Here we go. I’m outside. There’s someone sitting next to me and I don’t have my sunglasses on. I don’t know how I feel about this. I like to cry when I write my blogs, and oh, what a good cry I’ve got all up in me today. It’s a good cry. Cathartic. Going to a space where I can cry like I feel like it…
I’m back in my room. Crying like I feel like. The tide is shifting. I feel it. It’s getting better. Life is getting better. I got rejected from a program I thought I was going to get into. It was a directing program where you shadow someone and direct a commercial. I thought it was gonna be my big break and I was going to go back to LA and start directing and writing commercials and making at least 10k a month and never worry about money again, and I was gonna be someone at last.
To Be Somebody.
These days these really deep questions have been coming around for contemplation, and I’ve been looking at them.
What does it mean to be somebody? And how do you deal if you just never get there? Wherever there is? Whatever your dream of life is? What if you never break through? Are you a nobody then?
What if I never break through? It’s a question to wrangle with. I’m getting older and the world is falling apart and stuff. What if I never have a kid? My eggs get too old. Or what if I have a kid and my kid is a complete asshole or the child is just not what I was hoping for even if I try my best?
How do we cope with such deep disappointments? One part of me wants to go gung ho and just put my all into everything in life an make all this stuff happen. And the existential nine year old in me wonders what it’s all about.
What is this life all about? Who cares, anyway? What are we doing here on this Earth with all of our goals and ambitions and hopes and pride? What’s it all about? I could never really get into any of the answers I was given for that question, and even now, at mid age of sorts, I don’t know.
I don’t really know. But I’m coming to believe that maybe it’s about giving. Something about giving. Not in the way I had been giving. Not so that you can think highly of yourself or so that you can be somebody or tell somebody what you did. I think maybe you just give, because what are you doing with all that good stuff in you if you’re not giving it? If you’re not using it? It just kind of makes sense to be giving. And receiving, too. I don’t really know.
But I do. There’s also something to be said about showing up. Just showing up and getting it together. Just showing up. Waking up every day and just being here. Maybe that’s what it really is – maybe that’s what it really means to “be” somebody?
But isn’t everyone somebody? Even if they didn’t get it right? Even if they just couldn’t figure out how to do this Earth walk? Even if they just didn’t get there, wherever there is…
A part of me just wants to crumble. Like, I just want everything in me to fall. Any piece of pride, just break and get over this notion of judging everything and everyone, including myself. Just be ok. Like, just be wise now.
– Crumble, now. This is the feeling of surrender. Sweet surrender, set me free. Sweet surrender, set me free.
Day 532
Sweet Surrender (To Be Somebody)
YO
Y’all. I’m trippin out. It’s my birthday. My hands are tingling. I’m pretty sure I’m having a panic attack. Missing my bestie again. I could tell him the truth about my panic attacks and he knew how to deal with them.
Here is the place I tell the truth to myself. Been afraid to come, because, oh, there is some truth to be dealt with. Like how I miss my Bestie and my Neighbor. But what is there to say to them? If I was to call, what is there really to say? I’m sorry? For what? And then what? Has anything changed? No. Will anything change? No. But will I ever find anyone like bestie again? Anyone who knows me so deeply… anyone who I can express the deepest parts of myself with and know that he can hold them… I miss him so, so, much, but I don’t want him back.
I miss all of my old friends and lovers and family who are no longer parts of my life. I guess with the men, I would have wanted us to be friends. I shouldn’t have dated, should have just stayed friends. My neighbor? He always noticed when I was about to pass out, when no one else noticed. He noticed the little nuances in the ways I dressed and he genuinely liked my style and he genuinely liked me. He was real catty and jealous of everything and he couldn’t stand people like me – people who he thought didn’t have to work hard for anything and who got things easily and magically. He didn’t understand that we have been doing our own work. Hard, grueling, heartbreaking work. We have been trying to reach points of integrity and we have understood so much less than people thought we did.
I’m not sure where this blog is going. I’m trying not to say it. I’m trying not to look at it. Trying not to see where I am on this road called life. I’m old now. There. I said it. I am old and I am not tired. I am actually ready. I am ready to break through. All the way. All the way .
through. I’ve never done this before. I’ve never said this before. I don’t know when was the last time that I decided I was just going to live life differently. When I went to college, more than a decade ago. I decided I would wear my natural hair instead of perms and weaves and I’ve been doing so since. And now I start again. Ready… I have to deal with all the time wasted. My mind tells me not to say wasted, but I don’t want to be verbally correct.
It feels like wasted. It feels like I could have been doing so much more with this incarnation; like I could have been feeling so much more joy; and sharing. I could have been sharing so much more Love. So now? What to do now? Is there a way to make up for so much lost time? You tell me that there is. Like a person at an alcoholics anonymous meeting – one by one. Piece by piece. It is time to finally get it together. Chip away, but don’t make it burdensome.
Chip away. Share. Share the Love. Just share all the Love in my heart. Just share it. Forget about it. Forget about all the awful things that folks have said. Just forget about it. I can let it all go. I really can… I feel afraid to be different than I’ve been before. I feel afraid to live differently. I feel afraid to accept being Loved… Can you imagine? All this time, I have been thinking I’m alone. All this time, I have been thinking that no one loves me. But it has all been a lie. I haven’t been alone. I haven’t been unloved. I have been surrounded by so much Love. I have had so many friends and so many Loves… I have been so special. Ungratefully special.
Today I got so many gifts. I got a computer and some new head phones and money and my brother got me some purses from overseas… I got so many calls wishing me Happy Birthday. I am Loved. I didn’t know I would live to feel this – to feel Loved. I didn’t know that a time would come that I would be accepted by others just as I am. I didn’t know that people liked having me around, but they do. And here I am. Around. I’m here.
The nerves behind my left knee hurt. There’s a huge energy in my chest and low back and belly that needs to be let loose. My throat doesn’t feel like it’s open. And I call upon you, God. Cubano was right. We can’t do this life on our own. There are forces so much bigger than us that are holding the Earth together. Can I make a decision now to never be ensnared in dysfunction again? Can I decide to just be? Just be the embodiment of the highest Loving intent in every interaction? I know people say it’s not easy, but it’s so easy for kids. We were kids once. Now we have seen the world and we have seen so much darkness and felt so much pain and had our dreams dashed and smashed and screamed at the moon. And still we are those little kids with delight in our eyes.
So what about this blog? I’m not going to edit it. Not even going to go back and see what needs to be done or focused on. It’s my birthday. A particularly monumental birthday. Let’s just let it be so. Let me let it be like before I went to college. I was excited. The future was ahead of me and I could be anything I wanted. I don’t know why it strikes such fear in me to let go of the past and just let what has been be – stop waiting on some man from whenever to reappear and say or do whatever. Stop holding my heart hostage hoping someone will say sorry for something they don’t feel guilty about or don’t want to apologize for. Just stop it. Stop it already. Just stop it.
