Family dynamics

It seems to me a lot of our adult lives are an experience in re-parenting ourselves

This is a heavily paraphrased sentiment from someone I respect and admire. When he said it I took to heart that I have the capacity to provide myself everything I need emotionally, regardless of who my biological or chosen family is.

Osho says one of the core models for our enslavement originates from the nuclear family model. I think about how our families trap us-- in therapy to heal the wounds of childhood, in expectations and obligations from growing up, into believing any number of lies we as children had to tell ourselves, any number of stories we as small ones had to make up to explain away why daddy hates mommy why sister is so angry why brother does those bad things why why why why why.

It was all out of a need to survive not being old enough to understand or be told the truth. The motivation beneath it was survival. When we are trapped in fight or flight we cannot find how to simply exist, we lose ourselves to all kinds of vices and demons just to quiet the ones whose voices are, have been, the loudest for the longest.

My healing asked of me to go back in time and envision those memories (you know the ones burned into your retina memories so clearly you can revisit them at a moments notice) and put myself now into them. I held myself at age two, age six, age ten, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, I held myself as I am right now. I told each and every one of my same faces over the years,

"I love you, I am so sorry you are going through this. It will get better and I am so proud of you"
"This is not your fault. You are feeling so lost and in so much pain, and I love you for doing your absolute best to get through this. I love you so much and I promise it gets better"

Family dynamics. The second definition according to Google is "the forces or properties that stimulate growth, development, or change within a system or process", and within the system of self, the development of everything each of us is, resides those dynamics which propelled us to be who we are today. Good or bad, families are the forces which created us, stimulated our growth in-, out-, up-, and down- ward in so many ways.

I love my family. I have no emotional connection to my biological father. I do not miss him, but I have finally found myself in the emotional and spiritual place to reach out to him.

It is no longer out of a desire to prove myself to him-- that he fucked me up or that I was best off without him-- no longer out of a compulsion steeped in regret and sadness-- that I should call and that I owe it to him-- because I had forgiven him a long time ago.

The healing came when my own child self forgave me now. Not because I did this to her, not because this was my fault but because she needed to forgive herself to heal the inner turmoil within ourselves that I'd been looking to everyone and thing except her to heal.

I have a lot more parenting to do. I have a lot more learning, so much more self-examination, so much more exploration, so much more in life to find out. I still look to relationships to feel better, still crave all the numbing agents of mind silence and thought stagnation that my vices promise.

But I try continuously (and I forgive myself each time I do not fulfill those efforts) to remember their faces, to remember I am my own family, to remember the dynamics of families are not the only forces which "stimulate growth, development, or change within a system or process" because this is my process. I am not an island but I am also not enmeshed with anyone else except myself. I try to always remember her, even when I am fucking up, even when I am lost, even when I am actively doing things which I know cause her turmoil. Because I fuck up I tell her I am sorry again and again.

More importantly I think though, I tell her over and over that we are safe. I remind her I am strong enough for the both of us. I remind her she is loved and protected and powerful beyond her wildest dreams. I thank her and she thanks me.

We are the same person, always have been, and I continue to create my own growth, I continue to spiral downwards, I continue to lose battles against myself, I continue to thrive and to fail.

But what is most important is that I continue, with her, and with my own resilience, and through each day, whatever the day, knowing we are not alone.

When I think about myself I'd like to remember my essence. To remember the pain my own mind used to assign to my body. When I think of myself I would, do, think less about was, so much more about now. Chose to see through my eyes the world around, letting go of looking down, eyes up and open, afloat sea sun vibrates the vertebrae of eyelids. Open, look up out out see clearly remember to forget about yourself to truly see. Remember her, you, this, always is changing perpetual motion fluid body, temporal body, precious body to accept the gift of holding such a miraculous spirit. Remember to never forget who you truly where, who you truly are, will, be. 

How am I truly measured? In my capacity to give and receive love, my grace, my sorrow, my creative cognizance of all that I am so connected to and cannot even comprehend so much more in any measurable way, never forgetting her words and her sorrow, I listened and she knows now what I have found. 

Our truth. Our truth isn't reflected. It is emanated and I praise my own battlefield ruins for their valiant efforts. Put a blanket around cold memories and leave no tribute because salvation and reconciliation take no form here. No form yet form still says no to something and something isn't nothing and weight is something and she was so terrified of everything within herself she saw. Blindness needed a rationalization so she closed her heart to the open eyes of her inner self and taped shut the lips, the words could not be heard for a long time. The truth of their power and the power of their truth proved wrong by others own projected realities called hers too blinding. The light never bothered her, her light bothered them and they asked for darkness so absolute the solidity of it weighed so heavy she didn't, couldn't, see her own strength anymore. It was the weight of the truth she was so confused by, because so many convinced her it was too heavy. She had never had a problem with carrying it but found a solution to lessen the burden. Recede yourself and too will the weight of your truth lighten. 

