Journals

I have always journaled. For over 45 years now that I think on it. I began at about 15 years old and I’m currently 51 so. It has always been a passion for me. I have had a long love affair with the paper and the pen. It is my form of meditation and it is deeply embedded in my soul. I don’t feel whole if I have not written each day. I’ve had countless journals and my life is written down in many forms. I don’t only write. I paint, collage and draw as well. Whatever catches my eye, mind or heart ends up between the pages eventually. Here are a few of my current journals.

My current journals

Acceptance

We broke up last year I think it was and for me it was devastating. It really hurt me you know? And I really hadn’t written about it until now except for calling him every name in the book when I journaled. I needed to grow and heal from it. I don’t think we give ourselves enough time to heal when we leave someone. Especially someone we gave so much to, but now that I have done the work I can see where it all went wrong and that it only went the way it did because I nurtured and allowed it. I did too much too fast. I gave all I had with little appreciation allowing him, in turn, to expect it as the norm. I took nothing for myself and submitted to him thinking submission meant to love. What I did not know was that to a taker all that means is easy prey. For all my strengths I played the wounded doe very well and the lion came and I fed him well. He ate his fill too and left the carcass when he was done. He left some bones and gristle which I used to rebuild myself slowly. It wasn’t easy but I was committed to learning me and the lessons this episode in my life taught me. It taught me a lot. Lessons I thought I already knew, that I was too old to be blind to. Still, I decided to dig deep and work on me. No love relationships. I needed a serious break and I have taken it. These are the three most important lessons I have learned.

1. I want to want more than I need.

I have learned that need can bring you to desperate acts. It can make you give to depletion. The thought that you might need something can make you neglect not only your own needs but also the boundaries you have in place to protect yourself. it can make you lose balance and forget yourself to the point of losing yourself in the quest to fulfill someone else’s needs.

2. Chose you first.

No matter what, you are left with you. Whether it works or not everything must rest well with you. Be happy with you and your choices before you even get into a relationship so that nothing can hurt you as much as it would otherwise. So that you’re able to make those hard choices when you recognize when something is not working for you.

3. Be ok with being alone

I feel in order to be happy about sharing your life you must be happy and ok with being alone. it took me a long time and a lot of work to be all right with being alone. it took time to realize that I could not be content with anyone unless I was happy alone first because it is no one else’s responsibility to make me happy. This is a hard lesson for most of us to learn and understand because all our lives we are told that one day we will find the perfect person who will make us happy. We are never told to be happy first before we even think of bringing someone else into our life. To work on ourselves from the inside out and make certain all is well within first. We are often left to figure it out alone and after many failures, if we’re lucky we finally find our way and understand that there can really be no us until I am really me, wholely and completely me. 

I grapple with these lessons in every relationship still but that’s the point, isn’t it? Life is learning. Becoming, and I have become so much stronger, wiser, and able to take my steps with a certainty that I have not had before and for that I am grateful.

Breaking Cycles

Life is a wheel

As I sit here now I realize how true that statement is. We are at one time children living our lives with little idea of what to expect because we have never lived before. 

We don’t know what’s supposed to be now or what’s supposed to be next. 

We live wanting guidance but at the same time not wanting anyone to tell us what to do because we think we know when we know nothing, not really. 

We know we are here and we know we are small 

We know we have to follow directions and do it right so the big people won’t get mad at us and give us less directions allowing us a little more freedom, freedom we crave to keep the wheel turning if we ever want to get to be the big people giving the little people directions, and we want that so bad when we are little people don’t we?

I remember being the little person and I was not a fan. I always wanted to be the big person, the one to give the directions. I think it’s because I have too may bad memories about being the little person, the vulnerable one, the one without power taking bad directions that I could not deviate from.

When I became the big person I almost became the dictator, before the dream that is. the dream where my son was begging for my help because my mom was threatening to hit him. 

How I cried after that dream. 

How I changed. 

I broke the cycle in so many pieces it can never be put back together. 

I pulverized it and crushed it into so much dust that its molecules could never be reconstructed. 

I took myself and rebuilt myself. It was not easy, I’d been scattered. 

As I found the pieces I sewed them together with golden thread, the good moments.

I sewed all my broken pieces, it took years but I and built a better me, a stronger version infused with the little person and wrote my own directions. 