Take these deep, agonizing pains and kiss them… Bless them. Thank them for the gifts they brought. Do you know the gift they brought, Laydie? Love yourself. I know it’s very unreligious, but I’m not talking about narcissism or selfishness. I’m talking about being willing to turn your energy, your Love, towards your own self, as a full grown woman, kiss those scars, cherish them for the compassion they’ve brought. Cherish them for the opening they have given you. You can feel again. You are connected again. You are a part of the flow of life again. Cherish these lovely scars for letting you know that it’s important to be in touch with your needs. Cherish these amazing scars for forcing you to be kind to yourself now. It’s so past due. It’s time to be kind to yourself now. Be kind to each other. Pick up yourself. Bless the past and move on… Move on.
Ameen.
Day 531
Move On
As you know, the entire world has fallen apart since my last entry. People are dying and getting sick. No one I know, but our lives are changed nonetheless. We stay in our houses, walk around with masks and gloves if we must go out, and we are forced to face our own mortality and wonder what we’re doing on this Earth and what to do next.
Yesterday was quite a strange day for me. I had started some daily routines in my life – exercising, praying, meditating, writing poetry, writing in my journal daily for 17 days straight – but yesterday, it all fell apart. It was like this heavy, opening energy was flowing all through my body. Like I was in a dream or something. And I couldn’t get off my bed. I spent most of the day on my bed. I wanted to get up and at least write my journal entry, so I wouldn’t interrupt the flow. I was wanting to write for at least forty days straight, but I didn’t. I interrupted the flow.
Now here I am. I think I need to close my eyes. It has been challenging for me to know what to focus on and what to do in a day. I still miss my best friend. He is on my mind more than anything else. I still don’t know what to do about him. I imagine us talking, but what will we talk about? He’s still him. I try to think about the good things about him, but it’s hard. That makes me even more sad. Surely there were good things about him. Surely there are good things about him. What hurts most is not being included in his life. I know, when I write about it, I guess we were a little too close for adult platonic friends, but his life was my life. It was our life. I was living life with him for so long, and I took for granted how close we were. And how fun it was to have him. And how lucky I was to have him. And how he would mostly show up for me when I needed it. When I needed to get out of Africa because I was literally dying and none of my family quite understood the severity of my situation, he was the one who mobilized my family to get me a plane ticket out of there. I had tried to get one myself, but was so out of it that I booked the wrong date.
He was the one who came and nursed me back to health and cooked me porridge when I was at my lowest, and he has been there so many other times. I remember when I was in Africa losing it and throwing up everywhere, I called him. He told me I wasn’t gonna die, even though he thought I might. He researched bees for me when we had a bee problem… etc, etc. He wrote me a birthday poem. It was a sorry poem, and it felt like he wrote out of guilt, but it was what he could do.
Now he’s gone. I’m all alone. If you’re wondering what he did, it’s a compilation of things. Many things had happened over our twenty years of friendship, but the straw that broke the camel’s back is that he came into town specifically to help me with something, and then he decided to go date one of my friends and schedule his dates for the times that he was supposed to be helping me with stuff. We got into a big ol’ argument about that. It was awful. I was the one who originally thought that he might make a good couple with my friend, but after they both treated me like they did, I told him that the two of them don’t have my blessing anymore (not that it matters) and asked him to not tell me anything about her. I guess they kept in touch, and at some point, while I was overseas, he slept with her. Then when I came back from overseas, he tried to sleep with me. I was sick as a dog when he tried to sleep with me. I didn’t sleep with him, but afterwards, he wanted me to stay in his hometown and move in with his family so we could help each other get our lives together. He has a bunch of health issues, an over the years, I had been helping him manage his life and get his health issues together.
I didn’t stay. I told him I could help him remotely. He was hurt, but I didn’t feel emotionally safe with him trying to stick his tongue down my throat and trying to touch me whenever I was around. I was sick of him using and abusing me. I don’t think he really saw what he was doing, but it didn’t matter. He was still gonna do it. He was still gonna be frowning at me all the time – his frown hurt so much. He was always frowning at me. Even when he was helping me, he was frowning at me. The only time he wasn’t frowning at me is if I was dying, but then, you better believe it, as soon as I got back to health, he was frowning at me again; condescending, violating my vulnerability, not caring about doing things that hurt me deeply…
After I returned to LA, I helped him with managing his life a bit. We had a schedule. He was always good at structure and discipline. We’d meet up on the phone and said goals and act on them. He would encourage me to do things that were out of my comfort zone. You know what I notice about most other people in my life? They don’t want to live life together. Not really. Most people just don’t want to live life with you and be real with you unless you’re their mate. Working with my bestie was working my nerves, because he was ungrateful. He was still mean and frowning about everything all the time. And I kept thinking about the fact that he slept with my friend (who is generally sexually careless) and then tried to sleep with me, being willing to expose me to shit, etc. I was hurting. I didn’t even understand why. I was in so much pain. I was having nightmares about him and just waking up crying all day and just feeling so butt hurt about things that I couldn’t even process.
Then one day, he told me that he’s gonna help me with money if I help him get a job. That was one of our goals. That I would help him get a job. I told him I didn’t know he was gonna help me with any money and hadn’t expected it. He’s never given me any money before whenever he gets extra money and generally uses all his extra money on whatever girl is in his life when he gets money, always forsaking me. Me saying this turned into a big ol’ argument, and then he messaged me talking about I don’t want to help him because I don’t think he’s gonna help me… I was so livid. And so sick of him. All these years, the thought never even crossed my mind that I’m going to help him so he can help me, but he was sitting over there talking all this shit. We went back and forth on the text. He tried to call me, but I didn’t want to talk. Finally I told him that I don’t respect him. I’m disgusted with him. And I told him that I was gonna tell my friend that he tried to sleep with me after sleeping with her. I’m sure that he had planned to go and try and sleep with her again and her knowing that he tried it with me might impact her decision to give it up to him. After all her shady movements, she would know that she’s not so special to him after all. Just a dumping spot.
That’s what I felt like, too. After all this time. I know it’s not all the way true, but I felt like it nonetheless.
Now here I am without a bestie. My childhood friends are all gone. Some are around, but we have grown so far apart. My guy friends are either boo’d up with women who disallow them from getting too close, and I understand; or they are single and trying to mingle with me at last.
I am here. Literally on an island (I’m quarantining on an island with my sis and her son) as the world falls apart. I don’t know what to hold on to and what to let go of. I don’t know what to fight for and what to let be.
I know I’m not alone, but I feel so very, very lonely. I’m thinking about my sister, who’s on her own during this time. I’m thinking about so much sad stuff. My bestie used to say, “turn it around.”
