What Occurred to Me Yesterday...

I was sitting in meditation and I started crying, and immediately, following the first tear, there was an absence of my habitual response, which is to shut that shit down.  But that didn’t happen, they just fell as they came and it was all ok.  Which led to the next thought, which was why did I try to stop them before?  Why, oh why, did I ever try to mask or hide the pain I felt or feel?  What was that supposed to do?  Why did this come to me as a viable coping strategy?  What the fuck was I thinking, again, still?

I have spent so much of my life attempting to project this happy, outgoing, normal person.  And that is part of who I am, but in order to display that persona, I sacrificed some of the softer, more vulnerable parts of me.  And what I have learned is that vulnerability not expressed, having no outlet, becomes hardened within you until your internal structure feels as brittle and hard as glass.  And as strong as steel.  That isn’t really a very functional internal system to live with.  I mean, blood and fluids cannot flow through glass and steel, only around and over.  Depriving the body of natural nutrients it needs for survival.

I did that.  I shut it all down, locked it away until one day, I didn’t have access to it anymore either.  And I told myself I was tough and strong and mighty.  But I wasn’t.  That was all bravado.  It was all bullshit.  It was a protective covering for a wounded and tender heart.  I built a castle around my pain and then refused to raise the drawbridge to allow myself out, or any of you, in.  And I called that living.

It was living, I guess.  But it wasn’t pleasant or fun, or endearing or popular.  I became hardened to life and its slings and arrows.  Fierce armor that I could no more take off than you could penetrate...and it almost killed me.  When I hit bottom in 1995, I had 25 years of pent up rage and sadness and loss and disappointment and trauma that it has taken me the last 30 to unpack and begin to heal.

I know why I locked away the pain, the loss and the sadness.  I was laboring under the delusion that I could skip them.  If I just pretended, insisted that happiness was my only goal, and rage my only vice, then I could and would be fine.  Just fine.  Just fucking fine.

And I guess I was somewhat fine because I am still here, and now way better than fine...I am real.  Authentic.  Genuine.  Broken.  Afraid. Lost.  Critical.  Softened.  And guess what?  I am ok.  It is fine to be soft.  It is ok to lay my armor down and lay myself bare onto this life and living.  Sure the forces of mara shoot their arrows at me time and time again, but I am learning, ever so slowly to turn them into flowers and not be bothered with the opinions, ideas or beliefs of others.  I have my own code and it is the only one that matters.  I live by that.  Guided by spiritual principles, shown through example, loved until I could love myself...

Looking back, it seems so ridiculous now.  My whole identity and idea that I could somehow rise above the fray of living and cheat death, and taxes, and pain and suffering, and love and living.  I could find somewhere to lock into that would be "meh", even though I never, ever wanted "meh", like at all.

In order to fully enjoy your life, you have to be open to all of it.  The pain, the loss, the heartbreak, the ignorance, the helplessness, the deaths that come, the removal of things that I wanted to stay, the remainder of things I wanted to go.  I had to learn, the hard way, to trust this divinity that grows every day within me, that nurtures my soul and grows me into a better, more ephemeral being until the day comes where the body loses the fight, and I become vapor once more.  Inevitably, we all vanish.  Our only legacy is the memories we leave with those who knew us.  And we have absolutely no control over how they perceive us or judge us or revile us or need us or want us or remember us, if they remember us at all.

I know why I locked it all down.  But to me, this person I am now, it seems like such idiocy.  Such a terrible waste of time and effort.  But here we are, life currently in free fall, crying many times a day and I have honestly never felt better.  I can’t explain it.  The loss of my dad has opened up this portal within me that I seem to have a full access pass to enjoy and endure.  I have no key to lock the door, no bars to restrict access.  I just have this time, these feelings, this grief and this longing to know more, feel more, do more, be more.

I feel as if I have been leveled up.  That I have moved up a level of consciousness.  Perhaps that is just ego doing its thing...but I don’t think so.  The ego isn’t really happy about any of this.  It has lots of things to say and things it wants to do.  But, but, anyway, I feel it regardless of where it is coming from, or where it is moving to.

This is me living. This is me grieving.  It will be amazingly awful, because it already is.  And I will survive and if I am very brave, then I will be able to enjoy the vantage of my current, albeit still limited perspective.  And all will be well.  Tears have full permission to fall.  I have authority to fall apart.  I do not need to make it look pretty, or spiritual or look like anything other than what it is.  A fucking rollercoaster ride, without brakes, a fevered tide that roils on despite my desperate queasiness.  It will just go along, pitching and yawning until I myself am called to whatever happens next...

Again, still...