

It’s even more tiring to write out all of my rage by hand. My hands can’t move as quickly as my thoughts and there are many times I struggle to keep up. It’s frustrating. Yesterday, since there were so many thoughts competing for my attention and ultimately torturing me, I switched this to my laptop as well.

I spent hours, and I’m not even remotely exaggerating, hours typing out every single thought that came through my mind. It is 8,683 words. 8,683 words in the format of a letter I would never send. There was a point where it was only making me angrier. There was a point where I felt like it was only confusing me more. There were moments of desperation and there were things I felt embarrassed to even write. I questioned my faith in my spirituality. There is even a section that I go on a whole diatribe questioning if I had fully lost control of my own sanity. I was afraid that if I quit typing I actually would.

I had some semblance of clarity for a while. I took a shower and ate two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I was more optimistic going through pictures and videos of my past few months and appreciating how beautiful it all really is. I posted them to put some positively out into the world. I laid down to go to sleep. 

But I couldn’t. Those fucking thoughts had me in a chokehold once again, careening me backwards. I went back to it. I typed it all out in the form of a text message. I knew deep down that I wouldn’t actually send it but god damn did it feel good to play with fire for a second.

At three am, my entire mind deflated. It had run 8,683 miles and it was exhausted. I was ashamed of myself for still feeling all of these feelings, for needing to write them all out. I was afraid that I was actually just a crazy person, obsessed with my own pain. I wondered if I even had pain at all, maybe I am just really dramatic. 

I focused on releasing everything I wrote that day, acceptance moves forward. Resistance impedes. I don’t want to carry it all with me anymore, I’m sick of being angry. I will embody indifference, I will find peace in my grief. It’s over, it’s all over.

I ended my night by writing a letter to myself, reminding myself that what is not released in some form can only fester, turning itself into bitterness. I reminded myself that there is a very big difference in writing letters you’ll never send and then actually sending them. I reiterated how proud I should be of my bravery to start over here in the desert. I remembered how proud of myself I really was. I remembered how far I have come since last year, since May 22nd, since Saturday night. 

I didn’t sleep much and I still had dreams. But they didn’t have much depth, they were surface level. In the last one I ‘realized’ that today wasn’t my day off and I was too tired to go to work. Simple shit. 

I wake up to my dog staring at me a few inches from my face. The second I crack my eyes open she is tucking her head under my chin and pawing at my face. If I sleep past six am she thinks I might possibly be dead and therefore unable to feed her. She is happy when she finds out that I am not. I am too. 

I get up to let her outside and the sun is shining in that particularly jovial form it does sometimes. It is hitting the catclaw vine that grows over the top fencing of my yard in the purest way. It is just bright enough and it’s refreshing, whispering promises of a better day as it graces my cheeks. 

I leave my front door open so the crisp morning desert breeze can come through the screen, clearing out all the remnants of the past two days. It is peaceful, it is optimistic. It’s a breath of fresh air and possibility. I am right here. The sun is happy I rejoined the land of the living. I am too. 

I am lucky to live where everything survives by sheer determination and force, I get to live in an oasis where things grow delicately and green, wrapping around my home in a way that creates a sense of loving safety. I get to live where animals come and visit me, I have become the Southwest Cinderella. 

I find true healing here in the mountains. It is quite the cliche, forgive me for that. But I feel one among the plants and animals that manage to thrive here, just like me. I am comforted by being held in the valleys of the ancient mountain ranges. They hold steadfast, reminding me that years of violent eruptions and moving parts could redefine my structure but it all ends in an awe striking result. 

You know I love a good metaphor and, lucky for me, it’s chock full of them.

It only took two days to find myself firmly rooted back into the present. That’s not a long time at all. It wasn’t time wasted. 

Everything I experienced led me to exactly the place I am right now, this present moment. It has made the worst years of my life seem like the world’s most beautiful gift. 

Among the sun, the moon and the stars, I am scrubbed fresh, more prepared to keep going. They hold my hurts for me and they will give them back to me if I need to look at them again. If I don’t, they’ll release them for me for good. They guide me to the wisdom I need, they nudge me down the right path. The mountains anchor me through. They all called me here, after all. They know what they’re doing.

I will keep listening.

Heartbreak & Loss

just a moment in time.

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On May 22nd 2025, I arrived at my new home in a state almost 2,000 miles away from where I had lived my whole life. I packed up whatever I could fit into my car, strapped in my dog and left like a bat out of hell. 

I have not once regretted that decision but I wont lie, I’m fucking broke. The one thing I had going for me back in my home state was the solid foundation of financial security I had built over the years. I have no doubt in my mind that I will build it again. That isn’t the point.

The point is that I decided not to reinvest in my web domain hosting. I decided I was okay with leaving this blog in the past. In fact, I didn’t want the last few years of my life to be blasted on the internet for anyone new I could meet to see anyway. It was a fresh start after all. 

But there are some things you can’t leave behind. Things you don’t even want to. I hadn’t processed, or even accepted, that I had really lost my baby. I had tried to take it on a few times, sure, and there was even a small period of time this seemed possible. On her due date, I spent the day with Perfect on Paper Guy, her father. It felt healing. I thought we were healing. 

Blah, blah, blah. We don’t need to get into the specifics of that shit show. I don’t feel the need to tell that story.

But here, six months later, I am still rocked by waves of grief over and over and over again. I will think that I have come to a point of peace with it all and then something new will happen and drag me back into the trenches. 

I took my head out of the sand tonight and decided to see what would happen if I logged back into my blog account. I couldn’t. It was gone. It was all gone.

I don’t care about any other post on this blog other than a soul as big as my own. I rarely reread them. But that post is a handful of paragraphs that painstakingly and lovingly encapsulated the worst and purest moments of my entire life. I wrote it less than a week after the surgery feeling like I was going to bleed out physically and emotionally. I’ve reread it a million times and I’ve avoided it just as many too.

I have a rough draft of it but it wasn’t the final one I put out into the world. The only record of her being real. The only tangible thing that I have. They asked me if I wanted an ultrasound picture and I refused it. He didn’t, I wonder if he still has it. I don’t know if I would want to see it if he did. 

