Envy and Love

      A couple of evenings back I talked to an old friend. He is someone I genuinely consider a wonderful person and we have shared interests, such as: Both of us write music and try to record them, both of us love nature and treks; both of us started in Cristian families but deviated towards atheism through a slow burn process of inner discovery and curiosity. He is also a very kind person who always shows me healthy affection and helps boost my mood. When we met, possibly something more than friendship could have ensued, but I didn’t start it and he respected it, however, our friendship has lasted over ten years, and I’ve always been grateful for that.

     A few years back both of us were in a long term relationships with our respective partners. We were both happy, and it was nice to see how each other’s lives were unfolding. However, my relationship went to shit and broke my heart and my life considerably, at the time. It’s been over two years, but sometimes something will reopen that pang, like the conversation I had with this friend I’m mentioning now.

     Just to backtrack. The reason my breakup and this conversation was so painful was because this ex was the only person I actually opened up to in my whole life, and I trusted him and was genuinely happy - also sad of course, as relationships go. It was a pointless breakup that was mostly caused by outside circumstances and our unhealed trauma. Well, I can’t know what caused the rupture for him, I can only speak of my perception of it. I was extremely depressed and wanted him to make the pain go away and he tried to be there for me, but it was too much for him, and his way of coping was retreating to his corner, which caused me to feel more and more abandoned. In the end it was a radical split, from one day to the next. Just a huge back valley of despair and confusion that took me a long time to crawl out of. What hurts the most is that I believe we could’ve worked out and found something sustainable there. It was just a disaster. Once more, it’s my perception, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

     Ok, back to my present feelings. My friend’s relationship is still ongoing, and they are well and happy together, even though they are having to live apart at the moment. A part of me is overjoyed to see a commitment that is working; to see that love is real and many people find it; but another part of me is angry that he is happy in love while I am just unlucky and alone again. Mind you, ninety-five percent of the time I’m thoroughly enjoying my singledom. My past relationships post breakup have been draining and dissatisfying, so no complaints there. However, sometimes something reaches deeper and knocks me down, despite my efforts to tell me I’m over it.

     I want to write about our acceptance of all our feelings. Our mind and heart are complex places where we can feel joy and sadness at the same time. I did feel envy at his happiness and then I felt shame for feeling envy. Then I felt angry for not feeling joy at the good things in life. Then I was transported to the past trying to go through the “bargaining” stage of grief once more when the past is over and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it but accept it and live the present.

     It’s normal to compare with people who have what we desire. Being aware of our humanity in that is a compassionate act. We can’t be happy and grateful ALL the time. We are a mix of intricate desires. We are the consequence of what happened to us.

     It still hurts me that my past trauma and my unsettled mind may have also been the cause of me not being able to recognize true kindness and love from another human being. But that feeling of rejection of myself is not something that will bring me closer to love, both self-love and love for and from others.

     Plus, we can’t forget that most feelings just pass through us and are not real. I do want to be single right now. It’s a choice I made. And part of the choice is understanding that I will feel alone and sometimes my thoughts will be kind and sometimes they won’t. But may I strive to be gentle with myself, remembering that my mind is not always my friend, so I have to be that friend.

     There is no shame in being human. There is no shame in sometimes feeling envy, being petty or comparing. We can love ourselves through it. But love is also a choice. We can choose to let those feelings go when they expire and not feed them.

     I am genuinely happy for all my loved ones who have found mature, loving partners that nurture their lives and where they can share wonderful experiences and make memories. I am also genuinely happy for people like me who may still be learning what love is because they didn’t have it growing up, so it might take longer and we might have to stay in the ABC’s of love for a while. The first step is loving our flawed selves and comforting our soul when it hurts and acts out.

     Love is water. It may overwhelm you and sometimes it will be only a drop and you’ll feel thirsty, but we can rest assured that our air is also made of water. We are never truly parched. We have to wait it out, and in time, we will also feel the rain. The rain always comes.         

14th Birthday

      It’s been a long time since I write something on this blog.

      I journal every day, sometimes twice a day in fact, since it’s my main form of release. I keep my journals, but I hardly ever reread them and most of the time I delete them eventually. I write to get it out of my system. Although nobody reads this blog, these posts are public so I take more care about how I write and what I write about. I also try to have some clarity at the end of my musings. 

     Today is my youngest daughter’s birthday. She’s turning 14, and it’s one of those happy days for her. Her birthday is on a Friday, she looks beautiful, she has love from her family and friends and next year is full of hope and possibilities for her. A writer I admire a lot: “Alain de Bottom” said that parents are sometimes envious of their children and, although it sounds preposterous, he makes a fair point.

