#haphazardwriting

[thechildrendontlaugh]

Hunger

I have not encountered white people who have wished to devour me, for a long time. But I did, again, recently, on Sunday. There is a look I am familiar with, the feeling however—the recognition of the feeling—is foreign to me. Was foreign to me.

I’m still unsure of what I felt. I can’t exactly place it as a feeling, it is more an image. The first is a plague of locust, descending upon the land, wide-eyed, jaws unhinged, emitting a sound at a frequency I cannot pick up on but one which the others, the other locust of this plague, themselves vibrate with and attune to. The second image, the one that feels clearer to me, more reflective of this strange time that I am embodying and being birthed into, is one in which I am drowning, and these lost souls who have somehow come and infiltrated these once sweet waters, grasp at me to take from me my very essence of being. My life. And attempt to devour me by pulling me down and using my body as some sort of life-raft, to get to Heaven. I know that my body will not be enough. That it is a single, solitary thing that must remain intact—that must, in fact, still find the remaining missing pieces of itself—and that it will not get them to where they think they hope to be. Where they are confused they are not already warmly invited or welcomed. Extended a mercy—an invitation—that I have somehow received instead. A birthright.

It is a dangerous thing. When someone recognizes the power you have which you yourself are unable to recognize or know the extent of. When someone is attracted to some essence you have grown nose-blind to. That you have, all your life, inhaled, and exhaled.

How do I begin to speak into words, the shift within and outside of myself, I have felt for months now. When the feelings are still more images, and less words. I have slipped through both time, and space. I am not quite at the margins, but I am terrified of being in the center. There is a heightened sensitivity, an awareness. An Awakening, which has occurred. A muddying—or perhaps an intensity of clarifying—where I wake up to the same misguidings and false lines of delineation followed and even worshipped, by those who came before me. I have fallen into a space where the illusion of time has been smeared away. The smudges make my breath catch in my throat. I see enough to know that I should be scared. I see enough to scare me. I cannot see past my uncertainty. Or this fear.

I think of the age of “33”. What I thought it signified and would bring in. And what it actually seems to mean, and has ushered in. Was this version of me always waiting at the wings, to step onto a stage and recite lines that I don’t recall, but somehow, in the minute-to-minute utterances, I do remember. Right now, it is all deception that I conjure back to me. Lies, disempowerment, hurt, suppression. This pervading mantra that, “I am Bad.” Not quite “evil”, but bad. A thing to be punished, to be entombed and chained to the endless floor of eternity. I do not know if I have dabbled with more than I should have. And I am not sure of who has made that “should”. If that too is a lie, and I am, with this journey of mine, disentangling myself from Lies, and weaving new Fates of half-forgotten Truths.

I am hungry for this Truth. I myself have a hunger, and I think that is why, when I experience those who share a hunger themselves, I want to stick around, as though I will not be devoured, but the thing sought out. As though Hunger can distinguish between the two when it is starved enough.

I do my nibbling slow. And spit out a lot of what I try—and then come back to it, pushing my tongue against the mush of it, to see if there is a taste there, from in my infancy, that I recall, which eludes me in this illusion of being anything more than the child that I am. It all comes back slowly. I am impatient. There is more that I know I should know by now. (Whose “should” is that?) But don’t. Or do, but the remembering is incomplete, and paranoid. Unsure of itself, and who or what can be trusted. I have a thing in me which is not quite ripe, but it emits a frequency of its own. A scent. That I think—believe—at our core, we are attuned to. I am at odds with it, but not enough to push it completely away. I am just beginning to allow myself to suppose, that maybe it does not intend to do me any harm. That it is not another intent on devouring me by first descending upon me and looking at me sweetly, showering me with curiosity and wonder, holding the reflection of myself back up to me to mesmerize and distract me, beguiling me into staying, when I should be taking flight.

Who am I? And is that even the right question to ask anymore?

[thechildrendontlaugh]

A Year In Review: Earthquake

I have hated nearly every moment I have spent living here in San Francisco. It has been a terrible plague upon my life which has rendered me less of myself each day. No amount of preparation could have bolstered me strong enough to be here. I am filled with an inescapable regret. How could I have been so wrong about this part of the path?

It has taken so much from me…and I feel as though I am left with nothing in return. With whole chasms of sorrow, and grief. An endless pit of disappointment. A blighted city that has sunk into a cavern. Suffocating me. And my only thought is: I did this to myself.