She was mine. She was his. But she was mine. 

And now I have nothing. That’s not really true, I actually have a lot. But there are so many moments that all I can see is that I don’t have her. 

I can’t even make the words come out of my mouth to share this experience with anyone I’ve met here. I physically cannot make myself. I can write it on the internet and share it with strangers. But to verbally say it? I just can’t. It’s my Achilles heel. I’m afraid they won’t understand or they’ll act like it shouldn’t be this hard. I never understood it either until it happened to me. So maybe they’ll say I should just move on. Didn’t I move away to start a new life?

When someone dies, you grieve. You grieve them not being present in your life any longer. You celebrate the life they lived. All of the up’s and downs, triumphs and losses. It’s devastating and painful and it can take years and years to move on from. But they lived, they were there. 

How do you grieve someone who never lived? Someone you never got to see. An idea, even. 

I hoard my grief. I carry it with me every day, I sleep next to it at night. I let it roam a little ways away sometimes but I always pull it back. I’m afraid to let it go. 

It’s hard to start a new life when you’re aching for the one that never got to. 

When I was pregnant, I would lay on my back and try to feel if my body had changed, if I could feel her in there. I couldn’t. But I still did, in some way. She consumed my thoughts, all of my energy seemed to be concentrated in my abdomen. Everything from that moment forward was focused solely on her. I was ready to destroy anything in my path that threatened her. 

And then there was nothing.

When I saw that I couldn’t retrieve that one single blog entry, I pulled out my credit card and immediately charged it. I didn’t care about the cost, I didn’t even hesitate. I was sick, nauseated and sweating. I frantically did whatever I could to bring it back. I immediately copied and pasted it into a new document to ensure I’d never lose it again.

But why? Why do I hoard it when it hurts me so deeply? 

It feels wrong. It feels like if I let go of my grief that will be when she truly no longer exists.

Despite my feelings I have now towards the man I shared her with, that was our baby and that second chance is gone forever, we don’t have any more time. Two for one special, him and her.

I have been gripped with fear recently that if I ever found someone new and fell in love again, if I was to have another chance at having a child, it wouldn’t feel like my baby.

I know this is ludicrous. Truly insane person levels of thinking. There is a neverending list of why I should be grateful that I did not have a baby with him. And I am. But sometimes even just the knowledge that I will always be connected to him, that the grief of her will always be intertwined with the threads of him, makes me want to climb all the way up the mountain in my back yard just to fling myself off of it. There are times I am filled with so much rage that I feel I could burn all of them to the ground.

There will never be her without me. There will never be her without him. She fully encompasses both the absolute best and the absolute worst of us. I worry I’ll never truly be free of it, that it will drive me into madness one day. There are times I have truly considered ending my own life over it. Two for one special, me and her.

I wonder if I will ever really understand why this had to happen. Sometimes I feel like I do and then I don’t all over again. All I can do is continue to see the value of my own life and continue to keep living it. It really is good most days. 

I keep stringing those good days together, I have more moments of peace than agony. It’s getting better. This is just a moment in time.

I guess for now I will just write about it and cry and shake until it passes. And then I guess I’ll go eat a bowl of fucking spaghetti or something and go the fuck to sleep.

But at least I get to wake up tomorrow and if I feel like shit, I get to feel like shit looking at a mountain and a shit ton of cactus in perfect weather. Maybe I will post this to my Blog of Seemingly Neverending Pain that I couldn’t afford so I at least get my money’s worth. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I will do one of the new hobbies I have picked up or study the things I have liked a lot recently instead. 

I really have discovered a lot of things that give me purpose in my life. It might not be what I thought it was going to be. But it’s still pretty good. I really only write about my life when it sucks ass. Maybe I will try to write about it when it doesn’t. I do want to get my money’s worth.

Anyway, no two for one special today. Just a party of one. And thats okay.

Self Reflection

For the Love of God.

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The song Angel Band by Tyler Childers is what I would consider to be my favorite song of all time. I saw him California and I think I blacked out in the third row when he played it live. I tattooed ‘Hallelujah, Now I See’ across my palms.

It’s a song that I’ve played over and over when I’ve been at my lowest, desperately searching for why I should continue living. It’s a song I’ve played in euphoric moments when I realized that was why. It’s the song I wanted to play when I walked down the aisle when Perfect on Paper Guy and I got married. 

I have listened to the last minute of it, over and over, while I internally writhed with rage, anguish, and joy. It encompasses such a broad spectrum of feelings and moments for me that I think it’s etched into my soul at this point. 

Sometimes I get embarrassed to love something someone else made so much. But I think that might be the point of why music or art is made, to provoke the heart and the mind.

I write off and on through phases of my life. Usually at times I feel stuck in my brain. I don’t even know what I am looking for but I’m going in with a flashlight and a shovel to dig it out. I know there’s something, I’ll find it if I keep digging. I’ll find it if I keep making logs of fossils, sediments, if I keep crafting experiments to test hypothesis. 

My subconscious has been my own personal Everest. The diligence I’ve dedicated to climbing it is unmatched. At times, the level of attention to detail I’ve paid to it has driven myself (and everyone around me, I’m sure) into madness. No stone goes unturned. Sometimes there’s nothing, sometimes there is an entire ecosystem thriving under one small rock. 

As a child, I loved flipping rocks to see what was underneath. They are the Midwest’s version of tide pools. If I chill the fuck out, I like doing it as an adult too. 

What is true in the physical is often true in the spiritual. 

I used to be really religious when I was in highschool. I chose to be, it wasn’t forced on me. I found a sense of belonging, structure, and purpose in the church. I pushed it to extremes, as you can guess I would, and I got burnt out. I had held myself to standards that a teenager really had no chance of upholding, not when they’re riddled with hormones and a healthy desire to self destruct. 

My shortcomings and mental battles within myself truly felt like an angel and devil on my shoulder, pushing and pulling at my soul. I thought I could push through if I was just dedicated enough.

When I decided I apparently was not, I gave up. I turned my back on it. I had a lot of shame about this. I think it was the beginning of feeling like I could not trust myself to see something through.

