Beneath the surface,
gripped by the ripples
of life gone by.
It is a sad softness, and there are cold
lashes of fear, set into the marrow
of my bones.
Take this tender heart, I whisper.
To someone.
Somewhere.
How deep is the sea that clutches
and drags me to the muddy floor, within?
How many days will I tumble
into the swell of inner life
unspoken, unwanted, unkind?
Shall I stand here, now,
battered and smiling, beside this beautiful life?
Still searching.
Still searching.
Always searching, but for the fleeting days
of clarity,
of home neat and tidy.
The creative knife;
sharp, yet desperately beautiful in shine.
Still searching.
Always, still searching.
There are days when I fall to my knees.
When the wind leaves me hollow, and my tears water the dust.
And I say to the ache of life—
I feel you.
Still, I ask you to stay.
Because without you
I am only half the soft girl within.
And I choose to be her everything while I’m alive.
I stopped
and I said to myself:
I am in pain.
I did not try to hide it.
Or justify its reasons.
I did not try to pretend
the hurting wasn’t there,
or as true as it truly was to me.
For a moment I looked around
for the escape I’d always looked for.
The rug to hide all the knowing beneath.
The rug of make believe: the chance
to believe that the pain did not exist.
But it did.
It lived in my heart.
And though I wanted it to leave…
I let it be.
And I knew it was okay
not to shine it away
with my sun.
I took another sneaky day away from here, yesterday. I was busy ‘processing’ some soul questions and spilling the watery leftovers out my eyes. It’s an ugly blubbering kind of thing that happens when I cry, although I like my Step Dad’s version better. Once upon a time, he turned to my eighteen-year-old watery blues and said with a gentle, funny-man smile: ‘Hey, it’s not that bad. At least you look beautiful when you cry.’ (Ha ha ha. Sigh. My goodness I love that man.)
I want to talk a little bit about this thing that’s happening to me because, in truth, it’s the most profound thing to have ever happened in the world relative to me. I’m only in communication with one other person who has experienced this sort of drastic life transformation, too, (a beautiful friend of my Mum’s) so it’s been quite a lonely and frightening thing to go through, in some ways.
For close to a year, I have been going back and forth between two parts of me, trying desperately to merge these two very different aspects of myself into one whole human. Often times, this transition has felt like two different versions of me (my goodness I wish I could draw you a diagram) fighting it out to take control of who I am and where my life is going to next.
For most of my life, the rational side of me has taken centre stage. It has been the maker and keeper of rules, the iron-fisted disciplinarian that has made sense of the world around me in a very orderly manner. It has kept me safe. Then there’s the spiritual side of me, who I lost contact with some time after I became a ‘mature adult,’ and only now has she returned now that my heart has fully opened for business again. Oh boy, has she shaken things up.
The rational side of me—the order keeper that anchors me into reality—has had a bit to say about the arrival of her spiritual counterpart. She’s not all that keen to see what the new girl has to say, and I don’t blame her either. Among other things, this new spiritual opening has brought a level of sensitivity into my world which has opened up all sorts of weird and wonderful doors: a connection to nature that defies human comprehension would be one of those odd things the new girl has tossed onto the gameboard. (I’ll try and do a separate post on that connection, one day. It’s very hard to explain the lovely feelings that sometimes flow through me when I connect with the earth.)
So yes, while these two are battling it out, there have been some bumps in the road which have caused some tears— but actually, that’s where you guys are really helping me. You’ve given me a beautiful channel to move my newly resurrected creative energy through, and you’ve also given me some pretty wonderful shoulders to cry on along the way. That’s why I love blogging. The human connection. It’s not me against the world, it’s all of us together, sharing the good, the bad and the ugly of life.
I love that. I really do love that.
My soul spoke to me today.
It told me a story about the heartaches I choose to hide from.
Hiding is much easier than seeking, wouldn’t you say, on account of all the wrong turns made on the way to finding what you’re looking for. In my case, I am looking for an entire person (me) and so you can see how the effort seems a larger game than your average schoolyard version.
A soul doesn’t lie, is what they say, and I think they might be right about that much. When my soul spoke to me today, I had no choice but to listen (which is interesting because I am quite able to ignore my brain on demand.)
And so now I’m weary. Weary, but not broken.
Never, ever broken.
See? 🙂 xx
I had an epiphany yesterday, at a time where my skin was particularly susceptible to the energy of human beings that were not me. We were out as a family, enjoying the humming vibe of a dumpling festival (nom, nom, nom) and it struck me that I was running on supercharge.
As I looked around me, each person seemed so clear, alive and vulnerable. It was as if I were seeing them through a more sensitive, vibrant lense of the reality that most people know. Certainly a more sensitive lense than I have known for many years. It was, in the words of my precious little five-year-old: ‘Blow minding.’
As I stood in line at the dumpling truck—joyously waving at my husband and two little muffins, whose faces shone back at me like the brightest lights in the world— I realised that this was the way I used to live in the world, before I started living on adult autopilot. And I wondered…what on earth happened? Where did my authentic self go during all of those autopilot years, and how did my heart and soul dim quite as drastically as they did?
The epiphany that came to me as I stood in line, deciding between the Steak and cracked pepper dim-sims or the plain old beef was…I had to forget my true nature so that I could tell the difference between a life half lived, and a life lived as it authentically should be lived.
For instance…over the past ten years, I’ve had no idea that I was only half living (as in, I had no idea I was suppressing my authentic emotional self, in any way.) I was happy. I was writing and genuinely enjoying family life. I thought I was being me. Until last year, when my heart suddenly burst open again, and oh my goodness, I remember you! happened.
Yesterday’s epiphany had me wondering: if I forgot my true nature for so many years…how many others have forgotten theirs, too? How many others have ever even wondered: is this me? And is this as much of my life that I want to live?
Anyway, that’s gotten quite deep, so I’ll leave it there for today. But feel free to share in the comments if you’ve experienced a similar re-awakening in your life, because I really do think the more of us who speak up about these things…the easier it will get for the sleepy heads of tomorrow to wake up again, too. Well, I sure hope so, anyway. xx
Twinkle, twinkle little light
shine on me your beauty bright.
Hold me gently, love me dear
show me I have naught to fear.
Twinkle, twinkle little light
sing me through the darkest night.
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brooke-cutler.com 