     This happens more often in instances where you didn’t have a happy childhood or adolescence, and your child does. I mean, we all say that deep inside we want our children to have what we didn’t have, but maybe what we want is for US to have what we didn’t have, so we subconsciously try to live through our children. It's an attempt at going back in time and rewriting history, which, as we know, is impossible. We can become parasites of sorts, or we can try to project our dreams into theirs. I guess all my posts do get a little dark, but it is after all a journal of an unsettled mind.

    I know that accepting that my 14 years old birthday was nonexistent and extremely miserable is something that happens slowly. Acceptance, like all emotions, can’t be forced. We welcome them, but they come as they choose. At age 14 I didn’t have a friend in the world and my family was scattered. I don’t remember it. I don’t remember cake, or presents, or smiles, or even anything. I might have been disassociated. I spent a lot of my teen years simply going through the motions so as not to feel the immense loneliness and depression that consumed me every day and night.

     This is my blog, so YES, I’m allowed to make it about me. I already decorated the living room with balloons, took the pictures, bought the presents, gave the hugs and saw that huge smile on her adorable teenage face. I can give space to my 14 year old self who needs attention and a little comfort as I grieve what I didn’t have and let acceptance come with compassion and release.

     Having daughters is a constant healing and opening of wounds. My girls have the most important things – in my opinion – that anyone should have: the freedom to be themselves, to think their thoughts, to be loved through their moods, to be left alone when they need space, and support as they navigate the growing pains of womanhood.

     I grieve that I didn’t have any comfort through my broken hearts, through my puberty moods, through my low self-esteem growing up, through the extreme neglect of all my basic needs.

    The wounds open, I listen, I let them bleed, I tend, I nurse and I smile. I am me. I am free. I am a good mom. If I envy, it only makes me human. But emotions come in chunks. Envy mixed with pride. Sorrow mixed with excitement.

    The world is our oyster. My daughters will explore it and, while I still breathe, my 14 and 42 year old self can stand strong in the safe world I created for me where I’m allowed to be left alone to nurse my wounds, to cry, to write and to breathe life as it was given to me, for all of it is beautiful and the only reality is now, as my fingers type and I feel proud of myself for writing truth again, raw and messy, but real human truth. I am not ashamed to be human.    

Rant

          Life is unfair. Yes, I’m starting this post with this very cliché and depressive statement. Today I’m angry at life, even though I rationally know that it’s absolutely useless and it won’t fix anything. It doesn’t matter. I still am. Last week I was flying high and today I’m cursing the Gods that created me and landed me in this ridiculous excuse for a life.

       By writing I vent it all out and it almost sounds funny, like a tantrum from a five-year-old. Well, if five-year-olds are allowed to throw tantrums, why can’t a forty-two-year-old also throw one? At least I’m just harming anyone, just the lifeless keyboard I’m typing on.

        I understand that we're not supposed to compare with others and all that mumble-jumble, of how we're supposed to act when faced with life's adversities, but I'm so sick of that. It's not about the performance, but about the feeling. It's not about being perfect, but it's about being human. 

       I feel like someone just picked me up with their giant fat fingers and landed me on this chaos of a life for the heck of it. And, worst of all, gave me glimpses and awareness of what I’m missing out on just to rub it in. I know that I’m supposed to be grateful for the fact that my life is not worse, but, common, why can’t it be a little better?

      All to say, these past two days were painful and confusing and I’m emotionally dysregulated, part of my CTPSD symptoms. I’ve already done the journaling and meditation and listening to calm stuff and all the self-help stuff, so it’s time for a basic, immature rant.

     Maybe getting in touch with your inner child in order to heal is not just about soothing, but also about letting it express how unfair it is that their friends have a safe home and a future while they live in a dump and will never leave that dump, just because.

     And don’t tell me that if I work hard and believe I will find a way, or anything of that sort. I’m done working hard. That’s all I ever did. My faith in miracles is quite nonexistent. I’m done hoping my brain will just chill. I am who I am and the only way I will get through the rest of the possible chaos of my life is to be my friend, even in my rants.

     My rant is: Life is unfair and today is a day that reminds me of that.

    But it’s still my life. The only one I’ve got. Tomorrow is another day.

Ok, I’m done.