If I loved something so much but I wasn’t good enough for it, I’d bow out. I’d turn my back and walk away. I’d convince myself I never believed in it in the first place. If I wanted something so badly but I couldn’t measure up, I would repress it.

Fifteen years later, I still don’t believe in the Christian idea of God. I say that from a place of complete truth, I’ve overturned all the stones. I do think Christ’s teachings in the Bible hold a lot of merit as a tool when interpreted from a perspective of searching for clarity and purpose in both the physical and spiritual realms. He’s a philosopher, if you will.

I do believe in the idea of a Universal Spirit, a Source, a Higher Power. It is not so much that I feel like it is bigger (and therefore different) than me, as AA would suggest, but more that it is both separate and part of me. My highest self, maybe? Universal consciousness? It is not that much different from ‘God’. But it’s not personified, there’s no rules for its acceptance. It just is. 

Honestly, I think all of these different religious paths come from the same source and just present in whatever way we will find most palatable. But this is all just my opinion on my little blog so don’t come for me with ya pitchforks. 

Whatever you want to call it, I know it when I feel it and I know when I am in tune with it. My vision and my awareness expands. I become a part of everything, I see from the front of my own eyes. I feel and absorb things as they happen. I can feel every emotion and I can express them from my true self. I do not hide from anything: past, present, or future. 

Most of the time I am in a state of tunnel vision, seeing everything from a little farther back, not quite here. I think about things as they happen, label the feelings. But I don’t quite feel them. This is not unbearable and I am a little better at recognizing this now and it might take a few days, but I can push myself out of it. 

At my worst times, I am watching everything from the back of my brain. I feel nothing, I believe nothing, I don’t trust myself or others. My brain is turning it’s wheels, looking for a threat, looking for a solution. Looking for a way out. Analyzing, analyzing, analyzing. But I cannot see any patterns, I cannot put the pieces together. I have spent months in this stage, usually after a traumatic event, and I don’t usually have a lot of memories from those time periods. I am, essentially, an animated corpse. 

A lot of my distrust in myself comes from rotating through these stages, the last two predominantly. The first stage used to happen so little that I thought it was a fluke, a delusion. Mania, even. 

When I cannot succeed, live up to expectations, or be good enough: I will turn my back, repress, and walk away. I will feel ashamed of the moments I had in my true self where I felt joy, love, excitement. Even more so if I expressed them. I feel stupid for believing in them, believing in anything. 

Fear is the only emotion that I cannot tell you what it really feels like. I can tell you what anxiety feels like. I am anxious all the time. But I don’t think it’s necessarily the same thing. Anxiety is looking for solutions, disaster planning, it’s thinking ahead. It’s a manifestation of fear, most likely, but it’s not fear. It’s covering it up.

Fear is subconscious, for me at least. Fear is repressed. Deeply. 

If I am afraid that I will not be good enough, I am weak. I hate both of those things, so I repress them both. If I am afraid that I will not be good enough and therefore I will be left, I hate that even more. I repress it even harder. 

While I am repressing my fear, I am also repressing my other emotions. The love I have for someone, the adoration, the giddiness of being around them, the desire to be secure and loved. My outward expression of love towards someone makes me feel embarrassed, ashamed. I will look like a fool when they leave. I will look like a fool if they hurt me. I will look pathetic when they realize I’m not good enough. I will look pathetic for thinking they were good enough.

I turn my back, repress, and walk away. I have done it so many times. When the fear dissipates, I go back. But I’m not fully there, I’m subconsciously looking for the sign that I need to prepare, pull back, and repress it again. Sometimes I will shut down out of sheer fear of myself, I don’t trust myself to not keep repeating this pattern.

I am forever careening between hopeful and hopeless.

My fathers were the first men in my life to not live up to the idea I had of them. God was the second. I was left, wondering why they never showed up. Why they never pulled their weight and did the things they said they would. 

My fear of never being accepted, never being good enough no matter how hard I tried, has pushed me into a role of being the savior in my own story. I have written my own Bible in the electrical and chemical signals of my nervous system. It is my universal truth. 

“She’s shouting in the aisle

She’s shaking something fierce”

I began questioning the Bible and it’s teachings in my late teens. Can I question and disidentify with my own version in my early thirties? Can I create a new belief system, new commandments, new verses and parables to build on?

“Feels so good to be here

After all these faithful years”

The tattoos on my palms include an eye on each hand. In the center of the eye, and the center of my palm, is a circle that is inked red. This was a tongue in cheek nod to the phenomenon of stigmata, the appearance of bodily marks that correspond to the wounds of Jesus’s crucifixtion. 

I do not believe in the Christian idea of God. I don’t believe in Heaven. And I sure as fuck don’t believe in going to hell when you can experience it right here all on your own. 

However, stigmata is said to be a representation of a very real connection with Christ and that those who experience it are those who wanted that connection so badly that they would put themselves through the trials and tribulations to get there. 

“Just took a walk with Jesus

Just touched his nail-scarred hands”

If we are viewing the connection to Christ through a lens of metaphor for connection to Source, was it a tongue in cheek reference at all? I marked my body, the palms of my hands, with the words and symbolism to encompass everything I believe in. The words I’ve repeated to myself over and over through my own version of hell. I’ve held fast to nothing more than blind faith that I would be reborn, transformed, and full of all encompassing joy on the other side. And I did it with all the joy I could fucking muster.

“Didn’t even bother her

That he ain’t a blue-eyed man”

I believe in the weeping and gnashing of teeth. I believe in the absolute agony of accepting where you are in a moment that feels like it will eat you alive. I believe in the power it takes to not cower and hide your face while it all rages around you. And I believe in the bravery it takes to grit your teeth, turn towards it and stare it down with your god damn eyes open. 

“Hallelujah, jubilee”

I believe in being baptized by water and I believe in being baptized by fire and I believe I have experienced both, multiple times. Each time, I find more clarity, more peace, more joy. I am closer to the core of who I am. 

Every single time, I am reborn. Every single time my capacity for love grows tenfold, and my fear is quelled. At least for awhile, I can see clearly.

“I can hear the angel band”

It’s funny how often fear is mentioned alongside love in the Bible. It’s almost as if they are two sides of the same coin, you can’t have one without the other. 