I have been naïve. I have been hopeful. I just want my life to look different than it has—I want it to be different. I want to know I am capable of making that change. Of returning back to me. Of re-claiming me. It has take so much of my fire. So much of my spirit. I have had to claw at myself, trembling. And I can’t say any of it has been worth it. The impact I have made is nothing in comparison to the devastation I have felt. The loneliness I have experienced. A betrayal of hope. Relief has been teasingly fleeting. Why have I come here in the first place? What work did I think I could do, what information I could glean—steal, and take back. A loss of a feeling of community, means not feeling safe, means remaining stagnant. I don’t know what to do with this grief. I don’t know where to set it down, or what to pick up in its place. This is the season where I should feel my most powerful, my most sure. And I feel scared, and small, and lonely. This path has grown murkier, when it should have become more clear. My trust, shakier. When my faith in myself, should be at its greatest. I hate where I live, I hate who I live with. I hate the people I attract, and the ones who leave me behind. I do not have the strength to keep moving forward. To be dragged ahead as time soldiers on.

Last night, I could not sleep. So I allowed my mind to wander, thinking of the peace an aneurysm might grant me. How I would not have to think, would not have to make any decisions. Would not have to be disappointed. Would not have to pathetically throw my fists at fate, demanding something more. That its cruelty. It’s randomization, would strike for a final time, having the last breath in this pitiful song.

What’s my motivation? What’s my purpose? Why am I here? Is it compelling enough?

What of happily ever after?

This is a start. In writing, I am able to notice that something in me, has dislodged. Good. A seismic shift to toss my life upside down. Where I no longer am trying to take calculated risks. I have dreamt so much of fire, how could I possibly attempt to mistake myself as a dead thing.

I’ve bit my tongue too long. I will open my mouth, and let the blood spill out.

[thechildrendontlaugh]

This Little Light of Mine: Transformation When We Only Meant A Shedding

I am needing to leave my therapist.

It is something I have known—the two of us really—for quite some time now. But always a little fire would bloom, and I would see the smoke and know that all my energy would need to be directed to putting it out. On the cusp of a potential loss, how could I voluntarily abandon myself. But it is time, and it has been for quite a long while now.

I have been thinking all this weekend, about what has stopped me. While also trying to dig in and peek at my deeper, core wounding. What it is—what it is really—and the ways in which I have avoided it.

There was a beautiful cazimi in Mercury this Saturday, and while I am not too often taken by astrology, I cannot deny the dream-like unfolding my life has decided to take. Or perhaps return to. A surreal encounter with myself. With the world. That feels like an ongoing trip where I might easily see the tethering and connecting lines, the pulsating dots, and the whole of the Universe, humming to me in gentle, sweet anticipation. Why have I blocked off this side of me? This iteration? And why for so long? Perhaps more earnestly, is the question of why now? Of what makes this moment different from all the other moments which preceded it—and what makes it so different from all the moments that will follow after. What is being led up to? And why might I now demonstrate that I am “ready”?

I, have a longing to be seen. I talked about this recently, but it wasn’t until reading it momentarily ago, that I realized that there were some dots pulsating all along, waiting for me to see the threads. I think I am beginning to see them now, or at least what they are hinting at, although the “why” of it all, still frustratingly eludes me. I want to be seen. In the fullness of who and what I am. To not be rejected—to not show my bigness, and be feared. Cut down, and made small. I had two, back-to-back instances of this most recently which flayed me. Which caused a “core wound” to flare up, and for the threat of a spiraling towards this illusive “why now?”

I can’t see the connection. Only feel them. And even then, it feels like ghosts. Like the imagining of wind, but no actual breeze blows. And I find myself thinking to myself, wondering, if maybe this is indication of an armor built too resiliently. That it blocks out everything. If I do not remember erecting it, how could I possibly know how to tear it down?

My staying with my therapist (as helpful and wonderful as she has been to me, for me), is part of this erecting. This hiding, as it were. This denial, and perhaps even too, abdication. A part of me thinks that maybe I am instead running away, and not running to be found, however. It is a dangerous thing, not thinking you really know yourself. Lacking a basic trust, or having had it removed from you—trying to reclaim something you aren’t even sure of ever having existed, and if it did, no idea really, of how it might have looked, or acted, or behaved. What drove it away, and why has it remained gone for so long?

I still hide parts of myself from my therapist. And it is less a matter of wanting or needing to deceive, and more a lack of trust—or rather a recognition—that the fullness of the spectrum of who I am, would be too much. A depth better suited to analysis. I do not want to make myself as big as I can be, as big as I can believe I am possible of being (and even bigger still, because one’s imagination always pales), and see, that I am too much to hold.

