In the last year and half I have often shared on here that I felt as though there was a big lesson standing in front of me, just out of my grasp. I have tried to put to words a feeling that was as indescribable as it was persistent...What I am learning is that no lesson is ever singular in nature, they are all interwoven threads that make up our daily lives- and they are ALWAYS there... the tangibility has more to do with the student being conscious than anything else. And, at least for me, I have spent most of my life constantly trying to figure it out and deal with it before the universe deems me ready for it, which is a big part of why I struggle and squirm. In fact, I will go to great lengths to see what the future holds so that I might brace myself for whatever impact there will be of things to come. I talk about letting things happen organically a lot, but talking about it and actually being still to let life unfold in that manner takes an immense amount of practice and a fucking lot of patience! So, as I am thinking this morning about how I need to write all of this down, I read my horoscope...
"The universe rarely outwits you. But since you lost your cheat-sheet this week, you're down here with the rest of us mortals. Try to look at it as a good thing; your tendency to know all the answers ahead of tine was not only obnoxious, it kept you from developing yourself or being challenged at times. Getting an honest score on life's tests will not only earn you valuable self-knowledge, it will bring you closer to the real answers, the ones that will mean something to you, unlike those you lifted straight from the book."
Well, goddamn it. That damned universe, it is always RIGHT ON FUCKING TOP OF IT!!!! That intangible lesson has been right there the whole time...oddly enough, I have many of the clues I have been picking up as well as the ones I have been choosing to ignore, documented on here. Unfortunately, I occasionally fall victim to blissful ignorance, through the beauty of shiny distraction... and anything can be a shiny distraction, if I let it. As I sit here typing, I realize there are distractions just floating in my periphery. Part of me wants to reach out and grab hold of them, so that I can squirm out of this uncomfortable corner it feels as though I have backed myself into. Part of me wants to shrug off this new-found consciousness I have about the lessons staring me down... I want to focus outward and should on people, I want to throw a tantrum about how unfair it is that I have to sit in this space and fucking squirm while others bar hop their way through life, blissfully unaware of how their unconscious actions trample on other people's feelings and BAM!!!!!!!!!! There it is, the distraction trigger is cocked, and all I have to do to pull it is stay right there in outward blame mode.
The truth is, that this has nothing to do with anyone else. It NEVER DOES!!!! The only part the other people play in any situation is that he or she MAY represent an opportunity for me to bring about consciousness within myself on some issue... the choice then, becomes whether I stay with that consciousness or shift the focus to someone or something outside myself and then return to that state of supposed blissful unawareness. And, lets be honest kids, consciousness can be fucking uncomfortable. It's that fire in my belly, or the ache in my heart... It's that feeling that makes me want to run away, or check out. It's a funny thing, I wait for those conscious moments, and then when they come all I want to do is stuff that shit right back in whatever box it came from and NEVER open it again. The truth is, what I want is RARELY what I need. What I want is most always the distraction. But the distraction is the what keeps me from traversing to that next level of consciousness... and if I am truly honest, consciousness in and of itself isn't all that uncomfortable. It's just those tiny, singular moments where the mind gears up for the leap, that are the painful ones...perhaps there is truth in that saying about no pain, no gain.
I, like anybody else, find a comfort zone and want desperately to cling to it. I want to feel the warm embrace of routine, the illusion of security that I fool myself into while I think I have it all figured out. But the universe often has a cunning way of reminding me that I am never as in charge or in the know as I let myself believe. The truth is that all I know and the only person I can speak about is myself. Anything beyond that is a neurotic distraction from the present moment. Outward focus gains nothing, well except for further distracting me from opportunities to transcend. So, in stepping out of my neurotic comfort zone, I choose not to focus on the anger or hurt floating in the periphery, and instead listen to what the universe has to say... A line from a particular Pink song comes to mind; and while the entire song seems so realavant right now, this line in particular keeps standing out to me-
"It takes your breath, and it leaves a scar, but those untouched never got, never got very far..."
