: imitation leather : imitation lover :

2.28.05
declaration

i left my job at speakeasy on 2/4/05 and have spent the last month travelling, reading, writing and exploring. i've begun practicing yoga and guided meditation at a local buddhist temple, and my training in massage therapy begins on 3/15. overall, i feel wonderfully centered and optimistic about the direction my life is taking. this next year should prove to be fantastically expansive.

about a week ago, i wrote the following synopsis of how i was feeling over the past couple of months; it provides a snapshot by which i may navigate in the future, but also gives a good timestamp of this period in my life:

for a long time i was caught in resin: repetitive forgetfulness that there was anything outside of the histrionic halls within which i had boxed myself. it's like the walls got smoother and the patterns became more engrained; every day i woke up and could only see the world for everything it was not.

i had forgotten myself quite a bit, i think--actually, more specifically, i had forgotten my sense of adventure, love for exploration and humorous admiration for "life". i had courted security and acceptance because i hadn't ever really felt that i'd had it before and when i got a taste of it, it was difficult to see how i could live without it. i was addicted. never before had i been so intrinsically a part of something and it really took everything i had to nurture it; i kept pouring it all in with the hope that it would return to me endlessly. and when it started to fade, i went into shock for a few years, or so.

to be fair, i have always done this. i look back over my life and i see the repetition of longing for acceptance, understanding. who doesn't want those things? i'm certainly not alone in my quest, but somehow i think others have cornered the market on gaining it without giving up so much; there are experiences in my history that, at the time, seemed logical, necessary, reasoned--retrospection, of course, provides the requisite breadth of understanding to realize how foolish i have been, how much i have given up in the name of any number of ideals that seemingly cannot exist within the real world. and, what's even more, my foolishness allowed me to hem myself in, in the cheap little name of "never being hurt again."

but hurt, sometimes, is at the core of how we grow--a simplistic metaphor is the tree whose bark strengthens each time it is sliced away. so each day i am endeavoring to ground myself, to get myself out of my head more and to see things for what they are. i spent most of my childhood in my head and i developed a rich life there; my ability to wash down the details in the name of squeezing real experiences into the carefully hewn, fantastical boxes which i have nurtured for as long as i can remember has left me feeling essentially mismatched and foreign in my own skin. the realization that i cannot make everything better or okay just by fighting long or hard enough is simultaneously mortifying and freeing.

when i was leaving for ireland at 19, i was absolutely terrified on the plane. i had no idea what was in store for me and the fear i felt then was more palpable than any that i have felt since; but i wanted the adventure, the knowledge, the experience so badly that i recorded my fear like a name engraved on a grain of salt and bottled up for a souvenir; it took all that i had to take that first step and i grew as a person in countless ways. since that time, i used fear as a compass of sorts: if it scared me, i did it. there are some fears that i'll likely never adress, and it's probably for the best; but those that i can name, classify and exorcise have created my life map; and every day, i can name new ones and every day i try to slay them--sometimes more successfully than others.

on the flip side of that fear at 19 was an expansive sense of joy, satisfaction, yearning and excitement about all that life has to offer, every tidbit of experience and knowledge out there just for the taking by those bold enough to break through their fear and grab it. i knew then that i was just on the tip of something larger, that i had been granted but a taste of what loveliness awaited in the world, were i to remain open to it. i could hear the echo of it everywhere i went, but i felt that my reliance on fear as an essential compass was proof enough that i had no real grasp on who i was as an individual, human, entity. i didn't understand that i didn't really know myself, however, or what i was capable of, given the proper nurturing and berth. what i knew was that something was missing; i couldn't put my finger on it, i didn't have the ability to look that keenly back on myself; my feelings were raw magma and it was difficult to face them when i had no context for understanding them.

through my adventure then and subsequent travels, experiences and lessons learned in the past 10 years, i have spent a great deal of time turning inwards and trying to determine how those naked tendrils of emotion are illicited, worn, loved. i realize that i spent most of my life up until this point displaying a false sense of confidence simply to hide the soft underbelly of my misunderstanding of myself. and that when others pointed out those raw characteristics about which i was not prepared to learn or care, it struck me to the core and i reeled by usually withdrawing into myself, spending time alone with just miss lu as my sole companion.

i tried to live my life by determining what was right and what was true; i needed to be those things, i felt, in order to pass through the experiences in my life unscathed (and unscathing others). i needed to hold myself to the standard of infallibility, however ridiculous the notion, it was all i had to grasp onto when i didn't understand that my essential flaws are not insurmountable human errs to which i must be chained, rather, they are the buoys bobbing in the distance, future lessons to be learned, new pitstops within which i can tune up my proverbial engine (yes, there is a proverb about engines.)

these days i feel the freedom, optimism and excitement about the world, the knowledge and adventures that await that i felt at 19, so open wide--i have butterflies in my stomach with the thrill of it all. the major difference, however, is that what i thought was the recumbent fear that had to be interwoven with this joy has loosened; not dissipated, of course, but i find that i have learned a lot about myself in the past 10 years, i have gained some of the confidence in myself and abilities that i formerly only pretended to have and i have a different kind of driving force than to merely slay the dragons-cum-lizards of fear. being right and true isn't my prime directive any longer; i can learn to accept myself as a flawed and lovely woman who tries her best to contribute positively to this reality, but who occasionally screws up, doesn't know all the answers, could learn a thing or trillion by shutting the fuck up herself and listening, watching, observing.

it feels good to have come full circle, meet up with myself again, only much richer than i could have imagined before i went on this expedition. and now i'm ready for the next revolution. i must remember that there is a reason patience is considered a virtue; as much as i hate its accuracy, i now know it to be unerringly true.

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