“I was blind but now I see”

What if fear finally took the backseat? What if I was able to experience a love that is greater than fear?

“And I’ll jump right in amongst them

When I reach the glory land”

Self Reflection

The Year of Being Wrong.

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When I was a child, I had a crippling fear that everything I had ever done that I was ashamed of would one day come out as a tabloid expose. In my mind, at six years old, I would obviously grow up to be very famous. The paparazzi would dig into my past and eventually I would see my deep dark secrets splashed across all the magazines at my local supermarket. Obviously. 

Thankfully, I don’t think anyone is interested in, “Savannah jumped on a board once to scare out a mole she saw run under it and accidentally squashed it instead.” Or even, “At ten years old, Savannah spent a year terrified that everything she touched would lead to her imminent death!’ 

Even after childhood, I’ve basically had a nonstop printer of Ok! Magazine printing off headlines about how terrible, shameful, and bizarre I am for as long as I can remember. It’s the core of why I started writing about my life. It’s somewhat preemptive to air out all my dirty laundry (before the press gets to it. Obviously.) It helps absolve my shame to understand my life experiences and actions. Even if the driving force behind them at times was, “I was truly an insane person for reasons continuing to be discovered.” 

Writing about my life, however, has doubled the shame complex at times. I have been so public about the thought processing around my life and what has happened. These things evolve and change and the effect they have on my life compounds or lessens as time goes on. I have often reread things I have written and thought, “I don’t necessarily feel that way anymore.” And then shame comes in, “Way to go, bozo, you were wrong!”

This went into overdrive after my last relationship ended. Perfect on paper guy had some not so perfect on paper reactions, I was stuck trying to get over them and eventually I chose to end things with him.

”Savannah leaves another man after thinking he was the one, what a fucking moron!” The tabloids screamed in my head, “Jilted bitch is jilted again! When will she ever learn! Nothing is ever actually going to work out for you!”

I was a laughing stock to the muppet peanut gallery in my own brain. 

Luckily, my brain also has a good PR team. It cranked out new headlines to thin out the barrage of negative reporting. Things like, “Girl who would never have left a toxic situation before ACTUALLY leaves a toxic situation!” “Look out world! Savannah stands up for herself (and didn’t even resort to name calling to do it!)” and my favorite one, “Despite adversity, Savannah continues to believe everything will indeed one day work out!”

But there is still always a whisper in the background saying, “Everyone read how much hope you had, how much stock you put into this. And now you look like a fool! You always look like a fool! You should never express any strong feeling you have because you always end up looking like a full of shit loony!”

Honestly, maybe I do. I wrote a whole blog post about how I shouldn’t always put my whole ass into everything I do and I just kept whole assing it. It’s a quality that I truly love and loathe about myself. Fully in or fully out, I am only ambivalent once I have exhausted all my energy.

There is a fine line to walk in the duality of the things we both loathe and love about ourselves. Depending on how they are applied, they can be an asset or a detriment.

My favorite game to play when I notice I am being overly critical of myself is to take whatever I think someone would say about me (after reminding myself that literally no one really thinks about me that much) and asking myself, “What is the alternative?” 

“Savannah always thinks the guy she is dating is going to be ‘the one’, that he is so special, blah blah.” Okay, so what is the alternative? “Savannah is forever skeptical and on guard with someone she is dating, she never trusts that they are who they say they are.” Fuckin’ yuck, dude. I don’t want that to ever be me. I struggle combating those thoughts enough, there’s no way that I would ever want that to be my full modus operandi. I think I’ll go with my favorite ‘Despite adversity!’ headline instead.

I quit drinking two and a half years ago and the other day I was still spiraling out over all of the ridiculous or horrible things I had ever done. As they flashed through my mind like a reality tv recap, I burst out laughing, “Gollllly, what a wild bitch you were! Aren’t you glad that’s not you now?” 

I’m not going to hate myself forever. Because that’s the thing, right? If that version of me would have loved herself the way I love her now, she probably wouldn’t have done most of the things she’d done. I love her retroactively. I am the sum of all my parts. All of them are welcome (although most of their behaviors will not be tolerated in the present day.) 

That’s another way I challenge my imaginary tabloids: I don’t do so many of the things I used to do. And it’s totally okay if people don’t believe that. I don’t need to live my life constantly proving that I’m not who I used to be. I can just be who I am.

I care what people think of me, sure, but I won’t let it dictate my behavior. I won’t stay in a situation just so I’m not ‘wrong.’ And I won’t allow myself to boil alive in shame I don’t deserve to carry. I’ve worn my hair shirt, I’ve dragged myself over the coals. 

Enough is enough. 

I love that I put my whole ass into what I believe in, even if it is just for a season. Even with my alcoholism, I learned so much about myself and other people. I had a lot of amazing experiences when I was drinking. Eventually, the ones that sucked outweighed the good ones. It was the same with trying to make relationships work that had reached an end. One day, I took my whole ass out and closed the chapter. I had exhausted my energy. It had become a detriment, not an asset. 

I am not afraid of being alone, even when it sucks. And yeah, it really does suck. I’m not going to act like I’m living it up over here. I have a week off work and it could be aired as a documentary on ‘How to be Depressed.’ It’s not interesting, it’s just me eating cheese quesadillas and sleeping for multiple days in a row. Watching ten different tv series and not being able to tell you what a single one was about. Sobbing after every place I went on Christmas Eve because this is not what I thought my life would be like. Raging that I should have been 23 weeks pregnant, glowing with Perfect on Paper guy by my side. Celebrating with our families, my mom, my sisters. 

Instead, I am more alone than ever.

I would rather be alone than be in a situation I can’t remedy. I know when to stop trying. I didn’t know before. 

I always lived my life by the mindset of, “Ready or not! Here I come!” But what is the alternative?

For once, I’m not really pushing myself to feel better right now. I think it’s time to really grieve it all. My baby, my significant relationships, my dads deaths. Who I thought I was, who I thought I would be. I’m allowing myself to be afraid of what’s next. Sometimes you need to know when to hide and when to seek.

