Detachment and Self-Love

The Truth:
I miss her more than I'd like to admit. I think of her more than I probably should. Detachment is a bitch and she is definitely biting my ass these days. I am fully, 100% committed to the process of "changing my mind." I am reprogramming myself to not escape into my dreams of a future family with her. I am exchanging my vision of tomorrow for a celebration of today. The present is dope and and truly inspiring. I will appreciate what God is sending me in this moment. My "pre-sent" is sent from God based on the choices I make as I "make up my mind." I choose to love myself enough to live in the NOW. I recognize that this choice will have to be made over and over again. I commit to this process and give thanks for it.

The Love:
I am redirecting my love for her into myself. I am sending myself love notes and treating myself as if I am the goddess I saw in her. So here is some love poetry for ME from ME.

Love After Love
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
_______________________________________________

The next poem is one that makes me think of missing her. But when I long for her I often ignore and neglect me. So I will send this out to the parts of myself I send away (and miss dearly) when I dream of her. I can get no higher than when inhaling the longing for myself.

Poem # 3
by Sonia Sanchez

I gather up

each sound

you left behind

and stretch them

on our bed.

each nite

I breathe you

and become high.

Hiking

Today I learned that all of life's difficult questions can be answered by observing and contemplating nature. Thank you.

Survivin

Today is Friday and I am feeling better. I have on a cute outfit with my black and pink nikes. I have a laptop so I can escape the office and work somewhere else if necessary. I'm drinkin some good coffee. Plus, I am still on a shopping high from buying new Nike Dunks at WISH last night. It's the little things that help us get by. I'm happy for that.


New Shoes:



















Shoes I want:

Strugglin

"What does it profit a man if he gain the whole word and suffer the loss of his own soul?" (Matthew 16:26).

Jesus said that. Last night I was thinking about Jesus. I was thinking that I don't really know Jesus that well. Not on some fundamentalist Christian, "Do you know the Lord Jesus as your personal savior" rhetoric. I mean other than the stories of Jesus that are in the New Testament. I want to know how Jesus laughed. I want to know if He liked music. I want to know what He was doing at 26. Where was He? Did He fall in love with His soulmate and the have to leave them to save the world? Did He dance and experiment? Did He cry or play or party it up? I want to know how Jesus handled His 20's? How did He live with the duality of knowledge that He would save the world, but wasn't yet ready.

I was thinking about Jesus because I wanted a model for handling what I've been feeling lately. Right now my heart is broken. My relationship with my soulmate is over. I have ignored my broken heart, distracting myself with work and girls and money and chaotic living. Yesterday my broken heart brought me down. I cried until I threw up while on the phone with the one person I shouldn't be calling, the one person that could make it better. I went to bed alone and cried so hard I thought I was having convulsions. I called to God over and over and over. I thought of my ancestors, my guides, my higher self. I finally let myself be calmed in the knowledge that there is love for me in this world and beyond. That this moment will pass. I saw my devastation from a divine perception. I thought of myself as 3 year old, tortured by the loss of a cookie or something small. I saw myself flipping out, feeling pain and anguish and turmoil in something that in larger picture of my life will one day just be a memory. I told myself that I just did not have the tools to deal with this pain. But by dealing with this pain, I was gaining my tools. So tomorrows pain will be more bearable, as will the next day and the next. Just as children need us to teach them to deal with their emotions. I rested in the knowledge that I was being taught the same lesson. I am not alone. I am always surrounded. I am always protected. I am always learning.

Another Birthday

My birthday was June 8. I wrote this poem in May of last year. This is the updated version.

Months speed by faster than normal
I can't remember my age
26 comes before
27 and after 25
I forget which I am now
Days speed past me
and I don't know if we just met
or if we were born at the same moment
conjoined at the hip
or if we were lovers in our past lives
or not
I have no idea if I am dreaming
or if I am really an adult
my reality
my future
my past
all seem to convene on solitary moments
Like you and me and coffee
and Reed's Extra Ginger Brew
and right now...

One recurrent conversation in my life is about the illusion of adulthood. Most days, I honostly feel like a 5 year old. Well...maybe a 7 year old. Yeah, I feel about 7 years old. But I am dressed in adult clothing, with adult responsibilities, trying to pretend to be an adult like everyone else. The reality is - I am pretending. I am faking the funk. If the real adults around me just took off the layers of clothes and degrees and responsibilities and expectations, they would see a chubby, shaky 7 year old that is still afraid of the dark. I am trying to hold it all together. I am trying to play the adult game to win, but I don't always feel like much of a winner.

When I actually was 7 and I messed up, people forgave me. I was given second chances. People cheered me on for putting my best foot forward. Even if I did the unspeakable- like standing in front of the whole church and singing off-key, or forgetting how to spell "important" in the class spelling bee, or losing my temper and hitting my brother- people forgave me. They would clap for me when I lead the youth choir, Mrs. Ginyard (though the meanest teacher I ever had) would just tell me to try again when I misspelled my vocabulary words, and sometimes Michael wouldn't even hit me back if I started a fight with him.

