POETIC INSANITY

    I listened to this quote today in one of my favorite YouTube channels The School of Life and it really resonated with me at this moment in my life: "The best way to recover sanity is to allow madness to have it's full unfettered horrific necessary run". The topic of this video was about getting over your ex. Yeah, taboo right? Something perceived as so childish and mundane, for teenagers, not rational adults. 

    I suffered horrifically in my last breakup from the love of my life. Yes, I sound like a little girl, but I don't care. Life is perception, so what we believe is real to us. If you believe in God, God is real. If you believe in sun signs, they are real, and if you believe that someone was the love of your life, then they absolutely were. Our lives are grounded on our belief and feelings, although we delude ourselves as thinking we are such rational, advanced beings.

    We live in a self-help society, evolved or whatnot, in which we are encouraged to be extremely controlled and level-headed at all times. If we understand rationally that a relationship ran its course, we should accept it with dignity and move on like a champ, even if our stomach feels like it received a mortal punch, our mind cannot concentrate in any task, our body cannot absorb nutrition and we cry or yell at anything that touches our embarrassing wound. Our body doesn't speak "Rationalan". It has it's own language that doesn't use words, but sensations.

    If everything is a balance then doesn't it make sense that there should be the same amount of madness for sanity? Maybe it's why we suffer so immensely for something so irrational, simply to activate that insane part of ourselves that also needs to be heard. The crier, the yeller, the runner, the binger, the dancer, the artist... the writer. 

    I lost my mind for a while. I really did and since I had nothing to lose, I embraced my temporary insanity with all its phases: the deep depression, the ecstatic thrill, the daredevil, the beggar, the crazy and the melancholic. There is poetry in losing our minds for a bit and returning to our humanity, a place where we learn to have true compassion for pain, ours and our neighbors. Also a place where we are reminded of true beauty, the one we only see when our soul is blatantly open and our guard is down. 

    Don't bottle up the pain no matter how ridiculous it is. Find your perturbed inner self and allow them to just be, with genuine curiosity. The rational world will still be there after your body has returned to its natural rhythm. I'll finish with a quote from the music composer Seal:

    We're never gonna survive unless we go a little crazy.       

   

ENVY AND GRATITUDE

     The "bad" and "good"emotions. If we were to put the emotions on the scale, I imagine envy would be at the very back of the list as a big no no. We are not supposed feel envy, in fact, we are supposed to feel gratitude, at least it's what we've been taught our whole lives. When we feel envy it makes us small and wrong, therefore we should count our blessings and bla bla bla. I've been learning slowly to eliminate words likes "supposed"or "should" from my mind schemata. 

   I believe our inner world should (yes, should) be a place where we are supposed to (again, I know) feel safe to feel what we feel with no judgement. We don't have to act on it, but we can have the curiosity and compassion to understand that our emotions have a mind of their own and we must make kind allowances for both the joy and sorrow, peace and rage, gratitude and envy. In fact, maybe if we understand life as a tenuous balance, we could accept that one emotion can't exist without the other, and they both need space.

   I feel envy at people who seems to be happy without effort. I feel envy at people who had a good start in life and have made so much more "progress"(whatever that means) than me. I'm feel envy at people who were lucky in love and have a companion for the cold nights. I feel envy at the young who have their whole lives ahead of them and I feel envy at the old who are gracefully accepting what is. I feel envy at those who have such an easy time making friends and being surrounded by love. 

   Now I'll give space for gratitude. I feel gratitude for the calm mornings and cozy evenings when I feel centered and at ease. I feel gratitude for every delicious meal that arrives at the precise time I needed it. I feel gratitude for my children's love in whatever form they choose to show it. I feel gratitude for a child's curious eyes that give me hope for tomorrow. I feel gratitude that my body is strong and my mind is sharp and my fingers can write. I feel gratitude for the people in my life who accept me as I am, even when I push them away. 

   I feel gratitude for life, even if it's not always a calm relationship and sometimes I wish I could just leave the train, I always find a reason to stay and observe. I act when I can, I wait when I can't and I believe that nothing is written in stone. Books open and close. Stories end and begin again. 

  I feel gratitude for this breathe I'm taking right now that reminds me that I have a soul and the I will always find new things to be grateful for. 

 

Unlearned Happiness

      Yesterday I woke up ok. I didn't have the grappling concern over all the problems of the world, real or imaginary. I had slept well - possibly had had pleasant dreams - and I woke up calmly and slowly. It was a strange feeling for me and it didn't feel familiar. My day usually starts with a need to calm myself with writing, meditation and sometimes tears. It's like my mental alarm clock is a ticking bomb that I have to diffuse early in the morning in order for me to be able to have a relatively smooth day without any extreme inner struggles. I've been feeling this deep morning depression/anxiety for over 2 years, so it's very strange when I don't feel it. And instead of relaxing, my body goes into full alert of waiting for when the fridge will fall on my head.

   Another strange thing happened as well, though not unfamiliar. I was in a situation where everything was ok, in fact, everything was fantastic and propitious for clean, healthy fun, the type your belly aches from laughter. Now, what happens in my body when I am in a situation like that is also to go on full alert. I'm not used to feeling safe. I'm not used to having fun. In a strange way, most of the fun in my life is derived from some sort of adrenaline rush like radical sports or unstable relationships. In other words, my nervous system feels safe when I'm moving, solving, fighting, negotiating or overcoming some sort of adversity on my own. I guess it's a danger I can control (or I think I can) so I feel safe in some sort of sick way. 

   What happens when I am actually safe and well is that it feels wrong and unfamiliar. If I have no danger to face I feel instantly lost and small. It's hard to describe what happens to me, so I'll try to give you a mental picture. It's like my cognitive self, the little person in my brain that is in charge of protecting me will recede and put herself in my third eye, like right between my forehead. I feel like it's going on overdrive and my eyes will start looking in all directions simultaneously, except into the safe person's eyes. Yes, I am terrified of looking in someone's eyes when I am in that state of alarm, which ironically happens when I am safe. 

   Maybe if you picture those episodes of black mirror of the little versions of us living in the brain, you can get a mental picture. I call this version of me "La neorotica". It helps if I bring some humor into it. I know she is trying to protect me, but I just need her to take a nap so I can actually experience the feelings of safety and happiness in my body and let them slowly integrate into my psyche. 

   I read somewhere that we must learn to be sad in order to learn to be happy. It's a balance. I feel I have gotten good at giving space to my grief, and now I make that same effort to give space to my joy. When I feel it, I breathe it in, I acknowledge it with gratitude and I welcome it with patience. Patience because she must come slowly. Just like falling in love should be something gentle and calm, falling in happiness is also slow. We can't force it and make it happen, but we can surrender to it when it's there and give it as much space as we can. 

  Nobody can be forced to feel "happy", even if the circumstances are perfect. Just like all emotions, they come when they come. We don't know what is going on inside someone's mind. May we be more gentle with ourselves so we can also be more gentle with others. All things can be learned, but everyone learns in a different speed. I'm still a toddler in learning happiness, but I have my whole life, so I'm not in a hurry.