I have held a Judgment within me (I didn’t realize it until recently, that I attributed this signifier to X—Alobar—and this is part of why I have continued to carry the burden).

What is the wound beneath the wound?

I can almost see it. And it is the same story I have been repeating and playing out for almost three years now. That I have been trying to grow into, even when, at the end, there were back-to-back encounters trying to further stall, and stagnant. To rip me from myself. To make a bad thing out of the wholeness I was entering into more fully.

I think I want someone who will frustrate me (and I think this is echoed even more in the dreams of a soulmate I dream of from time to time—a man who I am at odds with at first, but allows me the fullness of my blooming, to shine without trying to eclipse me, without shielding his eyes, without fear that I will hurt him or in my Bigness, render him small). Who will not listen to the lies I am saying, but dig at the emotions buried deeper than I feel I can readily access them.

It has been so long since I’ve written like this, and I wonder too, why has it been so long. If it forebodes or foretells. If I am perhaps, descending into some kind of madness, or if this is what awakening looks like, what arriving feels like. If I will begin to know my self better, or if I will draw myself into a lull, where I will put off the hardest parts of it, for a little longer. I tell myself “I am ready”, but what does that look like? And who I am prioritizing in that readiness? And if I am constantly growing—constantly putting out one fire after another—how will I ever be ready? How will I know? How will I act, instead of being acted upon? What thread have I begun to tug on, that will remain flailing, untethered—I do not know what part this connects to or what piece comes next—and I am so tired of hoping for the parts that do not arrive. That are not ready and I do not know if they will ever be.

What is the point of all this as I reach a conclusion to this insert?

To stop my stalling. To maybe let a fire—just one—keep on burning. To see what it destroys, and in its seeming “destruction”, reconstructs and makes new. To let it shed. To let it change. To let it Transform. Even if I, as the little caterpillar, cannot imagine myself with wings, the plan of a new creation, always buried deep within, just waiting for me to be brave enough, to spin a little tale, and emerge at the end of it. Happy, free. Unrestrained.  

Let this little fire catch. Let it burn bright, my god, please, let it Shine.

[thechildrendontlaugh]

Endings.

When I think about documenting this time, I find myself resisting. There is a purity to it. A sacredness. And I am afraid, that if I attempt to preserve it…something may become lost. When I began this new semester, I knew that it would hold a key transformative quality for me. I knew it would be big, but I couldn’t begin to possibly wrap my head around what exactly that meant. I couldn’t begin to envision who I might be, and become, at the end of all this.

I can’t say how I’ve made it here, to this moment. In the same way that I look back on the whole of my life, and struggle to pinpoint how I survived those moments which felt crafted to specifically, and irrevocably, destroy me. I felt caught up in the midst for so much of this semester, moving towards some yet defined destination, not quite sure of where that might lead (predictably at the end, but what exactly does “end” mean, or look like), or the steady shift and changes happening to me in real-time, that I was somehow made unaware of. Like gazing at yourself each morning in the mirror, I did not track the changes until I reflected back at the beginning, and saw myself as I am now.

These things always tend to get heady. It is so hard pinning down the meta, articulating in words what already feels not-quite there, just barely perceptible. As always, I will do my best.

I began this journey knowing that at the end I would be embodying The High Priestess. Structurally, I knew what that meant. But I didn’t see how that was an embodiment I would be undergoing, nor trusting that it was a transformation that was even possible. There was no written guideline, no direct path. No chosen guide, save my own self who had been involuntarily appointed, and even then I had my doubts. Was I attributing or clinging onto something that wasn’t actually mine—that wasn’t actually meant for me? I think this was the first lesson. Accepting that this was my journey to have, that there had been no mistakes. That this too, was happening as it perhaps, was always meant to.

When I close my eyes and examine the whole of me. Try to pinpoint the beginnings of my changes, I find myself falling short of identifying what, and where the catalyst began. It is a little fire which spread everywhere. Maybe there were always a spattering of them…but they came into tune with one another, linked together, and consumed the whole of me. There is not even the ghost of me. There is only as I stand now, reunited with all my selves. An impossible return. To find one’s self again, most especially the parts one did not realize had ever been missing in the first place. I feel a fullness now. When I take a deep breath, the familiar achings of my own endless sorrow and impenetrable pain, don’t exist. When I stretch out myself, I do not feel the tautness of a thing that at any moment, will snap and break apart. I do not feel my fragility…but I am in touch with my vulnerability. I do not feel my hardness, but I am in touch with my long-buried softness. I stand upright and I feel my shoulders broadening. I know they expand to take upon them more, but I do not bend my head to balance out the newfound weight. No. My head stands higher, and I feel a lightness all around me. I am no longer eclipsed. I shine just as bright as the Sun.