What do I do about him, God? He’s a bitter, usurious, misogynistic, psychopathic, manipulative, jealous, mean, grumpy, closed off, stank breath warmonger… He’s also a brilliant, empathic, generous, strong, action-oriented, fun leader.
And me? Who am I? That’s another entry. I’m heartbroken at the moment. I miss him. I wish had like something motivational to say here, but I don’t. I just miss him but I don’t miss him and I don’t know what to do.
Take care, y’all.
Sincerely,
Laydie
Day 530
Untitled
There’s always so much to say. Just deleted an entry again. Gonna make this quick because I have to pack and have a long “to-do” list. Traveling tomorrow. A siblings wedding down south this weekend… Avoiding writing this. Emotions to the tip. Overwhelming… The sadness is really heavy.
I lost another almost husband. This one was stranger than the rest. He felt available. I can’t even remember the feeling now, but it was quite different than much of what I’ve felt in my life… My heart is kind of hurting. Actually, my heart is big time hurting. A compounding of disappointments. I don’t know how to pick them, OK? Let’s just call it what it is. I don’t know how to pick them. I always pick the ones who leave. Or the ones who cheat. Or the ones who Love you but make you pay for it by shrinking you and frowning at you and teaching you that you can’t shine with them. Or the liars who have whole other lives – wives and children and communities that I know nothing about – and sell me a dream. So, I’m not sure if this new guy is one of those. Well, he’s an old guy now, because he stopped talking to me about six days ago.
I met him at a magical moment. Another magical moment. I had prayed for magic to happen. A little over a week ago. It feels so long ago. Eleven days to be exact. I had prayed for magic to happen, because I was in a space with nothing, and I had all these dreams, and I couldn’t see how any of them would happen. I couldn’t really track how I would go from here to there, so I just prayed for God to get me there and I said I would surrender and get into the flow. My instinct told me to go do work in a local coffee shop, which was opened by a celebrity I admire, and so I went. As soon as I walked in, I saw a man see me. He walked up to the cash register, got behind me, and started a conversation with me. He invited me to have lunch with him, but I told him I had work to do, and I went upstairs… While I was up there, a little voice in my head kept telling me that I should have said “yes” to his invite. So, I thought to myself, I would come down and say sorry to him and talk to him once I was done with my work…
I came downstairs to get my food and they had called him to get his food at the same time. “You know you should have said yes to having lunch with me,” he said. I should have. I had lunch with him. It was only a short time, but the connection was deep and fast. I was in love. Or something. He was in love. Or something. When I left the coffee shop, he followed me out. It’s like he was just super drawn to me. He called me immediately. We talked briefly. I was caught up with stuff: babysitting, a friend needing help with an immediate project, moving, prepping for a wedding and situations popping up around that; and I didn’t have much time to talk to him.
He messaged me the next morning. Wanted to go do work on the beach together. All this time I’ve been in Cali, I have always wanted someone to do work on the beach with, but never found it. I was thrilled for the invite, but couldn’t come because I had a prior engagement. But my engagement was an hour away, and it just happened to be ten minutes away from where he lived. But he het me afterwards. For fifteen minutes. He held my hand, and I told him to be careful. He might fall in love with me… Later that day, he asked if I was afraid of him. I said no. I asked if he was afraid of me, and he said yes. He said he was afraid because he knows he can love me hard…
I saw him for the next two days. One of the days, we made out. I don’t never tell my business here, but whatever. Not quite made out. Not quite second or third base, but something in between. Less and more. I massaged him. He put his hand on my back. His hand was soft and warm and manly and protective… At some point, he told me he Loved me. Yep. He said it. He said I was his dream girl and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He said he thought I was out of his league… He asked me to go easy on him… At one point I touched his back and he started making all of these noises. He said I was ascending him… opening him to his greatness. I was loving him on purpose. I was touching him with love on purpose, but I didn’t tell him that. He wanted to go all the way that night. Third base. I didn’t, so I stopped the situation. According to him, he had been celibate for the past nine months and wasn’t planning on breaking his celibacy, but he’d finally met someone (me) that he could break it with… I didn’t know if I believed that story. Didn’t know if it was all game… My player radar is super broken, but I didn’t feel like having sex with some guy I barely know and having to worry about STD’s or babies or demons in my womb… So I stopped the red light special party before we could go all the way.
But we had already crossed lines. Dude was saying he loved me and I had already poured love into his body through my hands. He already held me like I was his and I had already welcomed his essence into my space… I didn’t know if I loved him. I just didn’t know. I just knew that I was truly enjoying a magical moment of touching and being touched by someone available. The feeling was different. He was available. And I almost was…
When he left, he called me. Told me he wants to love me. Asked me if he could love me… I was shocked. I didn’t know what to say. I had just met him. I didn’t know. I was still holding out for the dream celebrity superstar that I’m in love with. I was scared. He’s not the cutest ever, although he’s somewhat handsome in a unique way. But he wasn’t quite the dream mold. He didn’t come from the dream culture. I didn’t know. I wasn’t expecting him to move so fast… But he was scared. He kept asking me what was going on. What was I doing to him. What was this. He said he couldn’t afford to be heartbroken and depressed.
I didn’t know what to say.
The next day, he came and saw me. It was awful. We got into a bit of a disagreement because I asked him to park in my garage, instead of parking on the street where he had already parked. He couldn’t fit in my garage. He could have, but didn’t know how to maneuver his car to get in there. He got mad. Lost his original parking space. Talked to me in a harsh tone and told me that next time, when he says he’s ok with something, I should follow his lead… For some reason, his tone hurt me a lot. Also the whole “follow my lead” thing was a turn off. Was he one of those “follow my lead” men? Follow my lead even when I’m in a strange environment, your neighborhood, and I know nothing about it? I was livid, but more than that I was sad. My nephew, who I’m babysitting, who had been so loving to him the day before, cried and had a temper tantrum the whole time he was there.
The next day, he saw me again. This time he was kind of blaming me for opening his heart and not going all the way with him. He was confused. He was busy with his work. Oh, I forgot to mention that he had come into town for a short period of time to do some work. I had met him the day that he had arrived in town….
Now that I’m thinking of it, when he visited me the first time, during our make-out session, he had flashed a whole bunch of bills in front of me. I don’t even remember why he was showing me that much money. Did he think I was a prostitute? Was he trying to let me know that he has money? These are the moments I miss my best friend. He would be able to break man things down for me…
I feel like throwing up. Sometimes I wish I could be in the same world, in the same conversations as the people I’m talking to. It’s like one whole thing is going on with me and another whole thing is going on with them. Maybe it’s deception. Maybe we are not even having the same intentions for each other, and that’s why I can’t understand what’s going on. Because I’m getting played.