I so badly wanted everything to work out this time. Honestly, even just to prove that it could. ‘Former party girl leaves shitty relationship and finds new love, has a baby, blah blah.’ I wanted to prove it to myself, of course. But I also wanted to be a success story to everyone who had watched it unfold, everyone who wanted to see me succeed and everyone who didn’t. I didn’t want to say, “Look who was wrong again!’

I am okay with being wrong. I am okay with being seen as a broken record of ‘Despite adversity, I’m going to keep going.’ I am okay with it all.

Last year, I just wanted to be proud of myself. 

This year, I am.

Self Reflection

The Return of Color.

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I wondered a while back when I wrote “The Roots” on what it would be like to be interested in someone as a healthy minded person. I had started to dig up why I would repeat the same behaviors in relationships over and over and wondered how I could fix them, how I would know when I was ready. Now, I don’t think I would have ever really known and I don’t think I would have been able to scratch further past the surface without trying again. We don’t really encounter situations in our daily life that trigger the same wounds that intimate relationships do. 

Reading back “The Roots”, I am proud. I am proud of the work I’ve done and the place I’ve come to. I’m one hundred percent grateful for the journey in its entirety to be where I am now. But to say it’s been a god damn doozy is an understatement. 

Things finally came to a finite end over a month ago with my ex partner when I filed a protective order against him. I don’t care to speak on the events that led up to this at this time. The point is that it was over and for good. He legally could not speak to me, I was safe. I would wake up in the middle of the night shaking and repeat, “You’re safe, you’re safe. He’s not coming back. You’re safe.” until I fell back asleep. 

This past November I went on a date with a man. Just a single date, I liked him. I had cataloged all the qualities he had that I valued and referred to him as ‘The Perfect on Paper Guy’ but had cut things off when I knew that, with my ex partner still in active addiction, I wasn’t emotionally available to pursue anything. I had too much respect for him, even then, to continue building a connection I couldn’t properly reciprocate at the time. I didn’t want to drag him through the mess my life was at that moment. 

The Sunday after I filed the order, I didn’t wake up shaking. Instead I woke up from a dream about ‘The Perfect on Paper Guy’. (We’ll call him POPG for short) I hadn’t thought much about him since I cut things off and since I rarely remembered my dreams at that point, I was intrigued. I wondered if my subconscious was trying to tell me something: I was safe now. I could explore the idea of something new. I reached out and we hung out that night. 

Dating as a mindful, healing person is a hellscape. Rewarding, challenging, and extremely healing but a fucking hellscape all the same. I am extremely grateful to my friends who have weathered this rollercoaster of emotions with me and listened to my rambling thoughts as I have walked myself through what my brain and body has experienced at every stage. Regulating my nervous system, reconnecting my mind to my body and sifting through what is my heart and what is my guard has been careful and sometimes excruciating work. I’ve had to be viciously honest with myself but also deeply loving to myself at the same time. 

I had dived deep into attachment theory when I realized that every new time I felt connected to POPG, I could feel a visceral moment of shutting down. My subconscious would take over, flooding me with thoughts and feelings to drive me to detach and push him away.

Thankfully, with the mindfulness I have practiced to this point and the research into attachment theory, I could see these thoughts for what they were. I could take a step back and disidentify with them, take the time to calm my nervous system, and try again. Every time it has proved to build the connection stronger when I’ve consciously lowered my defenses and been patient with myself. And believe fucking me, I am grateful for his patience with this as well because it had to be extremely confusing and disheartening until I could fully communicate what I thought was happening with me in these moments.

I did realize after a week of spending time with POPG that I needed to let myself feel and ride the waves of the stages of grief over my ex partner until they settled. I was having a lot of conflicting emotions, a lot of guilt and shame over dating again when I was still quite sad over it all. This process didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would, thank the fucking lord.

The moment I felt like my face broke the surface of the waters I had been drowning in and I took that first free breath will forever be one of the more poignant moments of my life. I felt the love I wrote on in “The New Way to See” break free again and expand back into my world view in one prismatic, euphoric burst. It was a normal, uneventful moment in reality but I felt like everything in my life went from black and white to vivid color.

With that new clarity and my head above water, I found more things were coming to the surface. Deeper insight was emerging with each wall that came down. 

Last summer I bought a motorcycle. I took a class and I was absolutely awful at riding it. This was a challenge to my self esteem but I was able to take it in some jest and I was excited to keep trying. My ex partner and I were practicing riding together and I felt great. Until I dumped it twice in a row. I remember being overcome by so much anxiety in those moments that I could not physically make myself get back on the bike for the rest of the summer. I thought my pride was hurt, I was embarrassed. But going deeper, past the walls, I realize now how much different my reaction was when I dumped the bike in front of my ex partner versus when I did in the class. I could not laugh it off, I was paralyzed.

A year before this, my ex partner assaulted me when we were drunk in New York. I never really talked about it in depth until this past winter. Afterwards, I began to experience flashbacks and anxiety when I would attempt to dive deeper so I decided to leave it alone. I wasn’t ready, I concluded. Any emotions and feelings around it were locked tight. I was so disassociated during and after the event that I could barely access it in my brain. 

But I would venture to guess that my true issue with the bike and my ex partner wasn’t necessarily the embarrassment of being bad at something in front of him, but the feeling of weakness that came along with it. Being weak in front of him was absolutely unacceptable to my nervous system. It sent the alarms blaring, “Get up, get up, get up! Stand up tall!”

In New York, he pushed me to the ground. My face hit a parked car and I landed on the street. I laid there, gazing at the gold reflection of the streetlights on the pavement, I could taste blood as it pooled behind my lips. 

“How did this happen to me?” I wondered as I Iay there, paralyzed. Then, I felt him grab me and pull me up by my coat, putting me back on my feet and forcing me forward. I spit the blood onto my white fur coat, feeling around in my mouth to make sure my teeth were all still there. 

Outside of the where we were staying, I sat on the curb. Still frozen, eyes down, I begged him to please leave me alone. Then I watched as his boot reared back and then came forward. He kicked me in the face, full force. I can still feel what the sole of his boot felt like on my skin in perfect detail.

