Next to you

 I have something to say...

The subject of the end of the world has come up in my past, in the innermost recesses of my mind. When I doubted myself, when I was at my deepest point of self-questioning and self-doubt, I thought about how I would be able to identify the side of the "good guys". How is one able to determine where to go, when factions are fractioned, when everyone is teaming up and making groups to discuss the big questions for a few minutes and report back to teacher? Where do you go?

This is indicative of a much bigger conundrum at a crossroads in my life. Looking back, all I had were ruins, forks in roads and burnt bridges. At that point nothing was sacred, nothing was certain. Everyone and anyone could and would leave at the slightest turn of the winds. 

At the start of my road to question everything, I began by questioning myself. It was the worst kind of self-inflicted torture. Every choice, every action, every decision was put under the microscope and broken apart. The conclusion was that I could not be trusted. My judgement, my knowledge, my view could not be trusted. I needed to attach myself to someone simple, predictable and trustworthy. I needed to simplify everything, to stop the course that was plainly leading me to an existence of perpetual sorrow.

So I found someone. And I thought "plain, simple, unencumbered... someone who would recognize the good side of a fight". And letting go seemed easy at first, and the sense of routine comfort and security lulled me into a trance. And this is how years went by, one after another, burying the old ways and the old thoughts and everything that tripped me up in the past.

Then I fought my way back, because it was never about what I did, it was about how I couldn't stop blaming myself for everything bad that happened. This part of the story has been already spoken of in depth...

But now? What's ahead? What's my side in the war? Where will I be in a final stand against the world?

I'm on our side. I know we'll be on the same side. Our side is my side. Everyone is free to follow or not, but I will fight for us.

Amnesia

 Sometimes we enter a room and we can't remember why we went in there.

Then we leave the room, thinking if we forgot it must not have been important.

Sometimes there's in inexplicable hurt inside, one we can't place, one that tries to find a reason to exist in memories. Grief is love without a place to go, and sometimes grief is also pain without a place to grow. Free-floating pain. And when you try to pull it out, like the loose thread of a sweater, you tug at things that should be better left alone. And hurt finds friends in the past. Hurt finds many roots, and moves at the soil of melancholy.

I want to forget a past I never lived. I want to have no heart for the thoughts of those who came before me, and those who wished me ill, and those who thought they had wiped me out, and those who might still think at least they got one over me.

I understand... and I go back in the room of my solitude, to try and remember what it is I needed to find.

Epiphany

 I've been trying to find the reason, and make sense of everything that happened and why it happened the way it happened.

We've been talking about starting an anti-cult cult, a deprogramming program, a sort of anarchristianity. If there is anything I can leave behind in this world that speaks for me and of me and everything I held most important in life, I hope it can be the message that embracing our individuality is the greatest gift we can give ourselves.

Because I think I have finally found the seed of everything that had to happen for me to find my way back to my soulmate. I needed to accept myself. I needed to find my way back to myself, which would in turn lead me back to him. I had to go away and behold, longingly, how he stayed true to himself and embraced his authenticity with a fierceness and a bravery I couldn't even fathom for myself. I understand now, how I raged at the world for not allowing me to be myself, but I was doing it to myself. I was suffocating and repressing myself and in that state I detonated and destroyed everything around me in a dark tantrum. I wanted to be loved, I wanted to feel accepted. Who can blame me for thinking I wasn't? Truth was there was such a wide chasm between who I was and who I was expected to be that I mangled and tortured that reality and forced her to adapt, to conform, to follow, to mold.

I almost succeeded in killing her.

But then it shouldn't come as a surprise that when that became too much, when it became unsustainable, when I finally realized I was on my way to being dead way before I even hit the ground, I made the decision to save myself. To heal myself. To make myself whole again. And it's no surprise that that's exactly when life brought him back to me, put him right there in my path, also beaten up and weather worn, but still mine despite all the years and in-betweens.

And you can't tell me that it's not right. Not anymore. You can never convince me that this isn't what is mine, this is part of who I am, and this kind of love is what I deserve. And if I am to detonate again I hope it is so I can explode in love and build as much as I destroyed in my bleakest era. If I am still here there's still hope.

Atonement

 We all knew...

Something happened recently. Something that has nothing to do with me. Something that dropped on the center of two lives and caused ripples that haven't reached their limit. I am probably somewhere on the outer banks of the pond where this crashed, but still the air moved around me in a way it never had before.

And it begs so many questions. It demands attention from everyone whose mind has curled at the news.

Because we knew.

And at times like this it becomes sobering, it becomes real. We realize that we seem to think we know what we have to do, we are righteous, we are people of action, we stand for no evil. But in reality we often don't even know how to acknowledge its presence. And shit makes me scared.