Maybe this dude saw me and was just trying to get in my pants. It won’t be the first time. He’s a motivational speaker and filmmaker and stuff, but it won’t be the first time that a thought leader who seems integrous has proven himself otherwise…
Either way, he got in there deep. He got under my skin quickly and into places that I don’t usually feel. And then on the fifth day, he disappeared. I sent him some messages and he called later, saying that he’s been on set and was just getting my messages… He said he would call me back. He didn’t. That was five days ago… I messaged him some and called, but no response…
I can’t feel my body too well. I feel a pain and an opening in my heart and neck and back that I’ve never felt before. My belly hurts… I’m moving today, but no one is here to help. There are people that I can call, but the cost is high… They want from me what I have no interest in giving them, and they will feel used if I don’t give them what they want…
On to a wedding this weekend, then to babysit a nephew on an island with sister, then to my heal the world project if I can pull off the funding for it, then back home to LA…
I don’t know if I’m only into this new man now because he has become unavailable. I wish I could change and be available, too. I thought I was growing. I thought this was it. This was the leap. This was the change. I thought this man was honest and he would take his time with me and we would see how things go and both of us would come out of this unscathed. But now I don’t know what is true or untrue and I am scathed… I am scathed.
The day does not wait for me to be healed. Bridesmaids gowns must be ordered today. Clothes must be packed. Apartment must be cleaned. Car keys found… Things moved. Plans made. A little toddler is playing with shoes. He will need lunch, a nap and a change soon. The world is not stopping for my grief, but this grief is trying me, God.
It’s huge… How he could he leave, Allah? How could he say all those things and disappear? Why am I always the dummy, the played, the unwanted, the hurt, the abandoned, the abused, and never the BeLoved by the ones I want to Love?
I am sitting here sobbing. An Earth angel, my nephew, just ran up to me. He can barely talk, but he came and made a funny face so I can laugh. He jumped on my lap and hugged me. Then he looked into my eyes, wiped my face and said “don’t cry”…
It’s been hard, Allah. I don’t really know how to “be” in this world. I’m so tired of feeling hurt and feeling like I have to protect myself from the world all the time. Help me, please… my heart is breaking…
Help me, please. I am grasping for straws trying to feel or see the good here.
Help me, please. The Love in my heart is blocked and I want to get it out. I want to feel Love and Loved and happy again. I want to feel joy again. I want to be safe somewhere besides the room in my apartment by myself again…
Help me, please. I want to know how to be. How to walk with these shaky legs… Yes, I am still willing to be here. 100%. I am here 100%. I’m not going anywhere. No, not on purpose. I’m not doing like those candidates who back out before they are voted out.
But I don’t want this to be a fight. I don’t want this to keep being such a long, arduous climb. I am doing my best to stay right here in my body. My body feels numb, but I’m doing my best to stay right here in it…
I am here… I feel the nerves in my whole body shaking. Everything is shaking. I feel afraid of everything. I feel sad about everything. For once, I am going to be ok with this. Nope. I’m not going to try and stop it.
What I’m going to do is use my own power. Use my own wisdom. I’m going to believe, just because there’s no other way through this – I’m going to believe that there is a way through this excruciating pain and I’m going to tell God thank you for this pain, that is bringing up all of the unhealed parts that have been blocking my way for so long.
I’m going to believe, God, that You were guiding me. That something is guiding me. That we are getting somewhere with all of this. And you were guiding me when you led me to call this part of my life love letters.
And I’m going to claim that the way out is to love all this pain. Just Love it. Claire Zammit said it in her Feminine Power course, but I didn’t know that it would be so hard. So, here we go.
This is me looking towards the very real pain in my low back on the right. I am touching you, my long time companion. You don’t have to hide anymore or pretend that you’re not there. I see you, so broken and hurt. I see you, curled up and withdrawn. I see you, and I am so sorry that you have been hurting so deeply for so long. Longer than I can remember. I’m sorry that you haven’t understood it all and have just been feeling blow after blow after blow, curled up and afraid. I am looking at you, and I want to tell you that I Love you. I Love you. Will you Love me, too? Even though we haven’t gotten so much right? Even though I haven’t always showed up for you? I am showing up for you now. On purpose. I’m touching you, like I touched that man the other day, with Love… You have my permission to be touched with Love. You have my permission to receive Love. I don’t want to tell you that it’s been all around you all along, because you don’t want to hear that. What I will tell you is that you can have it now. Yes. I will be here with you, getting stronger and stronger, and bigger and bigger, until this energy of love is bigger than the density. I will stay here with you…
What are you feeling? Sad? Alone? Desolate? Can I touch you with Love still? I can see that you feel sad, alone, desolate… unworthy… dirty. I will touch you with Love anyway. I Love you anyway… What do you need? You need me to be here with you? You need me to show up for you? OK. I can see that you need me to be here with you. I can see that you need me to show up for you. What do you need? You need me to listen now and take action on the guidance given. OK. I can see that you need me to listen and take action on the guidance given…
I Love you. I Love You, my baby. I love You. And I love you again. i love you again… I Love You again…
Ameen
Day 529
I Love You Again
Let’s start where we are. Another deleted entry. Making way for bigger thoughts. My best friend is proud of me, I know. And I miss him endlessly. In his absence, I see him clearly. Brilliant.
Once upon a time, he and I couldn’t think of more than three things that we appreciated about each other. I think I could write pages and pages now. We couldn’t get out of our way to let the world see us. We couldn’t get out of our own way to let the world see how good we are. I will work on forgiveness more. Perhaps he is just as evil as I last thought he was.
Do you believe in evil? The devil. The awful things and thoughts and beliefs within us that carry out into the ways we cause each other so much pain and the ways we cause the world so much pain?
I made a new friend today. She is awkward and so hungry for good friends. She reminds me of one of my sisters. I Love her dearly. I Love my sister dearly, too. I Love my sisters. I just had to say it out loud. I Love my brothers, too. We haven’t quite built bridges to each other so we can Love each other out loud in the ways we Love each other inside, but, oh! We Love each other greatly.
I wonder if I should help more. Take the lead. Fix things in my family. I hear my mentors telling me to fix things in myself first and everything else will fix itself. I see my brother struggling on his own to make a life good. I don’t know how much to take on and how much to put down. Inside, you tell me I know. And so I know. So I know… I didn’t know before how Loved I was. I didn’t even see or feel all the love around me.
And now I do. A resistance to moving forward, I feel. A resistance to breaking through. To write the words that will free me. My calm and crazy bestie talks to me in my mind. In my mind, he is sorry for everything. He won’t do it anymore. He won’t hurt me anymore. In my mind, he will see me as good at last and treat me as good at last, even when I’m not sick and dying. In my mind, he Loves me for real and he is loyal and giving. And I do not hurt anymore.
