This has been the week of a hundred thousand thoughts but not a single tail or loose thread to pull so I could unravel it all and show you what has been happening up in there. I’m exhausted and I had an evening coffee so here it is 2am and I’m awake, awake. Lucky you.
I began reading ‘The Gifts of Imperfection’ by Brené Brown this week after a mini-bender on Amazon (holla Prime!). You may remember her very famous Ted Talk on The Power of Vulnerability (<—- click that if you do not)(I just learned how to code links so no more copy/paste web addresses!!). Maybe you want to have a first or second look- it may be insightful. I wouldn’t gush that I loooove her or the book but I appreciate the discussion and some of the practical action/suggestions she makes. There are a few things going on in my life, personally and professionally, that Dr Brown’s work sheds light on, in a rip-open-the-drapes-to-the-midday-sun kind of way. The book specifically focuses on Brené’s research on shame. Becomes clearer all the time how influential shame is in my life… Synchronicity is a funny thing when you’re a meaning-seeking little story teller with a spiritual bent, like me.
Gosh, life can be so very tricky sometimes. Grateful for that which helps us grow and shine right through it.
Speaking of resources, a friend sent me a Tracy McMillan article from the Huffington Post that got my haunches up a bit. It was titled “Why You’re Not Married (<–)” ; then I went on to read another article from her written in the same voice about being a female Peter Pan(<–). It wasn’t until I watched the video at the bottom of the first article that it dawned on me I had read one of her books last year- and I remember feeling mostly meh– about it. The articles are a little touchy, she is brave to write the things that she does, but brave does not equal correct- these really are inflammatory statement pieces. She does comment that she is delivering these “truths” in the spirit of generosity and wanting to help people, but, where I come from? Truth without love is cruel. It might make it more sophisticated and articulate to criticize… eh. Who cares. You read it, lemme know what you think.
It’s good timing for this all to be swimming around in my head because I have decided, after some setbacks, fresh starts & tipping points, that I am circling the wagons and getting some shit together.
Deep Sleep by Logan Hicks
I can barely stand myself anymore in a couple of key areas- the subject of this dumb blog being one of the top 2- so this may turn into one of those detox rants for a few weeks or so, like Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing… ha, if only I could write something to compare to that masterpiece of what it is like to desire/resist/succumb over and over and over only to understand the truth about that suffering is really about God… oh Leonard, how I need you now. I… oh God, where do I even start? All I will say is that I have had the devastating gift of having a love with the force of all the Earth’s oceans wash over me in the past couple weeks and… well, I can’t have him. He is living a version of the dream, with a woman- and their child. Don’t get freaked out and judgey, not a single shady thing happened between us at all and he is admirable and respectful in every way- and I am too. Love is like that.
I am left with this surge of anger and demand, however, shaking my fist at the sky and being like whaaaat the fuck—… No really. What the fuck. Between the one I love & can’t have, and my swinger/lover (who is also in many ways a platonic ideal, but doesn’t want a girlfriend so that ‘goes nowhere’), I am feeling pret-ty sorry for myself and like I have been dicked out of something that is most valuable to me. It occurred to me briefly this evening, after walking back from a stolen moment, that perhaps there is a larger message in this: because that’s what I do to make sense of the difficult things of my life, I seek to learn and grow from them… OR THERE IS NOT A STUPID LARGER MESSAGE AT ALL AND THIS IS JUST SOME STRAIGHT UP LIFE SHIT THAT IS UNFAIR. Fuck you rainbows. Fuck you karma.
Even if a part of me is angry and sad, I remain mostly deeply grateful. Grateful to be awake and to love like this.
So I am dropping this old shell and swimming my naked lobster ass out to sea to grow a newer, bigger one to accommodate all this growth, and/or the changes that are happening, now. Older lobsters must be the humungous mutant ones. Good timing for this sort of introspection, given Mercury retrograde beginning in 4 hours(<–).
And just in time, today- I discover Sharon Van Etten. Rocked me. Every song an anthem. Like this one:
Siren of the Seas by Logan Hicks
xxx
no i do not love you 