Reality strikes hard, sometimes.
The pain.
The pain of others: it tears me to the bone.
The delicacy of life, its precious petals.
It all aches within this lithe human frame of mine.
Cold impermanence.
Startling truth.
Fragile life.
Sometimes it tears us.
And I know you don’t want to,
but let yourself see:
sometimes it tears us.
I will hold you when it tears you.
I will hold you.
I will hold you.
Some days I fall. I’m not a good mum. I’m not a good human. I’m not a good me, on those days I fall.
It’s not a consolation to know that I do not fall alone. That humanity itself is in constant fluctuation, that some days we rise and some days we fall. I’ve fallen. Me. The writer of these words, the feeler of these aches. On those days I wish for more, I also wish for peace. The two do not go hand in hand.
But it’s not as easy as finding peace and being happy with that. Without this beautiful depth—without this wild and wistful wind that moves me—there would be no passion to whoosh me along the creative river of life, the river I know and love so well.
Is it about lowering the expectations I have of myself? Or is it about lowering my expectations of life? What, I wonder, would help me to feel at peace in a world that so often clips my wings.
I was given wings to fly.
I long to use them.
Is this me, using them? Right in this moment, is this the way I was meant to fly? To write about love and loss and sorrow and sacrifice? About life at its best and life at its worst and how, at some level, it’s all the same thing, anyway?
What is it all for?
And when will I stop asking: what is it all for?
Today my heart is quiet.
And it knows deeply
that it has lived.
I bounded out of bed. No, really, I bounded out of bed and bounced around my room, arms and legs flailing— a sort of contemporary dance concoction that would have won me the award for the most daggy morning-human, ever. ( Like, ever ever. )
I’m glad I listened to the quiet whisper that asked me to flick Spotify onto a super playlist of YES, and go with it. It started my day beautifully, and had me connecting to my heart and full energetic flow right away, which I struggle with from time to time, I’ll admit.
I’m feeling positive, at the moment, which feels empowering and wonderful on the back of the bouts of depression I’ve found myself wading through over the past couple of years. I’m probably a little odd in my take on the denser human experiences such as depression, but I believe it’s all there to frame life and to, ultimately, make it better. To show us who, how and where we are now, and to teach us who, how and where we would prefer to be.
Without times of imbalance, how can we possibly know and appreciate our body in equilibrium? How can we recognise the things in life we need to shift if we don’t experience a reaction to them? How can we feel deep empathy for others experiencing tough times, if we haven’t stomped through the sludge, ourselves?
Do I like being depressed? Well, no. It’s a journey fraught with many a winding road and impossibly steep hill. But do I see how it has grown me as an empathic human and broadened my perspective for the good of a great deal more people than just me? Absolutely. And I’m so, so grateful.
I am also grateful to able to dance about the house like an absolute loon and, rather than feel silly, fully LOVE the ways this body of mine can be all the magical things.
YES!
But if I was always
happy
how would I know
the absolute beauty
of real
human
connection.
And how would I discover
the strength
I have
inside.
Rainy days,
come find me sweet.
Spill your goodness
into the arms of the day,
until the sun shines on the fields
once more.
The ocean was alive the day the sun died.
Nobody saw its white beauty.
Nobody felt the cool of its break on their skin.
Eerie silence rose into the sky the day the sun died.
Pain instead of joy, broken instead of fixed;
life, never to shine again.
The sun was dead.
Still the ocean was perfect.
My next life lesson
will be to blow through days of stone,
and understand that days of stone
do not indicate a whole life
of stone.
Still there are diamond days.
Always
there will be both.
And never
am
I
broken.
Do these tears make you
uncomfortable?
How about
this:
does the rain make you
uncomfortable?
The sky
is not afraid to rain, and I
am not afraid to cry.
I am not afraid of what you’ll
think
of me if I cry. Just as I am not
afraid
of what you’ll think of me if
I sneeze.
Or laugh.
Or breathe.
I’m hovering over the heater. If my pants were made of plastic, in fact, they’d have melted to my legs by now.
That’s beside the point, I suppose. The point is…actually, there is no point. I’m just feeling a little glum and I wanted the world to know that this sort of thing happens to people.
Sadness. Pain.
It happens, and here I am, gifting you all with the gloriously heavy mud bricks of proof. Proof of glum. (Thank goodness I made this a little blog of everything. Today, it’s my diary.)
I wonder if any of you remember the girl who started this blog. Perpetually happy. Not a cloud in the sky. She was a little soul starved, certainly, but she was sparkly, and happy happy happy. She could walk in nature and listen to music without bursting into flaming sobs of aching life.
My life is broken. And it’s also the greatest, most beautiful magical life I’ve ever known; a creative adventure that touches me to the very core. Can you see the utter confusion I’m dealing with here?
I’m angry. At everybody and nobody at all.
I’m sad, because I am.
I’ve just read a wonderful article about the creative brain, actually, and how creative folk do tend to go through bouts of depression and the like, just because of the way we’re wired. Because of the often self imposed isolation (umm, me.) Because of the heightened senses (umm, also me.)
I suppose it’s a seperate can of worms when you throw in a marriage seperation, two small children, a global health pandemic and a raging angry sea of humans. I feel all these things deeply. And where once I buried pain as soon as it struck, I now allow myself to feel it. (Who even does that. Blurgh.)
I don’t want anyone to worry about me. The clouds always clear. Usually by morning (so there’s the bright side girl, being annoying again.)
But life, hey. ☺️ Sometimes I just feel a little more human than I really want to, and I suppose the next part of my journey is learning how to be okay with that.
I’m certain I must be known around town as that girl who walks and cries. It’s the music. It quite literally becomes me, to the point where I feel like I’m a floating puff of emotional cloud. It’s not even my emotion. Its the emotion (the energy) of the song. People must think I’m barking mad as I float along, sometimes whimsical, sometimes in tears.
Anyway. Fascinating. Wonderous.
Achey.
I’ll get there. x
So much love, bloggy friends.
This ol’ softy, Brooke.