I went reeling backwards and in slow motion, I felt my spine fill with steel. I was not going to lie there in the street like a pitiful mess. Eyes narrowed, jaw set, back straight, I sat back up and I looked at him dead on. 

Eyes narrowed, jaw set, back straight. 

Eyes narrowed, jaw set, back straight.

Eyes narrowed, jaw set, back straight. 

The threat is over, he is not coming back. But anytime I feel weak, powerless, vulnerable: my eyes narrow, my jaw sets, my back is straight. I am hyper vigilant. I am ready to defend myself, to discard any threat to my safety. I will not be hurt, I will not be pushed down, and I will not feel sorry for myself. We have already established that weakness and pity has evoked disgust in me since I was a small child. This event and some after, I believe, has increased this tenfold. 

The really fucking annoying thing about this is that the threat is over. But almost two years later, I am still bracing for it. As I have identified this feeling, I notice it often in many different types of situations. None are true threats but it turns out that I never really left New York, the girl with the iron spine is still there ready to defend the girl lying on the sidewalk. 

I never wanted to be the person who would bring her old shit into new shit. But I think at this point it is almost impossible not to, we all have baggage we still have to work through. I am realizing now that I spent years with someone that I subconsciously never felt safe around, I never fully relaxed after New York. I never knew true safety until I filed that order. It was always, “What will I have to endure next?” 

This state of being was normal for me, I never questioned why I was this way. I thought maybe I was just an aggressive person, I could work on that. I had, to a point. I was softer in public, on less high alert and I wasn’t having this reaction as often. But as I said, there are certain things intimate relationships will trigger far more than day to day interactions.

To return to the present: POPG has a real knack for bringing out things in me that I have kept locked behind defenses. Whether it’s just an inherent quality of his or my own natural reaction to feeling (and accepting) a new state of safety, I’m not sure. I lean towards thinking it’s both. 

I do know that everytime I am more vulnerable with him, I must be mindful. If I feel my eyes narrow, my jaw set and my back start to straighten: I need to take a moment alone to relax, disidentify with the thoughts that come in, and know that this is my body and mind’s reaction to feeling unsafe in vulnerability. It is my subconscious trying to protect me. I know now with certainty that it has and will pass. I am no longer under threat, after all. 

It has been well worth enduring the moments of discomfort. It has been worth questioning my thought processes. It has been worth pushing through. It is a gift and it is extremely eye opening to have moments of being truly seen as myself with no walls up. I am becoming comfortable with that, slowly. There are more and more moments of it all the time. It is also a gift to realize the beauty of being able to see someone else the same way. 

Everytime past trauma clouds my vision, the sun peeks back through and I find myself wholeheartedly present in my True Self again. 

The pitiful girl lying in the street, the girl with the iron spine, and the girl who lost her ability to see clearly becomes the girl who learned to love herself in weakness, the girl who knows what she fights for, and the girl who sees everything, all at once.

In my journey since “The Burning” my growth has always been inspired by clawing myself out of the toxic sludge I was mired in. Experiencing a connection with someone who evokes growth and healing by simply just being the person they are blows my fucking mind. I have never in my life wanted to better myself on a deep level simply just because the purity of another person’s soul inspires me to do so. Ready or not, I don’t think it matters in the end. I was ready to take on my own challenges that would come up head on. I was as ready as I was ever going to be. 

No matter the outcome, I am grateful.

He wants to help me get back on the bike. Wish me luck!

Self Reflection

The Repressed Loathing.

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I’ve been on a slight hiatus. To be quite honest, I have an article written that I have sat on for over a week where I dove into a traumatic situation I experienced two years ago that I, quite simply, just wasn’t ready to post. I have made myself very vulnerable on this blog but it was a level I am not ready to release at this time. Maybe soon, I will be. The article is on the levels that the body holds onto trauma that we might not recognize. The body does, indeed, keep the score.

As I am typing this, my left wrist aches. It does that sometimes. It was sprained once, just sprained. An X-ray showed no broken bones. It only needed to be wrapped in an ace bandage. 

The last time there was deep emotional turmoil between my ex partner and I, this wrist swelled up with a golfball size lump after I had been shuffling cards. It didn’t go down until I had slept in a brace or kept one on during my off days for a month. It quit hurting at the end of my trip, which in my mind, confirmed it was probably just tendonitis. Maybe it is. It started to ache again three days ago.

I have been reflecting, unwillingly at times, on certain events that happened recently. Many different ones but sometimes on the emotional outbursts, the rage, and the insults I had hurled at my ex partner. I have felt guilt and shame. If I am changing so much, why would these reactions have come back up? I didn’t even recognize myself in those moments. Except I did, a very old version of myself. If you asked my ex partner, he probably recognizes them from when I would be so drunk that my consciousness wasn’t even present anymore.

I was changing, but in the process I was pulling out the old. The well hidden, but extremely influential, integrated beliefs I had from my core memories. Unworthiness, unimportance, being unloveable. It showed out in rage but its core is unbridled, desperate fear of those beliefs being affirmed. It is self loathing for who I felt like I was at my core. I disguised my disgust for this vulnerability in anger. It felt like a clawing tool to bring back control and power when I felt I was at my weakest. I’m not the victim if I make you the victim.

Since I was a small child, I have repressed these feelings to the point we discovered that I didn’t even know why I had them. Since I repeatedly dissociated from them, I didn’t know how to express them. When they did come out, it was unhinged and feral. I was being Dramatic. I was too needy, too vulnerable. Pathetic. Shameful.

When you don’t dive into the big, it comes out in the small. Perceived slights become tantrums, fits of rage, venom spit at the people you love. If I wasn’t comfortable enough to rage at you like I was with my partner, I would isolate myself completely instead. I can’t be unimportant if I never make myself important. When I felt like this I had an extreme lack of self control, my worst fear of all. I could not continue this way. I feared the outcome if I did. It was only getting darker and more persistent, the depths of my soul were calling for my attention and I was absolutely fucking drowning in the currents.