And it did because she called it by a different name, those same names she called herself and those same names the memories called her and so it all lost the gravity of its own connection to acceptance. Weightless. Weightlessness is not real. The weight of self-hatred and that reflection are not worth carrying anymore and the constructs of overwhelm can be broken down to destroy the false conceptions that any burden is asking to be carried simply by virtue of existence. She was told to shrink. To shrink her own validity translated to shrinking the proof positive vessel of that same expression. Creativity called itself fucked up and danced around the curtain hidings own lies so dynamically re-named and misaligned. Gravity called itself the definition of her capacity to please others and she convinced herself gravity told her the truth when her lies had called gravity's redefining absolute. Vertigo affliction real close to life. 

Caustic sunlight on those newly opened eyes burns, open gently again and again and again. Stop taking the old solutions for avoiding life with you. Stop fearing what you are. Stop despising who you were. Love her, start accepting her, teach her to accept who she is and hold her hand with the childs' and call them all your best spiritual guides. 

Know them. 

Grieve for the solace that physical space shaped your safe space solitude into, grieve for the confusion of her. Praise the beauty of her creativity, love her for it and know the shift now is is not letting go of that which does not accept itself, letting go of hoping false solutions can solve any problems.

Fill up this empty space with words scribbled in written clear cut and without boundaries, all boundaries without bounds and see the simple parallel between filling all this empty space as the beauty of black and white turning gray loving its own presence accepting its own simplicity, expanding its own being, essence. 

Being nothing more.

And nothing less.

Smoking too much

"Don't smoke", "You're too pretty to smoke", "Ruin your skin"

I keep smoking. Morning till night. Wondering why I crave so much something that hurts me, will ruin me, might cause cancer, fucks up my cardio.
I keep thinking I need to exercise, workout, feel better. Wondering why I don't do something that is good for me. I live in a beautiful place, go hike, get moving.
I keep getting through the days trying so hard to get my mind to just take a break. Wondering when it will be a little quieter.
I float in the ocean and the thoughts are quiet. Maybe because it feels like the ocean is the one place vast enough to encompass all the thoughts, the miles worth of words of thoughts, swirling in my mind.
Maybe it's because the rise and fall of the ocean swell perfectly matches my own anxieties. I remember they will pass as the waves crash and surge.
Maybe it's because all I can hear out there is my own breath, my own heartbeat, and for those moments remember I live in a body, not just a head judging a body, judging the character, judging the whole fucking thing. I remember I live in a body, just as much as I think about being this body.
I keep coming back to the ocean.
I keep worrying, anxiety-ing, stressing, breathing, calming, doing my best.
When you've been doing therapy and self-examination for a while and have a tendency towards judgements of yourself its amazing how you can become so overwhelmed by all the possible ways to help yourself, make yourself feel better, you give up and stare at a computer screen instead.
I keep doing. I keep writing and reading and feeling.
Wondering when I will gain a little more clarity. Wondering when I'll stop overthinking all the good I've done into minimized psychoanalysis of all the ways I've failed at doing all the good things I've done, am doing, wondering when I'll stop smoking so damn much.
I keep going.
I keep smoking.
Wondering at the wonder of my existence in one moment.
Chastising myself for the lack of profundity in myself the next.
Wandering through this existence in one moment.
Clawing at my skin the next.

I smoke too much. I feel a lot. I worry so much I love and feel joy and self-examine and then self-examine my failure to self-examine enough.

My priorities and thoughts are far-reaching and chaotic and still and much too aware of themselves as insignificant and powerful and confusing.


And you think I give a shit about being too pretty to smoke?

New living space

My bathroom is fit for a hobbit. 

My back pulses with pain. 

Hawaii's real estate prices are too damn high. 

This is my space. 

This is my sanctuary. 

Rent paid monthly by parents paid for by renting out the room I used to live in. 

Driving too much. 

Driving not at all, catch TheBus now. 

Parking and traffic cause me to sweat profusely, and smoke in chains. 

Chains around your mind. 

Chains are imagined, still so heavy. 

Look at the sunlight streaming through. 

Look at this home you have created. 

Feeling lonely is not the same as being alone. 

Within yourself you are home. 

Within yourself it is built. 

I've spent so much time afraid of the shadows my own imagined fears cast. 

Myself the flashlight, my mind the object, the walls of my whole 

head

flickering with 

what 

never 

solidified 

into reality. 