I do not hurt anymore.
I can forgive.
The heavy burdens are lifted and I walk on as the healer I am… I walk on as the healer I am…
What will we do without all our pain? What will our lives be about without all the drama? What do we know about Love and ease. How will we move around without the sorrow of ages round our necks? Can we accept this goodness? Or shall we go around this circle again?
Have we learned our lessons? So much pain comes with gifts galore. Only those with so much work good to give feel the depths of deep like we do. Are we ready now? Am I ready now? My teeth chatter. I know I have already walked through the door of no return. Now the question is, how long do I just want to stand here in pain? Do I want to turn back or will I move forward, fear or not.
It’s time. On this auspicious new moon night. It’s time… I see the heaviness in the world. I see the heaviness in myself. Surprisingly enough, I am not as dense as I thought I was. But people I Love are suffering. People in the world are hurting deeply. Me, too, but at least I am still hopeful. I don’t know how to get all involved in others’ lives without getting beat up and bruised. The hits have been hard… But I digress.
What I want this chapter to be about is love, forgiveness, prayer, gratitude, action, joy… I’m gonna say it. Breaking through. Busting loose. I accept it. I accept my breakthrough and I pray for those who I have trouble forgiving.
What would I say if I were really me? What would I say if I could write my way into a new experience of life? What is my Love letter to myself? What if power was not a dirty word, eliciting guilt and shame? What if I was just that powerful and I used my power for good? What if I needed my own power to actually be free? What if that was the lesson here for me? To turn all of this Love, all of this power, towards myself and set myself free? To stand in my own joy. Stomach it. That. Much. Joy. What if I could hold it? I know I can. And what if that was my gift to the world? What if my life was a gift to the world? A gift to myself? I would be OK with that.
What if all this pain, all these years, weren’t for nothing? What if this has been an initiation of sorts, combing the depths of darkness to find the pieces of ourselves that we had left behind, repressed, stifled, forgotten. Opening the wounds again so that this time, light could come in and we could let go and heal? What if I really am a healer? Shall we begin? To walk as if our lives mattered?
What if our lives mattered? What if we were making this all up? What if we could make it all up? What if I could start today? And today, I start with we instead of I. In a different way. Not out of obligation. Out of Love.
-You tell me to start with I. You tell me that I am already good. I don’t need to prove it by always giving my good stuff away to others. You say that when I am good I will do good, even more good to others, so don’t worry about trying to give away all the little that I have now. Feel what it is to give to myself first. Just allow that simple act without guilt.
We are reclaiming our lives. Reclaiming our power. Integrating at last. And so, let me start with a simple letter to myself. Love letters is this part. Love letters to myself. Because I need to remember. Because I need a reminder. Because I need fuel that’s going to put bravery in me so that I can dare to be happy and dare to be free and dare to love again and dare to be safe and dare to put myself out in the world and dare to care again… Oh! And dare to forgive. And dare to own my power. Oh, can I breathe? And dare to own the disowned parts of myself. Dare to be the alchemist that I am.
No more babbling. Write myself a life, You tell me.
-Use the tools I gave you…
Dear Laydie,
I know you have been used to carrying all these aches and pains around in you for so long. I know you have been hurting and back bent and bowed over for so long. I know you are used to carrying and carrying the heavies and feeling guilty about everything you have done and everything you haven’t done. I know you are beating yourself up for hurting people and for letting people hurt you and forgiveness and ease seem lifetimes away. But what if I told you that the pain could go away? What if I told you that you didn’t have to feel guilty and hurt and so heavy burdened anymore? What if I told you that forgiveness was possible and that you could get used to feeling light? I am telling you that forgiveness is possible and you can get used to feeling light. I am here with you. I will never leave you or forsake you. I see you for who you truly are. I see you and I will keep seeing you even when you make mistakes, ok? I won’t try and punish you or withhold my love and if there are lessons to learn, they do not have to come with so much trauma anymore. The age of Love is here. I Love You, Laydie. I Love everything about you, all of your scars included. Especially your scars. Every time you get scared or feel sad or feel so much pain or feel confused about what actions to take or feel resistance when you know what to do, please remember that you have a partner, a friend, a lover, here with you. I am championing you. I won’t leave you. I won’t stop liking you once you get good at stuff. I won’t try to take advantage of you if I see that you’re getting good at stuff of having a lot of stuff. I won’t try to pull your energy away from what’s good for you. I’m sorry I have done that before. It will never happen again. I’m sorry that this discomfort hurts so much… I want you to know that you are good. You’re a good person. I’m sorry that people have called you what you aren’t and it has hurt you so much. I’m so, so sorry my baby, that it hasn’t felt safe for you here for so long. I’m so, so sorry that people you were counting on betrayed you so. I know it hurts. The healing is here now. The medicine is here. My sweet Laydie, I have many gifts for you. I am a God for everyone, but in this moment, accept that I am a God for you, too. Just you. Don’t give your gifts away yet. Have them. Feel what it is to be given to, to receive… Don’t worry. You are a good person. I know you will give everything anyway. But you are hungry, my baby. You have been suckled with no replenishment for too long. You have gone too long without a hand on your back, without a touch of love… Let me fill you up now. Take it to the achiest of aches. I Love you. I Love you. I Love you. I Love you. I Love you. I Love you. I Love you…
I Love You
Day 528
I Love You
Third time again… What I would like to do now is find my North Star, point my arrow, and walk. Hello world. Long time. Much has transpired as usual.
The details?
My married friend came back to the states, but this time he didn’t see me. Went to the East Coast to do business or whatever. To do what he wants to do. Let me know he was in town. We talked and tried to figure out what happened between us. He was unwilling to be honest. We could only go so far. I told him the truth about everything. Something in me wanted to be a part of his life so bad. He was the partner that I wish I had, except he wasn’t. In real life, he’s not anyone’s partner, and neither am I, and we are used to being all by ourselves. The space between who we are and who we want to be was long and far for the both of us…
I dated another guy. A liar who wanted to get in my pants and so he told me everything he thought I wanted to hear. I’m sure he’s been diagnosed with several psychological conditions, but he’s pretty good at conning folks. He got halfway into my pants and I regret it, because I like knowing what’s going on with my body and not having to think about sexual health when I think about my health. I am glad that he didn’t get all the way in and that I actually I’m finally learning how to spot the con artists and keep myself safe. I feel sad that the con artists exist, though, and that they prey on the most loving and vulnerable of us all. And I feel sad that I have spent so much time being conned by the cons…
My sister and her son moved in with me temporarily. She came in and changed the whole tone in my apartment. The floors are clean, there is light and life, and I cleaned out a closet that I had been wanting to clean out for years. We are like night and day, but I Love her so. She is so full of Love. Such a beautiful soul.