Back home

   There is a quote that goes: "You can't heal in the same place you got sick", and, of course, it's everyone's dream to be able to leave and not look back. In fact, so many do. In today’s world it’s very easy to escape into another realm, another reality, another relationship or another country. In that movement we do find release, sometimes temporary reprieve, but always temporary. At some point we must come home. By “home” I don’t mean the actually physical place, but the home inside of us where we have to revisit it all, the good and the bad, the unspoken, the monsters and ghosts.

    

Upon returning, we feel it all like it was never gone. In fact, sometimes it all comes back with multiplied force, and it overwhelms us. Some people chose to live their whole lives on the run, and they can manage it, but for most of us it’s just not feasible. We have two choices: To sulk and be angry and retreat into ourselves, or to accept reality for what it is with grace and patience. In order to accept, we must learn to make space for our grief and sadness when it arises and also learn to make space for love and joy when they revisit.

   

Recently, I have come home. It didn’t have a choice; it was just my reality. In coming home, I have to face it all again. I imagine I feel like people who come out of rehab and have to use their coping mechanisms to stay sober and build a healthy life. Some wounds reopen, memories return, small anxiety attacks spike within me and I have moments of despair. I return to my young self needing to be rescued and praying for a savior, when in fact, I am the adult who needs to soothe and rescue myself. That is part of my coping skills, calming the inner child and reminding her that we’ve been through so much and we will be ok.

    

   I think we can’t be too strict with ourselves and our dogmas. If I believe that quote, it means I’m doomed to be sick forever. Maybe it is harder in the same place, however, there are other ways to create space to continue healing. Maybe the place is my inner world and I can continue working on making it a wonderful place to be, in teaching my thoughts to be kinder, and in having compassion for the cortisol levels that spike my morning anxiety. I am not good at playing the “glad game” so I won’t force it on me, but I can make small future plans to have things to look forward to to keep me going one day at a time.

    

   I know this is also temporary. Everything is temporary. Even home, is not the same home I left, and be being so it’s a different place. I can heal in a different place. I am not the same person. I honestly don’t even know what “healing” means anymore. It feels like so much pressure to be always healing. Maybe I’ll rephrase it. 

    

   I can live here, I can breathe here, I can hope here, I can love here, I can trust here, and I can just be. It’s my only job right now.       

End and Beginnings

     Someone with an unsettled mind has a very difficult time with change, because it usually means that something that was safe - or seemed safe enough - is changing and something dangerous is waiting around the river bend. It sounds a bit crazy, but an unsettled mind is relatively insane, either because of real trauma, a mental illness or just the way one was born. And don't judge, after all, there is real danger in the world and tragedy finds us all at one point or another. However, living in preparation for tragedy is no life at all. 

    It's a funny concept trying to avoid change in order to make one's life safe, after all, change is the only constant in life. Even if we are sitting still, everything is changing around us, and the person who sits down is not the same person who stands up. We are all always changing and morphing and just growing older. Still, an unsettled mind tries their best to control possible catastrophe and pain by holding on to anything that feels safe. But even a strong branch may break if you hold on to it for too long, and once more you are adrift in the river of life. 

   Recently, after struggling for years to maintain safety and security, that last branch broke off and I didn't fight the river anymore. Sometimes I was terrified and thought I was going to drown, but mostly I was mesmerized at so much world I was missing out on by trying to stay in the same place. And, although there is always danger, most of it was ilusory. The river seemed to be taking me straight onto a rock, but would gently change its course causing me to laugh with excitement at the thrill of it all. Learning new skills caused me panic at first - that desire to curl into a ball and hide - but once I crossed that line I realized that I was more capable than I thought I was and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Or maybe it was, but I had it in me all along to learn. 

   It's hard to rewire a brain to welcome change as new experiences. An ending is automatically a start. It's simply an empty vacuum that new life will flow into, and whatever it is, I can handle it. I can handle any possible danger, but mostly, I can handle all the novelty of not knowing. I don't need that branch anymore because my home is the river and I am the water. 

   One of my favorite quotes these days is: "Embrace the panic of having the rest of your life ahead of you." I am halfway through my life. If I'm going to finish with a positive, yet realistic, note, I would say this. The benefit of having had such a crappy childhood and so much sorrow in the past is that happiness in the present just feels so amazingly foreign, like tasting an exotic drink. The good thing about not peaking in your youth, is that you are constantly peaking and life is always getting better. The fact that I didn't get to have extraordinary life experiences in the past means that they are still ahead of me and I look forward to all of them. 

   I am less afraid of change. If I was not afraid at all, I wouldn't be human. If I wasn't a little bit terrified, I wouldn't have the amazing unsettled mind that I have ... which I have grown to love. 

