I make all of my assumptions vulnerable.
I am so grateful Wednesday, February 3, 2010
I am so grateful for this experience – a chance to learn and grow for me.
I could have learned this lesson many other ways – I don’t think this outcome was a necessary step on the path of my growth.
I am grateful for it now, as a chance to learn and grow.
I am so grateful.
Remember Tuesday, February 2, 2010
1. Remember that it is your true nature to be wise and discerning.
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2. Remember that it is your true nature to be good to yourself and to have goodwill and compassion for others.
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3. Remember that it is your true nature to take pleasure in your existence and to esteem and value others.
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4. Remember that it is your true nature to be forgiving and to use everything in life for your growth and renewal.
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5. Remember that it is your true nature to be engaged with reality, contemplating the infinite riches of the world.
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6. Remember that it is your true nature to be courageous and capable of dealing with life under all conditions.
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7. Remember that it is your true nature to be happy and to add to the richness of experience for everyone.
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8. Remember that it is your true nature to be strong and capable of affecting the world in many different positive ways.
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9. Remember that it is your true nature to be an inexhaustible font of serenity, acceptance, and kindness in the world.
Protected: we actually know the answers but pretend that we don’t Tuesday, February 2, 2010
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Ok all you 30 year olds Tuesday, February 2, 2010
I love learning and growing, but does it always have to involve the complete destruction of my life? An extreme, life-altering, identity-changing shift happened inside of me before I externalized it. Did I have to destroy all of the good things that I had to learn these lessons?
Give me a light at the end of this tunnel, 30 year olds.
Tell me you were crazy in your 20s, too. That you made mistakes and destroyed beautiful relationships, too. That you lost yourself and questioned everything.
Fuck.
Sometimes I look back Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Sometimes I look back on the things thta I’ve written and I just laugh. What the hell am I talking about?
But then again, it’s all just learning and trying.
Fuck being engaged, though. I wanted to be married. Being engaged brings up all of your fears about impermanence and uncertainty with none of the guarantee about the future.
I’m all for bringing up fears and working through them, but the stress that being engaged puts on that whole process… You believe that you HAVE to work it all out before the wedding day. But you know – you don’t. Things don’t become permanent the instant you put a ring on your finger. You liked learning and working on things together before you got engaged. You’ll probably continue working on things after you’re married.
I have no idea why I went so crazy. I knew I was crazy – I knew I wasn’t myself. But I have no idea why, or how I got there.
That’s scary, because I feel like if I don’t know how I got somewhere, I can’t avoid getting there again. But thinking non-stop about the past isn’t helping me learn from it. Apparently. Shocking.
All I know right now is that I made a lot of mistakes. I also know that, at least early on, I did a lot of things right. It was the best relationship that I’ve ever been in – and having experienced that kind of love is such an incredibly positive thing. The real essence of me was loved – I was the best version of myself that I’ve ever been.
No amount of sadness can ever undo that happiness.
But no amout of happiness can ever undo the sadness I feel now, mourning the loss of it. This sadness will always be a part of me. If I find happiness in the future, it won’t mean that I’ve forgotten this, or somehow “moved beyond” it. This isn’t “unlife” to be replaced with “life” at a later date, when I’ve finally evolved. This is my life.
For some reason that’s comforting. I don’t know why.
The best Saturday, January 30, 2010
I did the best I could with the knowledge that I had.
I forgive myself and release the past and I am free.
I guess what I’m trying to say is Saturday, January 30, 2010
I guess what I’m trying to say is:
I started blogging and javabatting and being introspective to stop experiencing the negative feelings.
All of my introspective techniques became methods to run away from and “fix” the very emotions I claimed I was trying to explore.
Isn’t it funny how obvious and stupid something is when you finally figure it out?
The other day Saturday, January 30, 2010
It’s so interesting to me when we learn things about ourselves that we didn’t know, before.
The other day, I learned something about myself which I had never consciously been aware of. I have always known, on a subconscious or intuitive level, that I had something to learn about being Sad. Because of my own personality, I’ve always placed great value on being Happy. This can be quite obviously a positive thing – our culture values happiness, and “thinking positively” is considered a laudable traight.
The last time I was heartbroken, it took me quite a while to learn how to totally experience the whirlwind of emotions I was going through. I was so afraid that if I fully experienced the sadness, I would never fully experience happiness again. I fought the anger, the despair, the hatred, the rage, the disappointment, the disgust. I would present a bold, brave face to myself – and, by extention, the world – in hopes that I could “fake it ’till I make it.”
All of this until one of my closest friends gave me some advice that changed the game for me. She listened to what I was saying, and saw how hard I was fighting against my own experience, and she said:
“Molly, just let it suck.”
Let it suck – let it hurt – let the anger overwhelm you and the disgust steal your appetite. Fully open yourself to every part of your experience.
This was powerful to me then because, as she helped me to see, those negative emotions would affect me whether I admitted they were there or not. But admitting they were there allowed me to take steps to deal with them appropriately.
All of this I knew, which was why since March I’ve been trying to allow myself to fully experience the range of my negative emotions – my rage, my disappointment, my frustration. I believed that I needed to “admit” the scary things I was thinking – that I felt so uncomfortable because I was hiding some dark truth from myself. I was constantly trying to search for the “scary truth” I “wasn’t admitting” to myself. Was I scared about the future? Not happy with the present? Holding on to my past? Why did I feel so angry all of the time?
But it’s recently become clear to me that I was thinking about my relationship with these feelings in the wrong way. The difference seems to me to be the difference between:
1. Accepting and allowing an emotion – acknowledging it’s existence and not trying to stop it, and
2. Encouraging and indulging in an emotion – acting out based on how I feel.
I know how the difference feels – when I accept and acknowledge an emotion I feel immensely powerful. My breathing is automatically slower and deeper, and I feel completely calm, aware, and perceptive. Decisions are easier to make, I express my thoughts and my feelings clearly and truthfully.
When I am merely acting out an emotion instead of experiencing it, I feel shaky and disconnected from myself. My mind constantly flits from one emotion to the next, and searches for reasons for each new feeling.
What I learned the other day is that in all of my efforts to define and accept what I was feeling, all I succeeded in doing was feeding my emotions. Blogging stopped working because I would just feed my negative thoughts instead of acknowledge and let go of them. (EDIT: I think the reason that blogging stopped working was because I was doing the blogging to get rid of the negative emotions – and when they didn’t instantly disippate I got frustrated. My ultimate goal was *still* to stop feeling them – to run away, or to fix them. I have to remember that the process of experiencing the emotions IS the value – not the state of “dissolved anger” I get afterwards. Letting go of an emotion is good, but how can you let go of something you won’t admit you’re feeling?).
Then, sadly, I started to blame other people for the way that I felt. This is the part I’m am the most deeply sad about. No matter how hard my life is, it’s always just my life and I don’t want to start imagining that someone else has the power to make me feel one way or the other.
Everyone keeps telling me how awesome I am Thursday, January 28, 2010
It’s not that I’ve forgotten how awesome I am, it’s just that I don’t see the point. Which I guess exposes my belief that if I live my life “awesomely” I deserve to be happy. Which just devalues sadness again…
And yet the menace of the years find and shall find me unafraid Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The things I have learned over the last few weeks can’t be put into words, yet.
Suffice it to say that I’m growing more than I’ve ever grown, and in a way unlike any way I have grown before.
I’m so excited to see where I go next…