It started with sitting on a beach in Santa Monica, California watching the tide go in and out and thinking about how every cell of my being wanted to walk into the waves and drown. The cool rush of the water over my face and the salt on my tongue as I would let the water take me was an intoxicating idea. I could feel the need for it bubbling up in my throat and my vision was turning red. After agonizing for a long while, I picked up the phone and reached out to my dear friend. I didn’t hold back with my vulnerability in pages of messages and when words of comfort were given freely and with no judgement, when I could feel her love and care for me from thousands of miles away: I could breathe again.

Another time was soon after I got home when I wanted to lash out at my ex partner. I could feel the rage coursing through my veins and I could feel my pupils start to shake. I stopped. Right in my living room as I was pacing, ready to start frothing at the mouth, I stopped. I stopped and breathed and I mentally whipped my head around and stared it down. I looked that rage in the face and we locked eyes. It wasn’t rage at all. Chest heaving, we sat together. We got comfortable. Eventually, I sent it all my love. I accepted it for being there and integrated my insecurity, my self loathing, and my fears into being. Only as they were integrated, not repressed, could they then begin to be released.

With practice this each time, I have gotten good at staring down the big. But I still struggle with the small. The thought patterns, the longing, the sadness. Constant what if’s, how’s, what’s and why’s buzz around in my mind. The miniature are sneaky. I still push them down and swat them away out of habit. I tell them to knock it off, to leave me alone. Realizing the problem in this, I have tried accepting them and grounding myself constantly in the present moment. Switching tactics, I pictured them scattering like cockroaches when I switched the light on in my mind. Nothing has been successful for long, it has been hard work with little success, I’m fucking exhausted.

The other day, while finding myself again in a never ending loop of ruminating on a situation, I had a random moment of insight. “What am I seeking from this? What need am I looking to get met in these situations that won’t leave my mind?” I started to talk to myself like I was someone else.

“You are kind, you are interesting, you work hard. I can see it. I can see how hard you’re trying. You care so deeply, you love so passionately. You take good care of yourself, you take such good care of your home! I love the little star clips you put in your hair. You are funny, you are creative. I appreciate you.”

Funnily enough, these made me smile. I also felt kind of stupid doing it but sometimes you just have to feel a little stupid, I guess. I don’t know who I think is judging me in my own mind. (Me) But they were meeting the need I was seeking. I wanted to be seen, to be heard, to be admired and cared for. This isn’t vain or attention seeking, it was natural. It’s natural to want to be loved and seen for who you are.

“I am so sorry that happened to you. I am so sorry you had to go through that. You did deserve more than that.”

At this point, I stopped where I was doing laundry, put my hands on my knees and I wept. I don’t think I have ever actually shown myself empathy. I acknowledge and I accept the things that happened. “It’s okay! I make the best out of them! Look how far I’ve come! Look at all my fucking life lessons!” I would say to you if you said these things to me, with my eyes wide and my teeth bared in a frantic smile to hide any and all emotional reaction.

It’s never: “I am so sorry you had to endure this at all.” It’s always: “Okay, this emotion is called ‘sad.’ You got yourself into this situation. How are you going to get yourself out?” To do anything else felt like a pity party. A victim mindset. Being a victim, to me, is the most shameful thing of all. You conquer your shit and you do it valiantly.

When you’re kicked in the face, you sit back up.

I have never allowed myself to have any empathy for myself. Deep down, I always thought I had deserved these things. I should have known better. He showed you who he was. Also, I was cruel, cold, unloving at times. “I would leave you too. You were awful to him too.” Is more often the words I would say to myself.

But it goes deeper than him, doesn’t it? These issues weren’t born from him: they were triggered by him. Just as they have been by everyone before him. Just as they have led to me to keep friends at arms length and not feel like I should lean on them. Somewhere, in my core memories, is a deep feeling that I am not important, lovable, or worthy.

Before all these moments, I would have told you that I loved myself. And maybe I did, in the capacity I was ready for. More so, I think I was so afraid of looking weak (even to myself) to admit that I, in fact, did not and didn’t even really understand what loving myself meant.

As I open my mind and I open my heart to healing, I have found a more accurate idea of what it really means. I can see the value in changing my mindset, my coping skills, my internal monologue. I have learned to shine a light and peer down at the core values hidden away and search for a way to truly change them so I can. It started with admitting they were even there. It continues with asking myself the hard questions and being brave enough to still listen when I don’t like the answers.

I am patient with myself to grow at the rate I need to. But I am changing every day. I said yesterday, “I am not even remotely the person I was a month ago.”

Funny enough as I’m editing this: my wrist no longer hurts. The reasons for this, I’m sure, will reveal themselves in time.

This doesn’t look like much from the outside. I often joke that if you looked through my windows it would just be me, sitting and staring into space. Me, reading. Me, crying into a bowl of cereal. Sometimes it’s me laughing at my phone, enjoying the new friendships I have invested in. Sometimes I even leave my house and see them! Most importantly, it’s me reaching out to them when I need someone. I’ve learned when to stop isolating myself from those I love and who love me. Soon, maybe I’ll allow myself to be comforted by friends instead of crying alone. I’m happy that I’m crying at all. There was a time when I could not.

Sometimes a hiatus is needed, a time to reset, reflect, evaluate, and accept. I know now that having and showing pride, love, and care for myself does not have a checklist I must complete to deserve it. It’s right here, right now on this journey. It starts with accepting it right this very second and then every one that follows. Nothing else would fall in place if I did not. It would all be wasted effort. This is all paramount. This cannot be taken away from me. It’s a core belief.

Today was the day I whipped around, stared myself in the face and said, “I love you unconditionally too.”

I am excited to see what tomorrow will be for.

Self Reflection

The Past, Present, Future, Now.

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After I decided that I was, indeed, going to stick around on this ol’ earth to see what the fuck was going to happen next I woke up the next morning with what I can only think to describe as an ‘emotional hangover’. I drug myself out of bed and started my coffee, let the dog out, and found myself staring into space on my couch. My head hurt, I felt dehydrated, my stomach was in knots, I wanted to vomit. I still felt my mind plagued with thoughts on distaste for my current situation, anger, and loneliness. You might say that I was only choosing to focus on the negatives.