My world

     There is this quote from Anais Nin that has been itching the back of my mind for months during this period of - perhaps too much - introspection. It goes like this: "Had I not created my whole world, I would have certainly died in other people's". I feel like I'm good at creating, yet I am also great at destroying. 

   My life is a series of settlements I have build with people I have loved and trusted and sudden explosions in which I absolutely destroy it from the ground up and find myself naked and alone again trying to figure out what happened. Don't get me wrong, it was necessary to destroy certain worlds that were sucking the life out of me, filled with parasites and death. However, one wonders if I got so good at destroying and escaping that I can't break the habit, even when I find myself in a "good enough"world.

   I have learned to adapt in such an impressive way that I hardly know if I truly love something, or if I'm just good at it. I can't recognize if what is wrong is the outside world or the inner world, or both. All I want to do is "smash", like some sort of hulk woman. It feels good to smash and save myself, but maybe, just maybe, what I have to do is stick around to see if I can find something from the rubble, or if I should really walk away and burn that bridge... yet again.

   To create my world I must build. Once more I have smashed it all to pieces, but I feel called to go through the rubble with compassion and patience and maybe rebuild, maybe forage, maybe save some memories, maybe walk away, but with ease, not fear. Like that old saying: "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water". Honestly, I don't even think I can tell if it's a baby or a bundle of trash, but I guess I won't know unless I pick it up and take a look. 

   I feel like I lost - or destroyed - my world once more and have had to live in other people's, where I felt safe and cared for. I feel afraid of going back to check the aftermath of my most recent bomb and be overwhelmed with a desire to escape and disappear, or curl up into a ball and cry. I feel I won't have strength to rebuild or I won't have the wisdom to find the treasures buried in the mess of my life. 

   I wish I wasn't this way, but I am, and all of it is also my world. Our worlds are built from the inside out. The chaos of my soul bleeds out into my environment. I will never be able to fully calm the chaos, so I must learn to accept it and love it and make peace with my monsters, for they are also my friends. 

   As I befriend my inner world I will be less afraid of my outer world. I'm learning to settle my mind, not by struggling with it, but my listening to it without acting. Maybe the day will come in which I will live fully in my world without the nuclear explosions. Maybe I will learn to be in tune with who I am so I won't have to get so lost in my path that I hardly recognize myself anymore.

  For now, I will calmly walk back, with humility and love. I honor my past, I live in my present. There was a time for flight and a time for rest and now it's a time to rebuild my world from the inside out. As I find myself in my own soul, I will find my place again in the world, my world.   

     

REST

    I feel genuinely happy today. Yesterday it rained and today the weather is cool and inviting. My mind is calm like a still ocean that you can stare for hours and not notice time going by. The water is so motionless it can mirror me clearly and I don't feel the need to explain myself. This may be the first time I had felt this way in a long time therefore I feel the need to give space to this peaceful feeling in the same way as I give space to the moments of sadness. This past week I felt safe to feel and express, whether alone or with people - safe people. I sang out loud, I cried in fountains and I laughed so heartly my heart remembered that I had the ability to be truly happy in the moment - not only in a memory. It wasn't because everything has worked itself out, but because this moment is perfect and that's all that matters.

   I'm not worried about growing old, instead I'm feeling how my long hair gently touches my back and my eyes need reading glasses. I'm not worried about money, instead I'm savoring every meal I ingest and trusting that I will always have food on my table. I'm not worried about the future, instead I'm feeling the goosebumps on my skin as I type this out on this cloudy morning.

  The truth is all my concerns are quite small in relation to my biggest worry of all: my fear of being sad; my ability to go to such low places where life doesn't seem worth it; my dread of being alone and abandoned. I fear the emotions more than I could ever fear the circumstances that bring adversity to my life. I fear the abstract more than I fear the concrete, but it is just as real to me, since our lives are perception and we spend most of our lives in our closets of our mind.

   But today I rest. Today I feel love. I feel as if the universe has wrapped its arms around me like a mother and allowed me to take a nap. I feel like laughter has released hope, real hope, the kind that wakes you up slowly, instead of with a incoming panic attack at the thought of living another day. 

   I can almost listen to that thought that is trying to snap me out of it saying "tomorrow you won't feel like this, it's not real, don't relax into the feeling, you must stay tough", and I allow it to be without judgement. I understand why the thought arises and I love myself for it. But it's ok, because life is only lived in the present moment. Tomorrow isn't real. Tomorrow is abstract. The only reality is right now and right now I am happy for no specific reason. I feel like I belong to everything, but mostly, I belong to myself.