Mother's Day

     It’s Mother’s Day and, as usual, I feel a little out of my body. It’s been getting easier each year, though.

   The first year I had Mother’s Day after I decided to cut ties with my mom was dreadful. I got absolutely shit-faced like I hadn’t in years; I threw up all night and all morning. I had terrible nightmares and I was overwhelmed with immense guilt… or shame… or toxic shame? Maybe a bit of it all.

   Some things are not right or wrong. They may be right for others and wrong for you and they may just be what needs to be done in an ambivalent way. Life has so many contradictions. A relationship with the person who gave birth to you will drive you crazy until you finally settle it inside your soul.

   Here in my blog I say things as they are. I don’t sugar code them. My mother was absent for my childhood. I never missed her, in fact, I had anxiety whenever she was around. I was raised by strangers, and in some weird way I felt safer around them than around my mom. And even in cases where those strangers were people who harmed me, I knew my mother was as good as invisible. She wouldn’t protect me anyway, so it was no use going to her for protection, in fact, she would probably shame me somehow or throw me as a lamb to the slaughter.

    Yes, a lamb to the slaughter. When I was a young preteen, I was basically a child slave that didn’t have any friends or education. My mother saw me as labor, childcare, cook, therapist and punching bag.

    I just want to add that my mother exposed me and my siblings to abusers and pedophiles and always defended them or pretended nothing was happening. She, herself, was also abusive and violent.

   All I really remember feeling as I grew up was the desire to get away from her. I didn’t really understand it, but it was all I wanted. I felt like I wasn’t a person as her daughter. I wasn’t a subject in the world with needs and desires. I was a grey square in the corner people were allowed to step on.

    However (a big however), every child loves – or wants to love – their mother. We need a mother. My mother stayed in my life and at some point, I felt like I almost loved her, or at least I wanted to, but it was like loving an empty shell of a person, or worse, a prickly poison ivy that always opened my childhood wounds for her own amusement. Was it possible that she couldn’t grasp the enormity for her mistreatment and neglect, or did she really not care?

    Honestly, a child can forgive their mother almost anything and we all know that mother’s aren’t perfect, HOWEVER, some things just go too far and every human has a limit. When that bridge is burned, it’s done. I’m not willing to swim back on that current to rescue the old backpack I left on the other side that was weighing me down and destroying me from the inside out. I need to move on.

    Every Mother’s Day has been rough ever since, but it's getting easier. I am a mother. It’s my day as well and I am the priority in my life right now. I still feel the guilt, but I know that guilt comes from a society that preaches that every child must love their mom or that all moms are good, when that is not true. I feel the grief from seeing my friends and colleagues showing affection to their moms. I feel an emptiness in my heart of all the love I wanted to show a mother, but I can’t, because it’s not there anymore. It just goes into a black hole.

    My bother called me “dark matter” recently in pejorative matter because of my recent life choices, and I decided to think that maybe being dark matter is not so bad, it’s actually pretty cool. I can create my own universe and hold my universe together. I can create my own Mother in my mind. 

    I have honored my mother by never having been mean to her. I have always treated my mom with kindness, and I think it’s kindness for both of us for me to let her go, and if she truly loved as she says she does, she should let me go as well. She already destroyed my childhood and youth, yet I still have a lot of life left in me and I can only live it fully if I stay away from her dark matter.

   Why is that so hard? She is free to be her, and I am free to be me, each in our own universe in our corner of the galaxy. We are no longer connected, even if she tries to reel me back in. That flower died. Whatever new flower that blossoms will not have been watered by her but will be watered by my rain.

   The sky is my father, and the earth is my mother. I am the water that brings life to my world.

   We don’t know why people become who they become. All we know is who we are and what we need to take care of ourselves. It’s our responsibility to be our mother if we didn’t have one, and to do what is best for us.

   May we be loved. May we be safe. May we be peaceful. May we live life with ease.        

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.

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.      

Madmind

     Sometimes we all feel like the loneliest person in the planet. I know when I do, I really believe nobody could feel this way and bear this amount of pain. Once in one of my terrible heartbreaks as a teenager I actually said I prefered to feel physical pain and torture than feel what I was feeling. Dark, I know. Obviously my rational mind knows it's not true. Everybody hurts and everybody suffers, but I guess the levels are different. I think the main question is whether you believe that it's temporary, whether you know it's not the end of the world and whether you have some sort of comfort in your life to weather the dark tunnel. 

   I think of myself as someone who likes to be alone, but I think the truth is I don't like to be around most people because they trigger me in some way related to my past. Basically, I like it when I get away from the overbearing mind stimulation of social masks and I feel like I can breathe freely, which mostly happens when I'm alone. It's kind of a way of escapism, and it works. I think my perfect scenario is just to be in the same space with someone without any concerns, and that is very hard for an unsettled mind. We're always doing the math, seeing if everything is ok and preparing for the eventuality or disaster to happen. 

   Being alone can be restful when I'm escaping but it can also be terrifying when it's just my state of being at the moment simply because there is no one there. My mind sometimes is my greatest foe, taking me to uncertain pits of despair in a blink of an eye like a madman... or madmind. It's the fear of the things... fear of fear, fear of sadness, fear of despair, fear or hopelessness, fear of abandonment, you get the point. Like I said: madmind. The hyper neurotic, the extreme catastropher, the ruthless critic, the abusive relationship. All the familiar voices of my past take up their spaces with such ease, it feel useless to fight back, even though I know they aren't real.