I feel as though I am right there, in that moment in my life. I have finally come to that point where I let it take my breath, and yep; it left a scar. But the truth about life is that both the gasp and the scar are necessary and completely worth what I gain from the experience. Avoidance was my cheat-sheet, anger my distraction, and consciousness is my resolution. So my heart may hurt, my belly might ache, but somehow I am at peace with that. I need to remember that the truth is when I make conscious choices, even if I slip back into neurosis, it doesn't have to be permanent.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Casualties of the Mind
visceral-characterized by or proceeding from instinct rather than intellect.
I am a girl who spends a majority of the time in her head, over analyzing every. last. thing. Everything I say, everything I do, everything I think. The curse is two fold, it's obsessively over thinking any and everything, be it my job or my personal life, and then staying in my head about it until I am so paralyzed by fear (real or perceived) that I am unable to make any sense of it outside of my own head... and I hate that space. Some days are worse than others... some days I almost forget how awkward I am. Other days it seems completely inescapable. It's tiring... exhausting really, but ironically it's also the source of my intermittent insomnia. I worry myself sick over mostly dumb shit that is out of my control. Mine is a monkey mind that, when left unattended can be frightening and or dangerous. Not dangerous to others... mainly dangerous to me. I hate being stuck on that hamster wheel... it's mental masturbation with no release...
I sometimes wonder, what would happen if I decided to just be. I also wonder if that is a decision I am capable of... maybe I am hardwired for awkward. Maybe I am pre-programmed to stew in my head. Maybe I skipped the line when they were handing out interpersonal skills... Or maybe there's a way to (as some have suggested to me) 'just get over it'. I want to be over it. I want to be able to converse in real time the way I pound away at a keyboard... I want the bravery I pretend to have on here in real life... Even though I think this blog has helped me articulate myself and thus be a bit more honest with myself, I also think it has enabled me to continue to hide. Take this post for example, I have written countless different drafts of this same post over the last two weeks not knowing if I will actually publish any of them...because I am stuck in the vortex of awkwardity...yeah, it's so bad I have made up a word for it. Damn it I hate when I make these kinds of realizations...
This is a majority of the reason tough bitch has been around for so long. Tough bitch helps me to hide my awkwardness behind being loud and brash and acting as if I do not care. But there are times when even tough bitch can't hide me... I am sure it's quite the sight to witness me brooding....I know there are many people in my life who wish I could just get off this loop track of regretting before I ever do anything. I know I am not the only one who does this ... I have actually attempted to talk to others about it... but generally one or both of us is so awkward about it that we change the subject and the conversation goes a different way entirely...two people bumbling on that same arduous level is agonizing. I often envy those people who can be spontaneous... who can have a conversation or type out a text or an email like it's second nature, without having to bother to re-read, re-think or revise it 42 times, which is what I do a majority of the time...Like I said, I am not in that space ALL the time, just most of it, haha. The times that I am not wandering aimlessly amongst my mind's skeletons, I am sharp, I am keen, I am on point, and I am relatively content...what a shame those moments aren't my majority! Still working to find a balance on that front. It's a slow process, so for now, I guess all I can commit to is opening my mail on a more regular basis, we shall see how that goes.
ruminate-to chew again or over and over.
In composing this post, I thought it apt to look up the dictionary definitions to my blog title. Not that I didn't know what the words meant, but as the post was coming to me, I realized the humor in the words in relation to the proceeding ramblings... I think it's amusing that I chose to put these two words together, because I RARELY do both at once... when I ruminate on things (which as you may know if you've been around here much, is pretty much ALWAYS) I am generally doing so in avoidance of some visceral reaction that is bubbling up inside me. And believe me, I am the fucking QUEEN of avoidance. I spent last night opening my mail from the last two months... why? Because I avoid opening mail like the mother fucking plague and like most matches in the game of avoidance, I finally lost this week and was forced to remove my head from my ass and deal with some elements of real life. Yep, I have issues when it comes to some forms of adulthood; toss them into pile with commitment, responsibility, and communication.