I’ve been studying a lot recently on how the brain works to process emotions and how it creates thought patterns. Essentially if you consistently live in a certain state, the neural pathways will exist to keep you in that state as it is familiar and what it craves. The whole concept reminds me a lot of addiction, was I addicted to being miserable? I didn’t think so as I could tell you what made me miserable. But was I choosing to be miserable about those things? 

I have also been studying on the idea of ego and the most intriguing to me was emotional ego. As I sat on my couch feeling like shit, I took a mental step back. I observed those feelings I described in my body, my body’s reactions to the emotions. I let them be for a minute and then consciously removed myself from them. My consciousness is both entwined and seperate from my body. I felt the part of it that was observing the body and the other part that could see the thoughts and the subsequent reactions only for what they were, thoughts on a situation from the past. It is no longer my present moment.

My present moment was here, on my couch, drinking coffee. I looked around at the different colors in my home, the environment I had so painstakingly crafted. I like it here. The art is meaningful. In fact, how can I forget how loved I am when so much of the things in my home remind me that I am? 

I choose to ignore it. I choose misery.

What happens if I choose to only live in the present moment? The right here right now which consistently unfolds into the future? The concept of past, present, and future is truly a perplexing one to think on as neither truly exists. But if the present only exists second to second does it exist either? Even as I typed that present moment is already gone. Are we living in a constant state of both past, present, and future as our seconds unfold into all three states simultaneously?

I meditated on this concept for a part of my afternoon, probing my memories and my present moments. Trying to truly expand and experience the layers of my own consciousness and how far it went. What were its limits? Where did these thoughts come from? What was the source? Why could I think on all of this and also still have a song from earlier playing in the background of my thoughts?

I actually fell asleep for a few moments and when I woke up, I felt a very strong sense of peace. Here I was, in the now. The past was not now. It could only affect me if I chose to ruminate on it. The unknown of the future can only affect me if I choose to ruminate on it. But in the present now, what was there to experience other than contentment of my own company?

I poured myself a nice little glass of soda water and continued a book by Elkhart Tolle that I had been reading off and on on my vacation and very soon it dived into this very concept that I had been exploring in the afternoon. The synchronicities of the universe make no mistakes.

I spoke with my sister before I left about the idea of ‘letting go of the rope’ in life. There’s a common mindset I find myself in where I feel as if I am on a dock holding onto a rope with all my might that is attached to a ship in the water. As the current tries to take it, I sweat and struggle. I get pulled along inch by inch even as I turn around and heave to continue pulling it backwards. But it keeps forcing me forward. In my own fear, I want to keep it with me and docked where I can see it. But there’s no bigger sense of relief than when you let go of the rope, feel it whip through your hands, stand back, and watch it set sail.

The letting go of the rope is truly the only time life can set sail. There is no true control but only an ego’s desire to arrogantly decide its and others path. There is no story to unfold but instead a series of just right nows to continuously choose to experience and how.

I like it, Picasso!

Self Reflection

The Love of a Father.

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Today is my first full day home from a week-long trip from Portland to Santa Monica. As I arrived at LAX at 7:00 am Friday morning I could feel a sense of anxiety and dread building in the background of my mind and as I continued onto the flight it began to churn bringing with it a sense of deep irritability and discontent. My thoughts were starting to race, my jaw was clenched, and as we touched down in Indianapolis I felt nothing but a deep pit of unhappiness in my soul.

While I was sad on my trip, I could meditate on my feelings and view them from the outside. I could evaluate my situation and past experiences with an objective lens and think and behave rationally. I could feel the deep peace of my overall self outside of the turmoil.

Here, it’s all consuming. I’m drowning in it. I hate it here.

I can’t escape my misery, I’m fully sober. There’s no soothing and numbing from an outside substance. Honestly, it was the most I’ve struggled in a long time. How nice would it be to go to a bar and have a drink and lose myself in a crowd of people talking and laughing? Even just go and not have a drink, just to prey on the energy? But I do have the awareness at least that that would be dangerous territory at the present moment and not worth the risk.

So how do I incorporate that feeling I had when I was away to when I’m here and all of my issues are presented to face once again?

I visited these places to see my best friend and my Mamaw. I spent time with more family as well and found it extremely enjoyable. As my Mamaw said during one of our deep conversations on my childhood,

“I never want you to doubt that you were loved.”

I think a key I need to focus on is the unconditional love I feel from these people, though far, is still with me. I am still loved.

My first night home after unpacking and cleaning I was enraged, miserable and I did what I do best: I took to my car and drove. As I was driving I contemplated, if I will be extremely honest, the abstract concept of ending my life. But then I became aware of the distinct feeling that my Real Dad was with me. He was with me and he understood. He ended his life too. He regretted it. He knew the emotions I was feeling, the overwhelmingness of them and he was here to bring comfort and comfort alone.

I always sought out the presence of my Dad but it makes complete sense that he would step back and allow my Real Dad to be the one to be here for me. He understood better, I was so much like him. The time with my Mamaw opened the door to understand him better and to see him again. I could find the deep down wound in my soul that was missing and grieving him all this time.

I realized then that he had always been here, he’d just been waiting. He understood why I pushed him away. But the unconditional love a father has for his daughter has never faltered.

I am loved. Though I feel very alone at this present moment, so much of it is my own making. I fear connection with others because I fear it being taken away. My past experiences have made me very wary of care and love being shown to me. When will they leave? When will they prove that they don’t actually care?

I cannot become jaded. I have to open my heart to feel loved and to love others in the way I spoke on in ‘The New Way to See’. There’s so much love to be had, to give still. The defense mechanisms I have set up so defiantly over time don’t make that less so or make me less worthy of it. 

I am ready to give and receive love. I am ready to give and receive joy. I am ready to open myself up to people outside of a blog on the internet or superficial conversations. I am ready to see others in person and experience new things. I am ready to no longer isolate myself from others because I don’t feel, deep down, I’m worthy of them.

I took a cross stitch from my Mamaw’s house that says, “Give Thanks”. I am thankful for my experiences and the feeling of true unconditional love I experienced on my trip. I’ll think of it when I see it every day.

I’ll carry that love with me, my father with me, as I face a new day even though I truly don’t want to. He didn’t but I can.