I'm afraid

And not of the shit out there, I'm not afraid of what might come to me from beyond my watchtower

I'm afraid of what might still be inside of me.

I don't want to learn to trust myself too much, I don't want to grow complacent in my evolution as a human being. I want to keep holding myself to the standards of the way of peace, happiness and fulfillment that I want for myself and those around me. I don't ever want to hurt anyone again. But I have to wonder if there's not still an evil in me that won't change. I can't torture myself with such thoughts, but I can't completely let go of them either. They have to be a fixture in my house, not a decoration I can store away and lose sight of.

Complacency is such a heady poison... it acts like a drug until it kills. And evil is a rabid dog inside our minds that takes many names in the real world. When we learn to name it we tie it to a chain, and when we learn how to control it we shorten its lead. But it never truly dies, and because of this it requires our attention from time to time. At least to acknowledge that it's still there and at once it had roamed free and wreaked havoc and if we don't mind it from time to time it could break its bonds, corroded by or own hubris.

I've learned to love and accept myself for the tragic mix of kindness and evil in  me, as everyone should. But this is a reminder... that I can't and shouldn't lose sight of the lead and the dog stalking from the shadows of my mind...

I know.

At last

 Es muy fácil entender la vida viendo hacia atrás. 

Sentarse en la cima del middle age y ver hacia atrás deja claras muchas cosas, explica casi todo, revela eventos y situaciones que ni nos enteramos en su momento que pasaron. Y desde esa atalaya, después de contemplar todo aquello viene una especie de vértigo. Hacia atrás está toda esa claridad, hacia enfrente hay un precipicio oscuro. Sabemos que vamos de bajada, sabemos que en el mejor de los casos estamos a la mitad del camino y pensándolo así todo lo anterior se nos hace poco, se nos hace fugaz, y contemplamos nuestra mortalidad y nuestra naturaleza temporal como algo cierto y palpable. 

Encima de eso, sabemos que nuestro mejor momento físico ya pasó. Ya no vamos a volver a ser tan resilientes en nuestra corporeidad, ni tan resistentes, ni tan ágiles ni tan sanos, si ya lo fuimos. Empiezan a doler los huesos tanto como los recuerdos. Ahí vamos cargando todas esas memorias, cada mala decisión, cada desvelada y cada vez que no dormimos bien y comimos peor.

Hacia enfrente hay más decisiones y más incertidumbre. Pero en lo personal estoy empezando a sentir algo más... una especie de fortaleza proveniente de todo lo que ya aprendí. Y quiero pensar bien. Quiero creer que todo lo que se está debilitando por fuera se está haciendo poderoso por dentro. Ya no necesito luchar con mi cuerpo, ahora mi mente peleará las batallas por mi. Ahora mi estima saludable sanará mis heridas mentales. Ahora el amor más fuerte, el que no estuve lista para resistir con mi débil mente y mi estima pisoteada hace tantos años, pintará mi vida de mil colores. Y yo estoy lista también, para poder trabajarlo y moldearlo y hacerlo algo mio, algo nuestro, algo perfecto.

Creo que parte de nosotros sabe cuando hemos conocido a nuestra alma gemela, pero no siempre estamos preparados en nuestra integridad para asumir la tremenda responsabilidad de tener a quien te va a completar. Hay que llegar a un nivel de auto-completarse primero. Hay que ganar esas batallas contra uno mismo y sus limitaciones. Nos nutrimos y crecemos porque sabemos que el otro merece lo mejor que le podamos otorgar de nosotros mismos. Aprender todo eso cuesta... cuesta mucho, y no dudo que haya quienes no puedan llegar al nivel de introspección y auto conocimiento necesario para SER... ser por fin los dos una persona, una entidad, un set completo.

Y aunque todavía quedan muchos retos por delante puedo asegurar una cosa... vale la pena todo. Absolutamente cualquier cosa que tengan que sobrevivir con tal de estar con esa persona vale totalmente la pena. Es ponerse a cuentas con el universo, es aceptar que sí se nos hará justicia algún día. Es volver a creer en la promesa vaga de los poetas, de una vida en paz.

 Quietly...

With the lightest of steps

Raise the lantern and climb

Hike up your night gown, don't trip

This chore will be over in just a bit

Punch-drunk

 Sometimes it's all we can do to sit and listen.

Sometimes you just have to let the words come in those precious few moments of silence. Let the words and worlds build themselves up in your headspace. Sometimes you just have to let the words float in that liminal space between reality and your desire. You have to let the words linger and blur your consciousness. Let the words develop in that safe space, nurtured by the silence, protected in the womb of your emotions. Let the words grow, let them one day exhale their blessings onto your reality.

For now, just feel. Listen, and feel, and let them grow.