I finished a class I was taking at my spiritual center. It went by so fast. I Loved being in community with people who were deeply interested in spirituality and growth. I loved being able to pray and meditate with people. Praying and meditating might be my favorite things to do. I remember a friend of mine (a super religious fanatic) told me that I would never get ahead in life until I put God first. It was a long time ago that he said it, but it rang true back then. I do believe that I am finally putting God first in my life… You happy now, friend?
Men from my past have been reaching out. Strangely enough, I got a lot of calls on Valentine’s Day. I’m not interested. I don’t feel anything. Feel a bit dead and confused, and that concerns me. More than dead and confused, though, I think I feel sad. And more than that, I think I don’t care about how I feel. I want to break through to a different kind of life experience now, and that is where I find myself today.
In a library. Trying to get focused. Trying to see what is next. Knowing that it’s time to move on and get on with life. Knowing that this is enough now.
What if I don’t know what I want, Allah?
-You say I know what I want.
What if I’m afraid to change? I went on a date the other night and the guy was a fucker and I’ve been hurt so much, it’s scary out there.
-You say learn from my past and grow from it. Grow now. Do things differently. Be different. End this cycle. You have the power. Use it…
So, my battery is dying on my computer. I want to post this blog before I head out for the night. “Heart don’t fail me now. Courage, don’t desert me…”
I am going to focus on living life as if anything is possible. I am always lifted by so many miracles and blessings, that I don’t know why it has been so hard for me to believe that anything is possible even though I have seen and felt it in my experience. If I believed that all of life was organizing around my success… If I really and truly believed it, what would I do? I would pull back focus. I would put the magnifying glass on me again. I would listen and take action on so many things that I’ve been holding back on. I would sit until I could feel and see the big picture of my life… the steps needed to move forward… and then I would take action.
I would take action and not make it a thing. Not make it a fight. Not make it me pushing against something in the world. I would recognize that this is the natural order of the universe. I would put all of my resources on deck. Every single one. And I would commit to my happiness. I would commit to living a life I Love to look at and a life I Love to be a part of. I would be done with all these sad, sad things and I would just be this joyous, loving leader who has been fighting to come out of me all this time. I would come alive. Finally. I would light my own fire and blaze along with others who have chosen to light their own fires, too. It’s time to come alive.
And how? Listen. Listen. Listen… Just listen. Listen. Do the things that you’ve been wanting to do for so long. Listen… Focus. Focused intent can move mountains… Relax… Allow… I know it is scary. I know that coming alive is the scariest thing you can imagine, especially now, when you are hurting so much. Especially now, when there is so much grief and fear. But fear is a liar and you are a warrior. Do not bother with trying to convince a liar of the truth. Convince yourself of the truth by living it and see.
See what happens when you listen. Focus. Listen. Focus. Listen. Focus. Feel your feelings. Write about them. Do what you need to do to process. I’m not saying you ignore your feelings. But whether you are sad or happy, even if it gets hard, and it might get really, really hard, do your best to come back here to me. To the place where things make sense. It always there, even when things don’t seem to make sense. Come back to the place where things make sense. You know it when you feel it. You know it when you are in it.
And you will find Me here.
Guiding you
Assisting you
Having fun with you
Healing you
Loving you
Appreciating you
Forgiving you
Acknowledging you
Seeing you for you who are
Adoring You
Giving you joy
Lifting you up
Protecting you
I am here with You, My Love. You have suffered much. I am sorry. I am so, sorry, my sweet everything…
I think I’m going to start writing love letters and apology letters to myself. It’s time to heal. It’s time to break through this place. I Love you world. Thank you for being with me through this roller coaster. Don’t give up on yourself. Reach out. Forgive yourself. Let yourself feel and cry and heal. And then do your best. Don’t be so hard on yourself if you don’t get it right. Don’t be so hard on yourself if you make mistakes. Just try. Try a little bit to get it better the next time the same situation comes up. Forgive yourself. Ask for forgiveness. I don’t know it all. I don’t know anything… But I know that I Love you and I wish you well..
xx
Day 527
To Come Alive (The Place Where Things Make Sense)
Third time’s a charm. Been sitting here for about two hours. Wrote two entries and deleted. And now this third one.
Sorting, sifting, processing. Love, forgiveness, relationships, identity shifts, good and bad, presence, end of cycles, birth, children, marriage, true love, passion, life’s work, sex, pleasure, good and bad again, judgement, money, the purpose of life, love… Real Love. These are the themes running through my head currently. Regrets. How to make amends and build healthy relationships when the other party hates you or doesn’t see you as you are or won’t forgive… Who to reach out to. Who to cut off. How to move forward.
Fear. Mending, mending, mending. Healing. Always me, healing? Am I healer? Who am I? Writer? Healer? Matsemala said I was a saint. He was old. He said he only comes across a person like me once in a life time. He’s dead now. My People said I think like less than 10% of the world changers. But I am here. Alone. And I don’t know how to fix my own brain and my own life.
You say I am not broken and let us start there. But, oh, I feel so broken. I look so broken. I feel so alone. I feel so alone, and so afraid to come close to anybody now… I want to shake off this identity and put on a new cloak, but I don’t know how. You say I know how. But I am afraid. Because I don’t know what. What will happen. And I don’t want to let go. Of even the bad. I am used to it……
You say that it is time. Or not. The choice is mine. The choice is hard, Allah…
-Then choose it easy now.
Choose it easy now…. Choose it easy, now. I do not have to say out loud what I am, who I am, but they will know me by my works. I will know me by my works. Work, now…
Can I be brave enough to be myself? Can I be bold enough to not be bad and broken anymore? I know I can, but do I want to? If I was a saint, do I want to be a saint? You ask me if I want to be myself.
– Do you want to be yourself? Yes? No? Maybe so? Choose easy now… Choose easy now… Choose easy now… BeLoved Good Enough. My Sweet Good Enough. Choose easy now.
Can I break through now? This circle and cycle of misery? Can I have a life I’ve never seen for me? Can I be safe here? Can I be Loved here again? Can I be forgiven? Can I be happy now? Can I have good relations? Can I be free? I want to make it all happen, but I can’t do it on my own. The people that I love hate my guts and I can’t fix it. And even if I could, they would hurt me still and hate me still, and I would love them still, and it all hurts so bad… It all hurts so bad, Allah… Can I not be so alone? Can I do this life with someone who wants to do this life with me? Someone who won’t hurt me? Someone who will meet me where I am and see me as something good and be good to me?
My heart is so Lonely, Allah. I long to be understood. I long to be seen as I am. I long to live life with someone. I long to give love and have my love received without being taken advantage of or betrayed or hurt or treated like I’m not wanted. I do not know the way. I am tired of religions and doctrines and manuals, all contradicting each other. I have not done a good job on my own, but when I look deep, so few have done a good job of keeping their hearts pure and open… I want my heart back, pure and open without heaviness. I want someone to share it with. I am so afraid of being hurt anymore. I am so tired of being hurt… I want to be held… I miss my dad.
