Resting

For now. I've been in training all day and I'm so tired I am staring at the screen blankly. But here is a photo from my walk yesterday.

And I made it through the day and allowed the grommel bear out to roam once I got to the safety of my room. Now that she's had her say she seems ready for a nap.

Truth challenges

Truth challenges me today. I am pre-menstrual. Stuck in a VERY small office with five males all talking at the top of their voices. Working on a deadline for documents that need to be issued to my business users at four this afternoon. I’m not sure whether I should burst out in tears or jump up and rip out a tongue or two. Shouting, who cares what you think – no-one. And chanting to myself. “It’s only the hormones, its only the hormones, it’s only the hormones.”

Day like today strips me right down to a space where I need to decide, do I want to be the kind of person who takes my mood out on others or do I want to allow the freaked out me to curl up into a little ball and take a nap somewhere in my womb? Just focus on the task ahead and keep going. I can cry this evening when I get home.

Reflection

I have been feeling sad lately. Not all the time, only when I lie down to relax. I’m not sure where this sadness is coming from, is it hormonal, is it chemical or is something bothering me that I have wrapped up and buried deep in my heart. I lie down, my eyes fill with tears and my stomach starts churning.

It has been an enlightening weekend. I received a phone call from my brother who lives in San Francisco whom I have not spoken to in a while. Even though he is thousands of miles away from the rest of the family he is struggling with exactly the same issues regarding career and self worth that the three of us here are fighting with. It is as if a trigger clicked in al of our minds at the same time.

Most of my weekend was spend working on a job application for a position I’m really, really keen on. So hold thumbs.

I spend time with a friend Sunday morning, talking about life and relationship. Looking at Florian I’m suddenly struck with how fragile our state of relating is. A million things can and will happen to change it. But will it strengthen or weaken the feelings of closeness? Only time will tell, but I’m determined to absorb our togetherness. The good and bad makin up our composition, the fears and the safety, the irritations and the joys. Because all of these transforms us into what we can never be without each other.

Red self portrait

Red is the colour I wear when I need warmth and colour to bleed into life at the office. When blue fluorescent lights and computer screens beg to be reminded of blood, pulsing with life and vulnerability.

Red is to humans what green is to plants. Tears makes one’s eyes turn red.

Truth unfolding

A long time ago, a few years after I came out of rehab, I was sitting on the back lawn, yellowed by winter. Totally bored. I decided that I need a career. I wanted to have something to do. I also wanted to see the world and have adventure, like people in books and movies. I did not want to make lists about going to the library, buying potatoes and remembering to phone a friend forever.

While studying I was pushing so hard. I started feeling stretched and tired and crying a lot.

In order to cope I had to ask for help. Suddenly something new entered my life. Someone opened a door and while staring at the swimming fish and the yellow Chinese tassel moving in the non-existent wind I saw myself. I saw who I was, who I no longer wanted to be and who I wanted to be. I did not really need other’s to feel sorry for me, I wanted to be someone worth admiring.

I pushed and pushed through one, two, three jobs, striving to impress. Ignoring the fearful voices in my head saying, “You can’t do this, I’m tired, I’m lonely”

I kept coming back every time I could no longer keep going, to stare at the yellow tassel and the swimming fish.

And it was great. I had so much energy. I was giving up a part of myself that I have related to forever. A sad, deep still space. I could not move forward while lingering there.

Then suddenly it all stopped making sense. I did not want to rush anymore. I felt like I travelled so fast that I lost parts of myself on the way. The empathy, the feeling, the sadness, I missed them. I wanted to rest in that quiet space again.

But I was scared, what if I lost everything? What if I started travelling backwards? All the way back to the lawn? But I was not happy. I could not remember happiness. I was just pushing and straining and trying to get there. And I no longer trusted others to instruct me. What they were saying did not ring true.

I started praying and sitting in the garden. Just feeling the yearning and wanting so badly the answer, wanting to feel ok. I felt like trying could not get me there. I have tried everything. I would sense my longing to change coupled with not knowing how to change, not knowing what to do. I started feeling empathy with myself. How could I be angry with not getting it right when I so badly want to do the right thing? But I do not know what, why and how.

I now have the career I wanted. I am building towards finding something more. When things start to get too much and I start feeling lost, which I do all the time, and angry and frustrated and ungrateful I can return to the new me. Who is really the me that was always there pushing, but now she knows she is not always supposed to know where she is going and she does not always have to feel good. As long as she has the yearning, together with the resting and the pushing, the birth will fulfil itself. In small cycles, like a flower resting on water. Following its reflection outwards.

A new language

The reply from liz elayne got me thinking about the new language that we forge on blogs.

Unlike a conversation or letter, it is not direct. Our audience is not known. But unlike a movie, the audience and story teller can have direct conversations. We never know who is having a conversation with us by saying yes, I know, I have felt.

This unknown dialog is a conversation of emotion and memory, triggered by images, photographic or created with words.

The blog is like a virtual personality, we tell a story of ourselves whereby we can explore ourself and others can explore us and themselves.

Someone can pick up a conversation hours after we had it and through their memory resonating with ours, reply - unbound by time and space.

When I express a feeling and for the first time I feel as if someone truly know what I mean because they feel it too... I wish I could find words to express what it feels like. But I can't.

Reflections of truth

Today I wake up feeling confuddled. I feel like my brain is still nestled under my duvet even though I am standing staring at the duvet lying (not a spelling mistake) on the floor. My stomach is churning and I feel tearful. WHY? I was still ok when going to bed last night.

Doing my qigong I concentrate on the me who want to have a life of beauty while holding the me who am filled with resentment against going to work. I have one of those moments when everything slows down. I am just the me, breathing in the morning air, feeling curious. There is always a moment of reality and awe where rest and unrest meet. A feeling of absorption when frustration meets truth.