   There is some poetry in being mad, but only when you make it into poetry. When you allow your inner world to play its game, but you don't engage. You just watch it like a bad, cringy comedy, and clap all the end. Maybe you even add to it with sarcasm and give it more rope to hang itself with. Eventually everybody and everything gets tired. It's a wonderful feeling to be tired and finally rest. For some people they can just stop and rest without having to observe the horror show, but maybe their rest isn't as sweet as mine. 

   There is nothing better than calm. There is nothing better than nothing. Only when there is nothing, can we begin writing a script for a new movie, not a perfect life, but at least real. A movie in which we are the protagonist of our own story, with agency and choice. Only by befriending the madmind in the moments of solitude can we embrace our madness and laugh at it all, laugh until we cry and until we get tired and can rest. rest.     

STORIES

    I hate listening to people's life stories. I know it's a very intense way to start this post, but it's true. Wait! I lie. I enjoy listening to people who have sad stories like mine and we can actually sympathize and connect, although that is also not healthy for me, so I'll leave that train of thought for another day. Back to the "regular"stories.

    The childhood stories of "good enough" parenting... basically anything that has to do with "normality"will always make me sad because I can't share my stories, therefore I feel lonely in my dark child world. 

   The stories of youth and travels, early relationships, vacations, first jobs, carefree living... basically anything that has to do with being "young"and not carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders will always make me sad because, once more, I can't share my stories and I feel lonely in my extremely depressed youth.

   I know it's difficult for anyone to listen to me (or read this) because it's pretty much just sad. Yeah, I'm old enough to understand that I am more sad then happy and don't have "good old days"to share. It doesn't mean my life wasn't interesting, but not for dinner party stories. 

   I can say that my happy days were after my 30s, taking long drives on my own or with my two small kids in the back seat of my old car, feeling free. I can say that my happy days are still coming and I feel my health and looks and overall well being are better as I get older, but I still feel lonely in my past. 

   I'm still learning the balance in what I can share, when to share, with whom, and how much to keep to myself without it consuming me on the inside, and without the growing resentment of having the short straw in life. I guess that's why I have this space to write it; to express this inner frustration of not having "normal" stories to share.

  If I want to end in the positive note, I can say that my "good days" are still ahead of me and while others will be living in their past, I'm always looking forward to the present moment and the future, since ... very slowly, yet steadily... I might just become the most interesting person I know.        

   

GOOD MOURNING

    The mornings are strange for an unsettled mind, especially those mornings in which you have nothing much going for you during the day, so you wake up with an empty feeling. By the way, it wasn't a typo. I did write good "mourning" on purpose. Writing free flow means that the back of your mind has the idea, and then your fingers follow, or at least they try.

    On busy days, I wake up ready - like a soldier on a battlefield - and I am able to go to sleep with satisfaction (not happiness) but a sense of purpose. On days in which I am allowed to just be alive simply for the purpose of being alive, the world seems more grey and I wait anxiously for the sunset. It's almost as if I don't matter unless I'm useful. Maybe that's one thing that I'm mourning, my right to be alive just because... and by alive I mean unapologetically me. 

   Sometimes, right after a wonderful life experience, I wake up the next day with a heavy melancholy; just a desire to cry for all the reasons that I forgot to cry the day before, when my mind was well. I mourn the sadness that took a break, even though it was the joy's turn, after all, we must have balance.

   On days I have love by my side I remember all the past loves that ate at my soul and I compare, analyze, question or fight to erase them completely, something not possible. Nothing dies, it just transforms. 

  All I can do is slowly get up, make my cup of coffee, step outside and listen to the birds, observe the sky, indulge my thoughts, observe my soul, let the waves crash until the sea settles a bit. If I must cry, I cry, because I am mourning. I am mourning the little girl that once knew how to wake up with hope and today wakes up with dread. Except those days, those special days in which I actually wake a up to a good MORNING.      

42

 I turned 42 this year. It's only a number, but it's a big number for me.

My dad was 42 when he had 3 strokes and was taken away in a hospital stretcher. He passed soon after on a Wednesday, September 9, 1992. In a child's mind, my dad was an old man, like most children view adults. We can hardly fathom the idea that we will reach that age one day. 

This was amplified by the fact that I was raised in a fundamentalist / apocalyptic cult and I didn't think I would grow up to be an adult. Best case scenario, Jesus would come back in the sky and I would fly to him unscathed. Worse case scenario... well, let's just say it included any form of torture and sexual assault invented by mankind, while I had to remain true to my "faith". 

Honestly, I don't know if I have depressive tendencies because of my unsettling childhood, or if I was just born this way. As most people like me, I try to think my way into solutions to my scrambled mind and why I can't seem to ever be happy... just happy. 

So, back to my main subject: 42. 7 times 6, both important numbers. 7 is a "good"number because God took 7 days to create the Earth. 6 is a "bad" number because it's the mark of the beast (or devil). Oh, don't get me wrong, I am the opposite of religious, but I am cursed with an astronomic memory of small numbers and words. 

All to say, I have reached the unreachable age and I overanalyze it, true to my nature. Of the 42 years, maybe I was "happy" for 14 of them - wait - I should also count the hours I sleep, although my sleep has not always been "sweet". 

I'm doing my best not to divagate too much, and keep it short. 

I will always try to finish on a positive tone, not true to my nature, as I can be quite pessimistic. I feel that for many people it's only an age, but for me it's a mount Everest. I have somehow made it here alive and relatively sane. It's a struggle to remember the good times and not the countless breakdowns, heartbreaks and just long periods of basic survival. 

I am a lonely person, not because I don't have wonderful people in my life, but because I feel I am unreachable. I can't be reached and there are many things I can never reach, but I have reached the top of this mountain of 42 long years, that felt like 420 years (pun almost intended). Now I will just sit on a nice rock, enjoy the view and breathe a bit... just breathe.