There you have it. Somebody just called me. Just in time to get my out of my pity party. A friend. I’ve got friends. I actually Love and adore the friends I have. Even the ones I don’t talk to. God willing, I will learn to forgive and grow a bit. I will learn about boundaries and I will learn how to navigate this world, a sensitive, raw, open heart of Love that must be safe too. I will find the balance between monster and saint. Human… I will learn to forgive myself.
My married friend brought it to the surface – my loneliness. My desire for a family. My desire to have someone to partner with and do life with together. My need to get it together now. “Open out a way for the imprisoned splendor within … to escape” as Robert Browning put it.
I am not sad anymore. Who am I kidding? I’m just used to being sad. But I’ve turned the page already. A deep reverence for all that has happened brews up inside of me. A deep gratitude that I’m still alive and I get to tell the story of it. A faith in the Goodness of God. I’m not all holy holy any more. I’m not all stuck in the mud, either.
Can I forgive myself even if they don’t? Can I see myself as good even if they don’t? Can I be good? Can my actions reflect integrity and kindness and compassion and Love? Even for myself?
– You tell me to get all the tears out. One day, they will end. They will finally end. Yes. I know the answer already. Yes, yes, yes and yes.
I can be the BeLoved Sweet Good Enough instead of being bad and broken. I can choose it. Am I brave enough? I can choose it now if I like. I can really choose it now if I like. This initiation is redundant. We have already broken through. It is time we stop pretending we do not know what we know. We are fooling no one. Not even ourselves. And we are suffering much… We have already crossed over.
How does it feel to be Beloved, Sweet and Good Enough? Walk in your essence, baby. Walk as you are.
You are the Beloved. I Love you, my Beloved. My Beloved Sweet Good Enough…
Ameen.
Day 526
BeLoved Good Enough (Bad and Broken)
I don’t feel anything. I always get a little concerned when I don’t feel anything, especially when stuff is happening that would make it appear that I’m supposed to be feeling a whole lot of stuff.
I’m processing… Somebody’s husband told me yesterday that I essentially tried to seduce him and then got mad because he didn’t want me and only wanted to have sex with me, and so I hiked up our business negotiation prices because I was mad. I’m talking about my married friend. Who wanted me to be his mistress. Who cancelled our business deal. Who now told me that he didn’t want me to be his mistress. He didn’t want anything with me, he said. Just business. When he hit on me and tried to screw me, it was only because I seduced him and he felt like he had to do it, he said.
I don’t even know if he believes himself or not. He just might.
A month or so ago, I got accused for being at cause for the disappearance of one of my family members. A sibling had gone MIA for over two years. She said that the family had been conspiring against her and saying things about her. I had no idea that she thought I had started the whole conspiracy. A month ago, I found out that all this time, she thought I was the one who had told the family bad things about her and made them start a whole conspiracy. It never happened. I never said a bad thing about her (at the time she accused me of such) and had only said good things about her.
My married friend hasn’t spent more than two weeks worth of time with me in his life, and so I know that his opinion of me has nothing to do with me and everything to do with whatever experiences he’s had before me, but geez…
I am wondering why I am having and why I have had such extreme experiences of people just thinking I am capable of doing such foul stuff and being so foul!…
I got distracted. A few things happened. First, I wrote married man a text, just telling him again that I couldn’t believe what he was accusing me of, and also letting him know that God don’t like ugly. I was going to curse his children and tell him that I hoped his beautiful daughters met someone just like him that does them just like he’s doing me when they grow up, but I didn’t. Instead, I just told him that God don’t like ugly, and God definitely doesn’t like it when you hurt someone who means nothing but Love and help for you. And God really don’t like it when you hurt one of his people, and so I feel sorry for him, because he has been very, very ugly to me, a person who meant him nothing but Love and help and a person who is really on purpose one of God’s people.
The whole situation is saddening, but it is the last. It is a punctuation on a pattern that is now over. Enough. The end. I did my part in the whole situation. I entertained it… I still do not feel as sad as I feel I should feel and I am wondering if I’ve finally becoming a gangster, or I’m disassociating or if I’ve grown a bit in the past 72 hours.
An interesting situation happened, too, since I started writing this blog today. I am sitting in a Coffee Shop that was recently started by a celebrity I love. I met here this morning with a friend from one of my writing groups so that we could spend time writing together. At some point, a man sat next to me. I saw him looking at me from a distance at first. He sat next to me. Said he likes my haircut (I’ve gotten three compliments on my haircut so far this morning!). Then he said he knows me. Then he asked what I do. I said I was a writer, and then he started telling me about a project he has and asking me if I wanted to write it. Then my friend who I came with, who had previously had his headphones on, took off his headphones and looked in our direction. My friend joined the conversation, and, to make a long story short, my friend told the guy that we don’t take time away from our own projects to work on strangers projects for free, except if we are really compelled by the magnitude of the project. My friend also cut the conversation short, saying that he has to get back to writing his project. Shortly thereafter, I gave the man my business card. He took it politely and left.
Although I didn’t quite like the harshness of the way my friend spoke to the stranger, I appreciated his protection. I actually Loved his protection. I am reminded that I am protected. I am reminded of what the energy of protection feels like, and harmlessness. I am grateful and appreciative that I am sitting here with a friend who respects me and doesn’t want to hurt me and thinks I’m awesome and good and talented, and would never think that I want to steal somebody’s married husband. He would never think I would try to do that because he thinks I’m too good for that, and doesn’t think I would have to do that. I can get a nice, single man easily enough.
I also read a bit of the book I’m reading, “Busting Loose From the Money Game.” I paid my rent the other day, got car insurance (so I can drive Uber or something worst case scenario), got some clarity about my next career and life steps, got a down blanket for my bed with my Kohl’s credit card, which I had gotten two years ago and never used and which I had been getting good credit scores because of, and I bought a new sweater and some new jeans. I don’t even remember the last time I’ve bought clothes for myself. It was kind of a weird feeling to be buying new stuff.
I still miss my best friend and some of my old friends. In a perfect world, I would find a way to be at peace with them, they would see my heart and forgive my execution on some things, and they would treat me with kindness and niceness, and I would do the same for them. In a perfect world, my married friend, and all my other guy friends who hate me because they like me and think I’m trying to manipulate them with my sexuality because they are floored by my unconscious feminine prowess, would own their part in the bullshit that has become our relationships. They would grow. I would grow. In a perfect world, I would recognize that I do have feminine prowess that floors men, and I would stop pretending that I don’t know that Love like mine just isn’t that common and that if I don’t plan on being with a man, I might not want to have him in my bed or hold him or act any kind of way that I wouldn’t act if I was already boo’d up.