The Power we give… I have had relationships before and many of them have really tested my resolve. I think most relationships begin similarly with this amazing attraction you swear you have never felt this strongly before, this superhuman feeling that you have finally found the right one, the love of your life and sometimes that is true. This relationship can be the one that lasts a lifetime I’ve seen it. Trust however that there will be trials. That you will have to pick your battles to fight and some will test your faith and most of all your resolve to even stay in it because sometimes you’re not just fighting circumstances you are fighting all of the trauma or issues of the person you’re with and people can sometimes make themselves quite difficult to love. Sometimes purposely hoping you will give up and give them the freedom to continue not having to face their issues. Maybe they’re comfortable with them. We all have a level of comfortability we are not willing to part with. I am comfortable in my ways but I am always willing to learn and accommodate for the sake of making my partner happy, sometimes too much and that is where sometimes for me the trouble begins. I am a giver. I give so much in a relationship that sometimes it leaves me feeling empty. I couldn’t clearly explain what about me makes me feel I need to be this way but I am. I tend to fall in love with my whole being. My heart, mind, body and soul all become fully invested in the relationship to the point where I loose myself and suffer on behalf of every little thing done to me. I take it all extremely personal and my wounds become infected with the poison of need and regret easily. Especially when I feel rejected by the person I love. In turn instead of retreating like some people will do I give more all in hopes that they will see me and what I’m worth. Not that I don’t know what I’m worth because I do but we all know the heart has a mind of its own. Still with enough ill treatment I give up and release the person fully because my release is as pungent as my love. When I release someone I release them completely. Delete everything I have ever done with them along with all the love I might have felt. Of course love is harder to release but once I have decided to release someone there is no going back. There is no friendship or future conversations to be had. There is just a clean slate and a new beginning for myself alone without the temptation of calling when I feel down or the need to back peddle because unlike others I never forget the persons faults or what they did to cause me pain. I become clear and enlightened in every respect and act accordingly. That is the only way I have learned to save myself thus far. I give, yes but that in no way implies that one would have any ability or leave to take advantage of me. What I give I give freely and with love in my heart but abuse is not tolerated. I have been known to give away too much power away over myself in love but I can always take that power back. Usually it’s at great cost to myself but I do get it back. I cry it out and I suffer for my foolishness because I have refused to believe someone even when they have shown me who they are but when someone becomes an ache and sadness that settles in your heart, when the sorrow is larger than the joy you have to make a choice to continue or save yourself. Many times we continue to fool ourselves, and when we receive a bone from the other person that makes us feel in the least bit wanted, we accept it greedily hoarding it as a child would their favorite toy. Letting it keep the fire of hope alive wanting it to light the fire of another heart which we really have no control over. Love is hard. As hard as it can be rewarding when its real and genuine. We go on this way too much, too often but its part of what makes us human. No one ever said love would be easy especially when it’s expected to endure. You would think in my 48 years I would have it figured out. Impossible but I treck on because though I have suffered and sometimes severely, I believe in people. I believe in love. I believe in being myself and giving.There’s something genuine about that, something pure and I love that about me.

What is love? Questions…

 

I am 48 and I sill wonder what love is. I have some ideas of what love is but at times I still wonder and I think its because every time I think I have it figured out I get knocked on my ass as God laughs and waves a preverbal finger my way saying “That’s not it”, you my dear have much yet to learn. And I know I do. I am a lover but I have a fair amount of fighter in me as well. I want to know things when I want to know them and I want to know them for sure. Love can’t be researched though, its the language of the heart and we are all just trying to figure it out in our own way. I know love is kind, patient, trusting and all that good stuff or at least its supposed to be that way. I am loving and I try to be kind although my patience sucks ass most of the time. This I know and have been told by several people. Still aside from those things, what is love to you?

To me it’s being there for the ones you claim to love.

Being honest even when you think it will hurt.

Trusting and keeping your word.

.Being faithful if it’s a relationship and treating the person as you yourself want to be treated. Of all of the other things I think this is what love is the most because if you treat others as you’d like to be treated yourself everything else falls into place.

What do you call love?

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like the softest of winds

in the darkness unseen

smooth and sudden he became my sin

black velvet body

smile like a king

drawing me in

I’m suffocating

chasing

expanding

creating

edible dreams

sugar and whipped cream solutions

for the disapproval of kin

command me to be well

as i worship his skin

a thousand touches

for the unquenchable thirst within

love given and returned

in the span of a head spin

out of control

before skin met skin

shall we begin

again

again

and again