I’ve tried all the angles. I’ve felt all the rights and wrongs about what they say a writer should do, should be, should want…but I’m not like them.
I want barely any of what they tell me I should want.
To write from my heart, that is what I want.
To touch other hearts, I want that, too.
To shine so that others might know what it is like to shine on the other end of my words: I want that, more than anything else. Life is for dreaming and being the sweet dreams that we are.
I’ve tried to write for money: it leaves me empty.
I’ve tried to write any old thing: it leaves me tired, frustrated, hungry.
To share the depths of my soul is what I am here to do.
It has been fourteen days and the wind has brought me here.
What happened was quite accidental (but then, is anything ever accidental in the universe?) Rather than my plan expiring as I thought it was going to (for reasons long and complicated) it has rolled over for another year.
For a moment, when the ghastly realisation was made, I thought to approach wordpress and tell them, ‘Thank you, but I’m done, here.’
I never did do that. I never did pick up the phone.
I put this down to orders of the wind. The sway of the universe whispering me to stay just a little while longer. So, here I am, writing these words–half wondering why, half quite sure that there is nowhere else I’d rather be.
Why is it that there are so many segments of us, and why is it that not all segments of us want equally?
Some pieces of me want to be heard, to be known, to be understood and validated by like minded souls who feel a little like they’re swimming around in the ever spinning washing machine of life. Other parts of me want to hide. To never be seen. To only be known by the quiet that surrounds me, the quiet that I am.
I know I must write to experience myself truly.
I know I must create in order to find home.
What else do I know?
I know I’ll always be asking questions that make me feel a little lonely.
I know I’ll always think I know the answers until I, once and for all, understand that there is no one answer. Only the next question, the next step, the next choice.
Due to expire in a couple of days, due to expire. And I’m not going to renew it.
I’m attached to this, my sweet little bloggy home. Truly, I am.
I’m attached to all of you, whose faces I see, whose hearts I feel I know, somehow.
But I think this time, it really is time.
Time to reinvent myself, maybe.
Time to be brave and…do something else (you all know I’ve been wobbling about for quite sometime.)
I’ve got my new creativity website which may need some attention at some point. (The link for that one is brookecutlercreative.com. Please head over and subscribe if you’re not already, I’d hate to entirely lose you all. xx)
And, of course I’m intending to continue my novel, and to keep writing at medium and see where that road drifts to.
But I think I’ll let my plan expire, here, and…just see what happens.
I can’t pay for two websites: that’s one thing I do know, and that leads me to thinking this may just be the perfect time to let the wind blow. And sit here. And let it all be.
I’m so very unsure.
But I can be brave enough to let the wind take me.
I can be brave enough to allow uncertain life to meet me here.
Perhaps I am here to write. But at the core of that, at the core of my words, at the core of my message…I’m here to love. I always have been, and it’s more clear to me now that I’m allowing my love to be seen.
I can’t help but feel great waves of empathy, particularly for those who are struggling in life. Those who are scared. Those who are being unfairly treated, by those who don’t even recognise the wrongs they perpetuate (as a result of their own messy humanity.)
It’s all a bit of a mess.
It’s all a bit of a mess.
So maybe I shouldn’t waffle at you about love.
Maybe I should be writing something of substance: something about the politics of what’s going on with the floods in eastern Australia, maybe, and how they’d want me to say it’s got nothing to do with the way we treat the planet (when, actually, I believe that Mother Nature was the very first woman who learned to powerfully speak her truth.)
But I’m not going to talk about natural disasters, or about who believes what.
I’m going to talk about love, and how I feel it, and how I feel for everything and everyone, and wish that more humans did.
Because underneath every natural disaster, lives love. The rescuer rowing a family to safety while their own home—a home they have loved and cared for with everything they have—drowns behind them.
That’s love.
That’s not politics.
It’s not who made the wrong choice about dam management and should be fired because of it.
It’s not who is right and who is wrong about the effects of climate change on a struggling earth.
It’s funny. To think of the damage caused by cultural norms and stereotypes.
Of course, there are the absolutely beautiful cultural narratives out there. Those that cherish and honour human life by holding it, by respecting it so beautifully that even the hardest of hearts must surely be touched by the story of it all.
I heard a story as beautiful, just the other day. My counsellor told it to me: how, in her culture, when a woman becomes pregnant, she becomes the queen. The whole tribe lavish her with love, care, and most importantly, perhaps…food.
This discussion came about after a lovely tender moment where she looked over at me, my bulging belly sweetly growing a perfect little gift, and offered to bake me something lovely to celebrate the occasion (that’s right, surprise, I’m fourteen weeks pregnant. And how lovely it is, to me. How lovely it is. xx)
But, I digress. Because although there are some absolutely beautiful cultural stories passed on by certain cultures in the world, other cultures do not even realise their own toxicity. (And when I say toxicity, what I mean is…truly, their cultural ideas are heartbreaking and damaging to individuals who do not fit into the selected story being told.)
There are some absolutely wonderful things to be said about the culture I was born into. But one arm of the narrative, an arm that destroyed any hope of me developing healthy self-esteem in my early years, was the idea that vulnerability and softness were somehow character flaws. I was mostly soft.
As it turns out, this soft part of me, this sensitivity, is my super power; a power that helps me soothe, and bring safety to those who need it. A power that helps me tap into the world of everything and nothing, and pull down the words and creativity needed for my writing to touch people in the way that it seems to.
But my culture called me ‘soft’. It told me to ‘harden up’, and it assumed that If I didn’t…then surely I must be broken, at worst. Naive at best. Never have I been these labels.
And if you are a deep and tender heart resonating with these words…never have you been these labels, either.
Always we’ve been perfect.
Just the way we are.
Think of the trillions of flowers, plants and trees out there. Some are soft. Some are hard, shrubs built to last in the wind and rain and hail. None of them judge each other for being ‘wrong’ in anyway. They simply exist.
I lay in bed last night, at 4am, thinking of the tortured artist, thing.
We feel so deeply, us creative folk, and therefore, we capture the world in its fullest expression.
Which is beautiful. Really, ice-shatteringly beautiful.
But we are often not understood, at best. And at worst…we are grossly misunderstood, usually by the logically minded folk of the world, who do not (perhaps cannot) see the world the way we do.
Sometimes we are judged as weak, overly sensitive; irresponsible, messy. A lonely human, this does make, at times.
A lonely human this does make, at times.
I remember sitting at my piano as a nineteen year old, feeling the world in all its depth; the beauty of the autumn leaves outside the window, a huge comfort as I sat and wondered about my place in the world.
These creative eyes.
They make everything a little more beautiful. A little more horrible. A little more alive.
I’m grateful, for them, I am.
I’d imagine all the tortured artists out there were grateful, even the ones who battled to a sometimes tragic end.
Misunderstood, they were, and a little bit lonely, maybe.
A little bit scared of the depths that dragged them beneath the surface, on occasion, maybe.