Living in this moment instead. 

Takes as much effort as the anxiety of the future. 

Takes as much effort as the depression of regretting the past. 

Takes as much effort.

Endlessly more worth it. 

Nighttime Reflections (+Breaking Bad)

So expansive, queasy eggshell nerves wound finite tight calloused thick thoughts collapsing sweet nothings colliding sweet anxiety never tasted so bitter.

Living on my own for the first time and I spent today cleaning and packing and high on Adderall for the better part of the day. I found myself trying so hard and struggling so hard to focus, to do one task at a time, to stay on track.

High on Adderall.

I most definitively do not have ADHD.

Drinking and drugs used to be an obsession. An idealization of myself. I made myself into a caricature of a drug doing eating disordered caucasian white girl with daddy issues-- like really? Me now would give me then a huge hug and then a slap in the face. Me now would give me then a kiss on the cheek and then a kick in the fucking ass. Me now would hold her while she sobbed and wipe her tears. Me now would promise her then that she would get through it, that she would survive, that she would get through all the narcissists, the pain, the arguing, the fighting, the chaos, the spinning, the nights spent too high to function or write anything more than fuck yous across the walls of her consciousness. The me now would promise her then she is not going to feel wonderful all the time, she is going to continue feeling lost and confused and angry, she is still going to hurt. Me now would promise her then that yes, all those feelings and crazy things and chaos would still arise, but that she would find in herself the strength to get through them without drugs and alcohol, without throwing up her food, without jumping into the bed of yet another practically stranger who made empty promises and left her heart even emptier; that she would do all of this and so much more.

Because me now is her then and she is me now and I am her in ten years and I am her when she was small and lost and confused and her when she was eleven and in despair and her when she is sixteen and she is me when I was one year old.

I looked at pictures from my family's past today. I cried for the father who did not see me grow up into this girl-going-on-woman I am now. I cried for my grandfather who passed away. I cried for the little girl who lost herself in cocaine and porcelain. Who got lost in trying so hard to lose herself and found herself in losing herself completely.

Today and for a long while now I have been busting my ass moving myself into my first apartment paid for by my parents and will begin the semester at a college I'd never thought I'd go to. Nothing looks like she then imagined for me now. Nothing will be like me now could imagine it will look like for me then.

And that is okay. Because I keep going. I keep fighting a battle against myself becoming better than who I was before. I keep fighting the battle in the name of my own cause, against the enemy of my own demons. I keep asking myself for guidance to deal with my own head, for the wisdom to know myself, the wisdom of my own truth which, if I keep fighting, quietly, in the small moments, steadfastly, each day, keep breathing, in the silence, if I just keep going, is my truth, her truth, our truth, a truth which, because I will keep fighting, may get quiet sometimes, so teensy tiny quiet to be only a whisper.

But it will not be lost, it will never be silent.
Because I choose her.
I choose me.
I choose us.

Returning to the ocean after a brief hiatus

Ear drum holes pieces particulate

driftinginsunlightsaltwater

breathe gentle

MIND quiet

body release

how far can one go before
returning to the beginning

drumming waves
beat
melodies into
your very skin
alive
so
deep.

Solvent solidified contours of
my own self
dissolved
willingly, the covalence of my skin
an electro molecular match creation
fit form finally
for the puzzle piece
that I feel I am finally
finding a place
I fit.

Can I get the definition please?

Your life will take its reading from you.

If you have in your heart that this life is for freedom,not only this life but this moment itself is for freedom—then your life will unfold accordingly.

My reading is losing its definitions to its rambling.

Speedometer reading chaos vacillating hyper-rapid eye movement. 

No rest, no remedy, no continuity. 

My heart beats without direction, slows from tar lungs

expressing their discomfort with breathing, 

beats without direction. 

To orient towards freedom seems impossible. 

Not only in this moment but each preceding and following.

Life will unfold accordingly

-- to what? 

according

-- to whom? 

I fear this accumulation of anxiety. 

Wonder at the gratitude and 

bliss of moments between 

scarcity of spirit

disillusionment of meaning. 

How much more chaotic can one's mind be 

when its reading has lost itself in the defining of itself. 

Why does the caged bird sing? Some people know why. 

Yet I am uncaged, "FREE", and do not sing. 

Not free, really, trapped behind the bars of psyche. 

Not trapped, really, the bars of psyche, 

constructs of the mind entrapping itself. 

Where is your heart in this life? 

Mine is still beating. 

Looking for a direction. 

Mine is still beating.

Waiting to find its definition.

Mine is still beating. 

In spite of its entrapment

by my own self-induced

chaos. 