I got myself, back to me. I was kissed awake. Blinked the sleep from my eyes, and felt the warmth return back to my blood, and bones. I was resurrected. And it took me so long, to arrive. It took me so long to find myself again. And I carry newfound—old—truths back with me, from the point I have emerged…to the there that calls me still. I just need the feeling. Placing it gently within the inseams of my heart, knitting it gently within my womb. Wrapping it around my neck like the holy talisman it is. An object of protection, promise. I carry myself, back to myself, and thank myself…for always believing, even when it hurt, “it is not yet the end…” How much courage that took. How much faith.

In the middle of it all, you wring your hands, and your heart, and wonder, “how might I ever make it through…” But impossibly so…I have made it through, and I stand atop the mountain, all on the other side. The places where the air felt thin. Where there were nothing but deserts and drought surrounding. Where puddles felt like oceans, and I nearly drowned in both. Where darkness prevailed, and I had only my lamentations to guide me through the caverns of the underground…

How did I make it through? How did each tragic moment of grief and loss and pain, build upon each one that came before it, creating something that no longer pricks, when I touch it, no longer blinds when I look upon it. How could something so beautiful…come from the breakdown? And then build me back up again?

Some part of me so badly wants to cling to this moment. When have I ever known peace like this? When might I ever know it again?

…but something draws me further still, and I have spent too much time learning how to believe, and trust the beatings of my heart, to stop now. There is a sweetness which fills me.

I have never known “good” goodbyes. But I know them now. There are still aches found there, but there is such a profound gentleness. Being seen as I am, as I have longed to be seen. It is perhaps what makes the goodbye hurt more. That it is so good, how could I ever depart from something that feels like home? That is Love? Something that has kissed me so softly, and restored me back to myself…Do goodbyes ever not hurt?

Some part of me that bears the wound of childhood, thrashes about, and coats herself in the comfort of this moment. That draws it back into myself in a way that means transmutation. That takes the energy of this moment…and transforms it into the metamorphosis the season of winter beckons me to hibernate into. It will warm me, as icicles begin to form all around me, a little fire preciously stoked within me.

I don’t know how this piece fits into the wider puzzle of my life’s purpose. But I know it is precious, formative. That it matters. That I have unlocked some new avenue, previously closed off for me. I was not ready. I believed, but I found it hard to trust. Found it hard to love, and even harder, to say goodbye. I was not full, I carried an incompleteness about me, a whole which whistled when the wind howled and caused me to turn in on myself, curl into the hole of despair and prefer rotting over pruning, and growth. I was not ready, to face myself. To unshield my eyes and bask in the glory of my brilliance. I looked for others to give me permission, to grant me my wholeness. To tell me of my enoughness.

I look back at myself. At my pain, and sorrow. My immense grief. My falterings. My stumbling. My lamentations which wracked the walls of my life until they threatened to come tumbling down. How many times I begged to give up. How many times I cried out to be forever struck down.

It has taken so long, to arrive. To be here now.

I breathe in all that I am. All that I was. All that I forgot I could be—would be. I am so thankful to be alive. This too, is a blessing. The becoming, that leads to being.

May this goodbye be sweet. And the one that follows after, be ever sweeter.

I am, finally, at long last…ready.

[thechildrendontlaugh]

We say our prayers with sinner’s tongues, touching sinner’s lips Our hallelujahs sound like pagan chants And our raised hands mimic heretical signs Of gods and demons and cursed men We are still waiting for the sky to fall And the sun to darken Where men cry out, and children weep for their mothers And the women are all missing We are waiting for the fires to spark, and the Earth to grumble And the animals to spring forth from its cracks We are waiting for the end With gouged eyes we are waiting for the end to spill out over the horizon And chase us down Engulfing our shadows We are dancing in the dark Caught up in fits we once called spasms Now some marking of divine, fated intention A touching, an anointing An infestation of the devil haloed in blinding light We are waiting for the end We herald its return To end, to end, to end To suffer this end, and melt away Old things wash away. This is the killing song.

[thechildrendontlaugh]

we are still waiting for the sky to fall, and the sun to darken.  the apocalypse is near, and we are eager to herald its beginning. doomsday approaches. soon we can all begin again.

[thechildrendontlaugh]

you do your best work on your knees when you are begging on your knees

[thechildrendontlaugh]

a pillar ever-lasting.  time overlooks her. and even the Sun asks permission. to lay kisses on her skin.