This is not the way the adult game works. If I mess up and can't pay my car note they repo my car, even if I cry and beg and plead for BB&T to forgive me for messing up. If I do the math wrong when estimating the money in my bank account, even if it is by 1 dollar, they charge me 30 whole dollars in fees to forgive the mistake. If I walk out of my door right now and pick a fight with my brother, the police would not care about sibling rivalry. They will take me to jail (period), no questions asked.

So as I stand 12 days away from launching the nonprofit that started as an idea in my head two years ago, I feel like a 7 year old responsible for things that are way beyond my capabilities.

(INSERT HIGHER-SELF VOICE HERE...)

At all times I am the child I once was, the adult I am growing into, and the woman I will be. Right now, I am the ME of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Yes I am the chubby shaky 7 year old, but now i have an additional 19 years of living that the 7 year old did not. I have lived through and conquered things that 7 year old me could never have dreamed. And in 19 years, my 45 year old self will have lived through and conquered things that 26 year old me could have never dreamed.

Right now, as I feel scared and overwhelmed by my vision. I will call on the innocence of my 7 year old self. I will hold her and protect her in the ways I have learned over the years. And I will allow my 26 year old self to be held and protected by the woman I will be. I will allow this chain of knowledge and protection to continue into the infinite that is life, knowing that right now I am protected by the force protecting us all.

Right now, I will be ME (and I am a pretty awesome 26 year old).

Checkin for Signs

[I just saw "V for Vendetta" at the theater. Take home message number one: there are no coincidences.]

1. Exactly six months ago today I wrote about "Letting Go, and Letting God." I discussed my fear of faith, and my young adult attempts to distance myself from my the Christianity of my childhood, and finally trusting the universe to have my back if I started walking not by sight.

2. The flood (on the 6th day of July) that washed away my car last year took with it the Bible of my adolescence. The purple one with my name engraved in gold letters. I did not buy a new Bible until today. While on the Bible aisle, I was grabbed by a book called "Stealing Jesus: How Fundmentalism Betrays Christianity." Of course I purchased it, even though it was outside of my budget.

3. Tonight I am planning my first trip to Bible Study (first like ever in life).

4. I have recently allowed myself to be open with a woman who is a Converative Christian Republican. She believes that everything that does not "glorify God" is satanic. This includes, but is not limited to : yoga, all forms of meditation that are not on the Word, Unitarianism, Humanism, Target, Harry Potter, astrology, and even Cabbage Patch dolls. Needless to say we disagree regularly, and more so now as this season of our friendship seems to be ending.

5. I am on my moon cycle. Poo and I have been dreaming of each other every night. We hadn't talked in weeks, but in a brief conversation a week or so ago, we discovered that both of our periods had gone missing. Just disappeared, like they ran off together or something. Monday night, we spent over an hour on the phone going through the range of emotions. Tuesday, we both got our cycles.

6. My mother called today to tell me about a dream she had where I was sick. She saw me as I was in my preschool class photo, when I had a stomach virus. She was worried about me and thought I needed something.


I don't know what all this means. I do know that I am watching the signs. I know that this is an important moment in my life. I have decided to live it with the fullness and honor it deserves. I will love freely, live outside of my fears, take giant leaps of faith, and prepare myself to welcome this moment with wide-open arms.

"Light hits my window and I am waiting..."

Dancin

I am not alone/a night I see a light like my own/and it is not all blues/ there is peace in heaven's womb/so please don't be confused/ about my friend/my friend the moon.

I am not afraid/the path I'm on/ is one that I have made/reflections of the sun/make stellar flowers bloom/ I listen for their drum/and dance with my friend the moon.

-Fertile Ground, "My Friend the Moon"
________________________________

I went to Cherry last night with my little sister Sunshine. Being single in the club sucks unless you are confident enough to ask someone to dance. In my 25 years of life, I don't think I have ever asked a woman that I do not know to dance with me. Last night was no exception. But, I love to shake my money maker. So when the DJ switched to reggae, I went to the front of the dance floor and danced alone. I started shyly, with my hands in my pockets and my eyes closed to block out all the partnered ladies grinding on each other. As I got more comfortable, I found my hands above my head and my body swaying to beat. It was fun! I was not dancing to get close to a woman so I could get her number. I was not trying to show off my fancy foot-work to the lovely ladies. I was just dancing- with the beat, with the dj, with the lights, with the energy of the room, with the warm night air, with my dreams, with the life that exists on the other side of my eyelids, with my own divinity- just dancing with myself.

Starting my own company feels kinda like that. I am as nervous as a 14 year-old boy at the school dance, walking up to the coolest girl in school to ask her to dance. Everybody is watching, everybody knows what I am doing, and I am scared shitless. If I fail, will everyone laugh at me or will they pat me on the back for taking on such a big risk. I guess I am learning that the most important lesson is to just do my dance. The dance may be alone or with the girl; the biggest thing is to step outside of my fears to do what I really want to do. Right now, I just want to dance...