Journeys are not devoid of meaning - they are road maps of impeccably placed footsteps leading to success in all forms. Throughout this process, I pull inspiration from all things musing design, art, empathy, and beautiful good will. Through teaching, listening, learning, cooking, sharing and loving I have an abundance of awesomeness. It is life, love and the meaning of.
Her fingers danced among the thorns, plucking ripeness from its perch. The fruits of her labors so abundantly delicious. Though she was a novice at life She considered herself refined in the art of living.
There were other ways; certainly Yet hers was a place of fortified faith The belief that should she be consistently committed, all rewards would be bestowed. Thorns, like weeds - had their place.
Their distinctiveness in growth was beset only by the brush strokes of color framing poignant efforts to be alive. And from this, she pulled a dignity of living well. Living with complete exhaustion of all endeavors toward excellence. For surely, any effort would yield some crop. That largess her proof of enhancing to an excellent being.
Pain is unrecognizable to those souls living life in fresh perspective.
Babies.
To the rest of us, it is an expected grievance.
Elements of pain come in forms of the physical, the mental, psychological, the physiological...the emotional. The happenstance affects every part.
I was born unafraid. Courageous, even. And now - I sat through October; my anniversary - expectant of life. Thoughtful toward what my amazing husband of a man and I could create. We were pregnant. Able. All that we had planned and thought of had finally come to a point of culmination.
I bled.
For fourty-two days.
Two methotrexate (cancer-drug) treatments and four months later, I still wreak the havoc of what it means to be a perfectionist-idealist-mother-to-be...grieving. For months I put off the grieving. I replaced it with what I might do for someone else. Quite an accomplished time, if i might say.
116 days.
That is the studied length of time that Methotrexate stays in the tissue of the body. I (often) hate myself. I want for things I cannot control. I dream of things I cannot give right now. I long for serenity.
That peace that I have worked so hard for...diligently for. I want my peace back.
I create. Out of what appears as hopeless, lost, unadventured or misinterpreted. I compose. And yet, I am left; longing...debilitated and sad. In time, in long lengths of time, I am able to recompose. But really - I am sad.
An aching, longing, nag pulls at me. I want to do more, be more, become more. I cannot.
If I sit. A big if...I sleep.
If I think for just a moment with my tea, I sleep. In eleven hours - I accomplished a plethora of dreams, a recollection of plans and one sky-diving mission of which I was unaware in my slumber. But dammit, if I didn't become it.
And in the day - I fail. I cannot possibly be all that I need to be when those persons entrusted to my care come to depend on me. I am technically savvy, emotionally available, and with motherly instincts to beat the band (most days) but lately - LEAVE ME ALONE is all I can muster as a response.
Culmination.
Of emotion.
Sucks.
My "Be better; do better...with what you have, at the time" slogan is sadly lacking as of late.
She called it the spin-cycle. The nomenclature attached to the feeling of being simply out of control with those thoughts and emotions that so swiftly carried her to a place she did not care for. In some ways it was a necessary pattern of reconciling with the forces of her depths - while in other ways, and more particularly, bothersome ways, it was an irritant of immeasurable proportions.
"It is the thought process that evokes the spin-cycle," she thought.
If only I could stop thinking...
And then the phone rang.
With too many things to consider, far too many elements to choose from, and not nearly enough time for them all - I stumbled toward the clang on the counter. Why is it that this blessed phone jingles when I have finally reached a point of conscious thought?
Faith spoke to me from the other end of my tyrannical perspective and we covered all the ground that lies between what we think and how we feel, to the inevitability of our thoughts acting on our motions. Funny how faith is. Turns out Faith was contending with much the same things.
In two and a half hours I covered the ground of how she is feeling; mirrored by what I experience and had all the advice to hand over, just not apply.
(INSERT Rest here)
“You’ve done it before and you can do
it now. See the positive possibilities. Redirect the substantial energy
of your frustration and turn it into positive, effective, unstoppable
determination.”~ Ralph Marston
I want to say that I didn't start out all insecure and scared; synonymous with the turtle who has yet to cross the road. I began in much the same way we all do.
I was born.
That in and of itself, was enough. I was born, breathing, screaming, a crying mess unto myself - but born. Alive.
And now? Now, at some point in my existence of experience I have been tainted. I have become accustomed to disappointed, to outrage, to upset and lies. I have tendencies toward mistrust and criticism. I blame myself and work consistently toward understanding those things that lie deep beneath the surface of my skin.
In some manner I always seem to return to this place. It adds a touch of comfort; of familiarity. And yet - I recall listing my faults, burning them accordingly and resolving to stop accepting such self-prescribed criticism. It is as Einstein referenced when he said, "A hundred times every day
I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors
of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order
to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...(Einstein, p. 8-11)".
I do receive. Just what is necessary to become the next evolution of my former being. The catch between are the efforts necessary to become that next evolved persona. I am stymied.
My reflections speak to a time four years ago. My efforts protrude into the next decade, and, I might add, they are quite productive. The here and now is where I falter. The attempt to know more about others than I do myself. I became accustomed to defining the "norm" and counted on my misgivings of the self. I have such a fond recollection of the power of self. My self. I truly feel that Webster did no favor to connecting words for the sake of saving on printing costs. In my mind, myself is two words.
Two words.
A pleasure versus pain motif. Nothing exists in one realm without the imparting of the other. The entirety of my point being that there is a formula to all of this. The age-old adage about some chicken and some road. Why? Why did that particular chicken cross that particular road?
Because there is a longing to reach the places no chicken is supposed to go. Big, vast, desirous places that the individual being longs to explore for the sake of being a better person. The catch being that we don't know what that exploration of the soul may produce until we do the work for ... self.
Einstein, A. (1954). Ideas and Opinions, based on
Mein Weltbild. P. 8-11, http://www.aip.org/history/exhibits/einstein/essay.htm
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