Mania as a pasttime

I feel compelled to write something right now.

Right ways to write about the right ways writing wrings truth from the neck of falsities and verbosity.

I feel compelled to write something because so much reading can only compel you eventually, as an aspiring writer, to begin doing just that.

Articles about responsibility, short little anecdotes about beans, self-help typed out and sent around the world in a blink of an eye.

No one has read most of the words I've written

and that is okay.

Hungering for sustenance and finding it in all the wrong places leaves you even emptier than when you started. I have found confusion to be the antidote to decision making and thus align myself with that emotion constantly. Too confused to chose confusion, I leave it to its' best friend, apathy, and she paints a pretty boring picture.

What am I doing with my life?

I have written so much that will go unread
and that is okay.

That is perfectly acceptable because I wrote it all for myself--

"OR DID I", says the paranoid little voice inside my head that is fearful of attention seeking and so incredibly desperate to be acknowledged.

Listen to music just to get out of your head.
Watch stupid T.V. shows and rationalize that there are a lot of things you could be doing that are much more valid but not necessarily as numbing as just staring at a screen while playing solitaire while on Facebook and several other social media platforms/ self-help blogs to make yourself feel better about feeling okay about yourself every once in a while.

I look at people and feel jealousy of them because I sensationalize the lives they lead based entirely on aesthetic criterion I have arbitrarily assigned them full credit for purely for the sake of making myself feel like absolute shit instead of focusing on becoming a better me.

And then I remember they are livingbreathingcryinghappygoluckysadnessfilledangrymotherfuckerangstyselfdoubtfilled
human beings

and I wonder at how I could be so fucking self-serving in my self-hatred.

NO one likes someone who doesn't care about themselves enough to stop caring so much about everyone else-- everyone just doesn't know it yet because we all care about everyone so much and care too much and then all just sit back concerned and hypothetically putting one fist to chin contemplating in a serene and perfect nature inspired hyper monchromatic background that is the emotional equivalent of a blade of grass in the wind metaphorically speaking.

RIGHT?

Or am I hyperbolizing, over-generalizing, -simplifying?

Why do you care about me?

Why do I care about myself?

Look at how far this fucking planet has gotten itself sucked into its own sink hole. How fabulously brilliant and wonderful and gorgeously we have evolved. How disgustingly self-aware we all are of our privilege and then doing nothing to solve it.

Poor me, poor them, poor us.

Ignorance is BLISS motherfuckers.

But I am not ignorant, I simply consciously anchor my consciousness in different places from you... and you... and you... and the children in Africa and the drug cartels and the polticians and the fucking filibusters and the great lakes and South American forests and European brothels and Japanese tea houses and Buddhist zen gardens.

Because we each can only handle knowing so much.

And so I chose to sit here in my room and write about knowing very little at all as my mind spirals around in concentric circles upon itself a lá the butterfly effect never quite repeating itself and coming so damn close.

I don't need drugs. Sobriety gets me pretty fucked up as it is.

I just want to go to sleep but I can't.

I sit here and keep typing maniacally wishing I could eat some ice cream or solve a rubix cube or become a Russian hit man or be a tiny teacup pig in a teacup with little drawings of pigs on it, nesting doll style- teacuppig-ception.

But I sit here, knowing it is highly likely no one will read this.

And I don't mind,
maybe I do.

I'll get back to you when apathy stops being such an attention seeking neutralist asshole about the whole damn thing.

What I'm finding out

No one really tells you the solutions. Math teachers tell you the answer, school tells you how to get an A, how to pass a class. You learn from other people-- how to act, do drugs, dress, who you are-- all the time.
But no one shows you the solutions to the most daunting of the problems-- how to be who you are , what self-love looks like, how to accept yourself despite all your flaws-- that's all for you to figure out on your own, fitspo, hashtags, uplifting Pinterest quotes and blogging articles (hi there!) be damned.
One of my favorite quotes I've ever heard came from someone who was quoting someone else, so as  a paraphraser once-removed I am probably incorrectly wording it. What I remember it as is, "What you are searching for is already in the place you are searching from".
Think about that. Really think about it.
Look down at your toes and imagine all the answers are right there, everything you struggle with in life is in those toes you may or may not love or hate the shape of. Look at your hands and imagine all you need to build the home of your own self is within them.
No one can really give you the answers-- not drugs or relationships or acting out or school or not school or money or even your parents. Not obsessing over how you look or saying 'fuck it' to life, none of it gives you the answers. What you chose to learn from those obsessions, relationships, schooling, parents, etc. can give you some direction, but even that still isn't the answer.
The one person who has the capacity to heal, grow, love, and accept you, the only person required to be you, is you.