What would I do if I didn't think incessantly?! Hahaha, and now, I will proceed to think about how I think about things too much, BRILLIANT!!!!! In some of the other forms of this post, I called out specific situations... and I was pretty fucking honest. And, as is usually the case, I was pretty fucking hard on myself... after all, if I'm not- who will be?! But then, I thought about other parties involved in said situations and worried about them becoming a casualty of my blog. I try wherever possible to not use names and specifics, and in this case, it just didn't seem feasible to disguise the situations well enough... not that the other parties have anything to hide, more that it really isn't my right to call the situations out in public form. And truthfully, a lot of the catharsis that comes from this blog lies dormant in those unpublished drafts... I get what I need from them- I get whatever IT is out of my head, and I move on... or I write it out, and then ruminate and come back to it later, sometimes many, many, times over... and at some point, I come to a place where I can publish some version of whatever lesson I have been pinging on.
What would I do if I didn't think incessantly?! Hahaha, and now, I will proceed to think about how I think about things too much, BRILLIANT!!!!! In some of the other forms of this post, I called out specific situations... and I was pretty fucking honest. And, as is usually the case, I was pretty fucking hard on myself... after all, if I'm not- who will be?! But then, I thought about other parties involved in said situations and worried about them becoming a casualty of my blog. I try wherever possible to not use names and specifics, and in this case, it just didn't seem feasible to disguise the situations well enough... not that the other parties have anything to hide, more that it really isn't my right to call the situations out in public form. And truthfully, a lot of the catharsis that comes from this blog lies dormant in those unpublished drafts... I get what I need from them- I get whatever IT is out of my head, and I move on... or I write it out, and then ruminate and come back to it later, sometimes many, many, times over... and at some point, I come to a place where I can publish some version of whatever lesson I have been pinging on.
I am a girl who spends a majority of the time in her head, over analyzing every. last. thing. Everything I say, everything I do, everything I think. The curse is two fold, it's obsessively over thinking any and everything, be it my job or my personal life, and then staying in my head about it until I am so paralyzed by fear (real or perceived) that I am unable to make any sense of it outside of my own head... and I hate that space. Some days are worse than others... some days I almost forget how awkward I am. Other days it seems completely inescapable. It's tiring... exhausting really, but ironically it's also the source of my intermittent insomnia. I worry myself sick over mostly dumb shit that is out of my control. Mine is a monkey mind that, when left unattended can be frightening and or dangerous. Not dangerous to others... mainly dangerous to me. I hate being stuck on that hamster wheel... it's mental masturbation with no release...
I sometimes wonder, what would happen if I decided to just be. I also wonder if that is a decision I am capable of... maybe I am hardwired for awkward. Maybe I am pre-programmed to stew in my head. Maybe I skipped the line when they were handing out interpersonal skills... Or maybe there's a way to (as some have suggested to me) 'just get over it'. I want to be over it. I want to be able to converse in real time the way I pound away at a keyboard... I want the bravery I pretend to have on here in real life... Even though I think this blog has helped me articulate myself and thus be a bit more honest with myself, I also think it has enabled me to continue to hide. Take this post for example, I have written countless different drafts of this same post over the last two weeks not knowing if I will actually publish any of them...because I am stuck in the vortex of awkwardity...yeah, it's so bad I have made up a word for it. Damn it I hate when I make these kinds of realizations...
This is a majority of the reason tough bitch has been around for so long. Tough bitch helps me to hide my awkwardness behind being loud and brash and acting as if I do not care. But there are times when even tough bitch can't hide me... I am sure it's quite the sight to witness me brooding....I know there are many people in my life who wish I could just get off this loop track of regretting before I ever do anything. I know I am not the only one who does this ... I have actually attempted to talk to others about it... but generally one or both of us is so awkward about it that we change the subject and the conversation goes a different way entirely...two people bumbling on that same arduous level is agonizing. I often envy those people who can be spontaneous... who can have a conversation or type out a text or an email like it's second nature, without having to bother to re-read, re-think or revise it 42 times, which is what I do a majority of the time...Like I said, I am not in that space ALL the time, just most of it, haha. The times that I am not wandering aimlessly amongst my mind's skeletons, I am sharp, I am keen, I am on point, and I am relatively content...what a shame those moments aren't my majority! Still working to find a balance on that front. It's a slow process, so for now, I guess all I can commit to is opening my mail on a more regular basis, we shall see how that goes.
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