pre-markers

i'm one month away of 6 years post-discharge of therapy ... maybe it's a cosmic joke, but this year was the freaking hardest of the post-therapy period, but this year i finally made it through ...

what in the back of my head i was always afraid i wouldn't be able to survive happened and somehow i made it through, i stumbled, i fell, i fumble still, but i survived ...

it just hit me that i'm one month away from being discharged from my 6 year long therapy stint and the best part about it is to look back and see how much i keep on growing, changing, evolving ...

i think i would be so embarrassed and saddened if i looked back and saw the exact same person i was that day or a month before that day ... the journey is on ongoing and let's keep on mutating please!

on embracing chaos

"Chaos? Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, chaos is being yourself. …" Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay

[Coco Rocha by Chris Nicholls | Flare April 2010]

life.progress.

progress ... that is all that matters not the sadness not the grief not the problems ... no anger and no bitterness ... i am so going to nail this!

life.progress.

on the willingness to have the life waiting for us

“We must be willing to get rid of

the life we’ve planned, so as to have
the life that is waiting for us.

The old skin has to be shed
before the new one can come.

If we fix on the old, we get stuck.
When we hang onto any form,
we are in danger of putrefaction.

Hell is life drying up.”

Excerpt from A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

[Photo by Donald Miralle although i might be wrong]

the grace of leaving no path untaken

“Face your life

Its pain, its pleasure,

Leave no path untaken.”

Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

[photo by Richard Avedon, 1969]

on how absent parents allow for freedom of self ...

I have been thinking a lot lately, about doors that close, and windows and french doors that swing open. about the permanent loss of any and all family roots. what it truly means to be uprooted, family-less, a blood family of more or less one. 

when i think, i am now very matter of fact about the whole thing. the emotions have slowly but surely (in the wake of increasingly crazier behaviors, actions and attitudes that just removed any and all patience and care i once had. the understanding went out the window back in april) have began to dry out. things are what they are. and that has been liberating for me. there is no weight. no sadness. nothing. it is what it is. and i have to do what i have to do. 

so as i grasp a book in my hands, i think what all this means for me, for the future, what i have to do. the roots - mine! - that i have to firmly allow to grow untainted by a parasitic and toxic set of beings that seemingly drained all life in their path. 

... you have to always see the good in the bad ... i am starting to feel very grateful about having had more often than not to be my own set of parents from a very early age. as i find myself utterly rootless when it comes to family ... i am finally at the point where i see what a gift this is. i get to plant roots in better soils, more filed with love and light (!), with the family i have chosen and that indeed chose me. i get to have a life not tainted by somebody else's actions and bitterness. even if i might have to pay the price for some of their actions, they won't be a daily part of it. and that is a massive achievement.

so, here i am, slowly, i finally have initiated the process where i am actively removing the nasty weed like suffocating roots that have nothing to do with my plant dna and that have tried so hard to suffocate it from my.self.

you see, this is where bliss begins because i am now able to just be me ... and i have realized that i have ceased to yearn for answers from them as i really don't care for a word they have to say anymore. i don't feel anything anymore. i don't miss them at all. when it comes to them, i have slowly but surely become a flat line. the only difference is that i wish them no harm, and i know for a fact that if they could destroy me, they would do so in a heartbeat. heaven knows they have tried to do so. sorry. thou shall not have any more dominion. i'm in a different place now and for the first time ever, i feel in constant expansion. and this is where my real and lasting peace of mind truly began ...

"But my father’s gift of absence—I’ve come to realize that that was even more precious. Because I have children of my own, I have theories and beliefs about raising children, and one of them is that a man (...) would have had a role for me to play (maybe handmaiden, maybe something else) and a standard for me to live up to. He would have seen me as a reflection of himself, and as his self became more desperate and disorganized, his demands on me would have intensified—the world is full of men who, once they have lost power over their colleagues or their lives, redouble their power over their families. He would have made sure that I knew that I was female, and that females have limited capacities and defined roles. He would have disdained my failure to grasp, say, algebra, and my devotion to the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew. Unlike my grandparents, he would not have been wise enough to leave me alone, and unlike my mother he would have been idle and looking for a project.

(...)

I enjoyed this story, but even so, I don’t feel that I missed anything. I know from my own experience as a parent that sometimes it takes disappointment and heartbreak, as well as a little distance, to disabuse you of your cherished notions of who you are, who your child is, and how you might “mold” him or her. When my father knew me, he seems to have been both confused and very sure of himself, a fearsome combination.

The Tom Sawyers made chaos and distracted my mother, stepfather, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. This gave me the private space of being a comparatively good girl, where I thought my own thoughts and came up with my own ideas. A girl who is overlooked has a good chance of not learning what it is she is supposed to do. A girl who is free can grow up free of preconceptions. Sometimes, from the outside, my work and my life look daring, but I am not a daring person. I am just a person who was never taught what not to try."

please read: My Absent Father