Its like there’s the remains of this little dead kid inside of me and I have to go back into his head and figure out what killed him so I can move on

I feel like a grave robber rooting around in his bones.

I don’t even know if his thoughts are real. Even if they aren’t it’s what is inside of me and thats what coulors me making it count.

Its like I can’t get the grave stink out of me no matter how hard I try. Even as I am kneeling in his grave, holding him, cooing to him, as I cradle his neglected bones.

I’m out for a walk and I get home. I feel the pull to lay down on my grass and if I am honest the thought has crossed my mind several times as I am walking.

As I am laying there on the unraked grass I am so glad the bitter end to winter has finally passed. The cold wind has turned into a breeze to cool my body from the raw sun beating down on it.

I lay there with my eyes closed listening to the sparrows and chickadees sing while the odd seagull cry comes from above. Occasionally a crow (covid) caw pierces the air around me, in this odd time of 20(19)/2020.

At times I open my eyes and I soak in the blue as I feel myself melting into Gaia. I haven’t been this content in a long time. Everything slips from my mind as I live in the moment.

This is what it’s like to contemplate GOD

I wake up, cook food, go for a walk, watch screens and people die. It feels like there is nothing else that I can do. They continue to tell me that is what I need to do.

So I do it. It is like watching a slow motion accident. I am not sure who is in the car. It might be myself. It is others right now. The one thing that I need is connection to others and if I do it it might well kill me.

I am watching from afar at the moment, but who knows when this invisible beast comes to town. I will watch and wait for it to come here. I hope it doesn’t take someone I know, or myself. I would prefer not to suffocate.

Is living on pause now? I try to remember that I am a lucky one I have enough to live, but it gets lonely and how long will they continue to die???

I always was enough, even though I didn’t believe it.

I am enough regardless of mine and others expectations

I will be enough and if I believe that truth I will never disappoint myself ever again.

It all starts now. I have been saying that for so long that I convince myself till the next time it slides away with a whimper or a lack of engagement.

I have underwhelmed myself so often that I am comfortable in my apathy. I must still care though or I wouldn’t want to die every time I let it happen again.

I don’t think this will change it much but perhaps I will hold on to the light when I see it again, because I know it is there. I just know that it gets really bright after a while and then I choose to not stand in it, but instead slide back into the dank dark.

I think I’ll go make popcorn.

There’s been a tune running through my mind. I think it’s called life. There’s some days when the notes are all I can ask for. A blue spruce rising above me as I walk by. The air rasping in and out of my lungs, especially when it is cold. The flood of emotion after I’ve seen a great film or read a good book. People that come in. That’s when the song is good.

Then comes the cacophony of acting out, the images of pain and control. The excitement at the abuse of others. The desperate grasping at the control these images give the illusion of giving. Then the song becomes grating and discordant, playing a circle of repetition in my head, and it feels like I went through a cheese grater.

Then comes the attempt to pick up the tune again. A melody of light that is full of others smiles. How long will it last this time before the light forces me to look inside. When I do that I inevitably hide in the ugly song.

I don’t want to hide anymore. I want to stand in the middle of the street and sing light/love. Next time I have to break the descent into that tune that only makes me punish my self. Cause that’s all I am doing.

I have this black hole in my chest and I don’t know what it is. All I know is it is coming out. Is it fear or tears, is it a horror that I have kept buried these many years? I don’t know but it is putting a lot of pressure on my chest.

Do I fight to keep it inside and continue to stuff it down deep or do I finally let it see the light of day? I don’t know. I’m scared. Will I be buried under a tsunami of feelings?

Well I’m writing so that’s a good start. I have been working on mindfulness and gratitude. I also saw Cathy from a distance yesterday. She visited the house and the cats and I didn’t do the pile of dishes that was on the counter. I thought to myself who am I trying to impress. That ship has sailed. I think it helped me to realize that it’s done.

I felt immense joy when I was out walking this morning. I did stretches and also lots of cooking this afternoon. When I had supper and relaxed that’s when I started to recognize these emotions start to build inside me.

You know what. Fuck it. Let them come! I don’t want to ride this rollercoaster no more. I don’t think I have many more times when I can pick myself up from the bottom. I just don’t feel like caring anymore, but I’m pretty sure that I am going to have to care if I want to stay alive.

Here goes.

I feel like I have a ceramic heart, because as a cook I know that ceramic can be used to sharpen steel, it is so rigid.

That is also its downfall, when it is dropped or knocked it will break itno pieces.

Sometimes my heart is so rigid that I won’t let others in because of something that they have done, or something that I have perceived that they have done.

I have cut myself off from many this way

There are times when I feel slighted by the smallest things. They don’t have to even be said or an action. Sometimes its just what I perceive. Then my heart will break.

I think that this comes from my childhood, when I took things so personally, but I was small and I didn’t know how else to take them!

Am I so frozen in my patterns this will never change? Well I keep reinforcing it in a lot of ways so progress is slow. The other day I was taking part in a conversation where a person that I didn’t know said something racist. I said to him “That’s just racist”

The conversation went in a different direction. But I made sure I introduced myself when he left. Next week I found myself at a table playing crib across from him. Seems like a nice guy. He has some beliefs that I don’t, but that doesn’t make him a throw away like I used to believe.

There are days I feel so broken that the mountain looks unscalable. There are days when the light is everywhere. In both those situations it would behoove me to look around and realize that it is neither as good or bad as it seems.

I think that I’ll start writing now. I never know where my pen will lead me.

It might take me on a pain filled rant, or I might find myself down in a lake of depression.

It might lead me up the path of creativity, or a banal exercise of putting letters on paper.

It might shepherd me to a place of belonging, or a state of unbridled joy.

All those places make me and I need them to be whole.

The place that I am longing for it to take me though, and the place I have the hardest time finding, is Home.

What do these words mean?

To me they have come to mean total agreement.

That isn’t what love means though. It means that I will love you even though I can’t agree with that part of you, because can we really agree with everything that somebody else is?

I love you as a whole. I can’t just pick and choose what parts.

I agree to disagree.

I think that is what love is.

I wish that was true for me, but I refer you to the first line again.

On an intellectual level I believe in the words that come after the first line, but on a purely visceral level I am totally emersed in that first line.

There are many reasons for this I am sure. I can comb through my childhood and find neglect and other factors.

What does this mean though? Does it mean I have to live there? That’s what I have been doing!

I masturbate because it gives me the dopamine hit that I equate with love. I over eat because it fills the hole where the love usually resides.

I watch movies that show me how it feels and I cry because I want the same.

I just realized that the title is wrong. It needs to say I Love Me. If I did that then I wouldn’t have to do those other things.

The problem is not with the other, it is within.

It’s so much easier to look on the outside though. I have been taught that because I make mistakes I am wrong. This is some hard rewiring to do.

Will I continue to look at myself and see the expectations of myself and others or will I see the beauty and potential that has always been there.

Please be part of my journey and walk beside me. Not behind, not ahead. Beside.