I would own up to my power. I don’t have any real power, but I do. I am a nobody, but I’m a somebody, too. I have too easily accepted the nobody part, but not the somebody part. In a perfect world, I would be somebody now. Act like I’m somebody’s mamma and get it together already. Fight for my life. Fight for the joy in my heart that so wants to live. Fight for my peace of mind. Fight to have good relationships. Use my words to build up instead of break down. Oh, I so want to learn how to use my words to build up instead of break down. I had gotten pretty good at it when I went overseas, but then these people… Dees people be working my nerves and sometimes I just feel like enough is enough. Somebody has got to tell somebody, because obviously they don’t know if they’ve been walking around the Earth with this wickedness for so long. Sometimes I feel like people come to me because they want to hear the truth. Because they want to heal and grow… And I come to them, too, because I want to be the truth. Because I want to heal and grow.
Another fragmented blog entry. I think the topic I had in mind was, “The Offended”. I was pondering how to get out of this place. How to move from being “the offended” and “the victim” so much. I don’t think it’s a war. I don’t think that’s the answer, to go out and try and teach all those “bad people” out there a lesson about treating us right. I think the answer is to get on the other side of things. Instead of trying to ward off the darkness, let the darkness contend with you. You be on the offense, not the defense always. I think something in this is true. I have not been alive. I have not been shining. I have only been at the effect of the darkness, instead of letting the darkness be at the effect of my light.
And it is why they say that even the darkness is a friend. It has been egging me on and egging me on and egging me on, and teaching me and punishing me until finally, we have reached a point that I have to shine. Not in response to this taunting game, but out of love for my own beating heart. Out of care for my own precious life. I have been wasting so much time putting out fires. I could just do like my friend did today when drama approaches, and tell it, “I’m so sorry, but I’m busy doing what’s good for me, which will ultimately result in what is good for more than me. I will consult with you as long as I can accomplish goodness for myself in the process.”
The war is over now. It’s time to come home…
Day 525 – The Offended
I wrote a whole 2200 words and just deleted it. I was telling on myself. Talking about all the men who cheated on me in my past and how I interacted with a man recently who wanted me to be his mistress and I almost agreed. Lied to myself and put on blinders because I was so emotionally bereft and lonely, I just wanted someone to live life with, but ultimately, I couldn’t keep the blinders on for more than a week and I had to decline the opportunity to be a kept woman with a rich sponsor in exchange for my soul and morals… And now I’m broke again because I spent the last month or so not working in anticipation of said cheating man coming into town and doing a business deal with me. The business deal did not involve him cheating with me, at least that wasn’t verbalized. But I found out later that the business deal was not really a business deal. What was really going on is that this man wanted to escape his life and have a mistress (me), and doing business in America (he’s from overseas) was just the icing on the cake… It didn’t work out. God protected me. Or whatever. Something made us fight almost every day about nothing and stopped me from jumping on his penis and he decided he didn’t want to do business after all…
I also wrote about God and religion and about how I don’t know if I’m coming or going with religion and don’t even know where to start. I don’t care about much these days. It has been this way for some months. I miss my best friend and realize that he was super wise and smart. And super abusive, too. Nobody else actually lived life with me and knew me the way he did, though, and I feel terribly lonely without him. But I know that if I reconnect with him, he will take me through the emotional mud again, and I don’t want to go through that. He offered a deeper perspective on life that I don’t meet up with too much and he was always willing to go all the way with everything, or at least be honest with himself and me if he wasn’t willing to go all the way.
I’m broke. I don’t have a job. I don’t have any plans. I don’t have any friends for real. My family is ok, but they are away from me and I am not compelled to come close because mostly I don’t feel like I’m a good thing when I’m with them and I am emotionally depleted and tired of feeling like I’m not a good thing. There’s no man in my life. I have a car that Cheater helped me to get back in my name and an apartment whose rent is officially late today and no foreseeable way to pay my rent before getting evicted and people who owe me money who will never pay. I have unfinished creative projects and a farm overseas. I have men in my life who keep their distance when I’m not ok, and come around to play when I shine. A couple of them, the ones who have no clue how to love me, want to get partnered and boo’d up for real and resent me for not picking them even at my lowest.
My problems are too heavy for anyone else to carry, and mostly, even if people I know could carry them, they wouldn’t. They have their own problems. Many of them have problems worst than mine, and feel like I should help them.
I feel nothing, but will tap in now so I don’t fall into disassociating again. What are you feeling, Laydie? I am feeling lost, alone, and afraid. What do you need, Laydie? I can see that you need Love. Unconditional Love.
I am writing this blog to sort things out. To decide if I want to live or die. Death is not only for the dead. You can living a living death, just a zombie in this world. I want to live. A living life. I want to live. My will is weak, but there none the less. I want to live.
This is the hardest day of my life. This one right here. I know you’ve read a lot of busted blogs from me, but right here? This is the hardest day so far. Because I am not in fantasy land. I am totally aware of just how dire my situation is, probably not even all the way aware. And I feel totally alone. In the past, I have been a blind optimist, and me not seeing the potential bad things that could happen and the bad things are happening helped to shield me and keep my mind stable. I see the bad things now. I see the bad things that have happened in my life. So many. Not even blaming anyone. I will take all the blame. It still hurts. It still hurts to be here all alone not knowing what to do and not knowing where to go and not really having anyone who you think can and will help you for real without asking you to give things you don’t want to give.
This is the day that I’m doubting whether or not anything I believed in was true. This is the day I’m questioning the meaning of life and trying to find something to keep me interested in being here. I am not interested. I am not interested in saving the day and getting the money to pay rent and working some job with people I’m not connected to just to come home and pay rent again. I don’t know how to fix anything. I don’t know how to fix anything in my life. Let’s just be honest. If we knew how to do it, then we would do it. Or maybe we know, but we don’t follow what we know.
This is not a motivational post. It’s just me musing and processing. And deciding. Can I find a part of me that’s willing to stay here? Not so much. But I’m not tryna off myself, either. What can I find? What can I do? I am still here, in limbo. I can’t just wake up one day and say abra cadabra and all my life is changed. I don’t know what religion to start with or what my purpose of life is supposed to be. If I’m being honest, I just don’t know. I’d like to say all this and that, but I really don’t know. I think everyone is just holding on to whatever they can hold on to. Whatever can make sense to them. But there are holes in so many philosophies. But we just want something to hold on to… something to make sense.
So, I have agreed that I don’t want to die. I want to live, but I am so broken that I can’t honestly say that I believe in this good life any more. I don’t know if it’s possible for me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to figure it out. I don’t know if God loves me so much that he will give me something that I’ve barely ever seen in people who come from where I come – peace of mind, happiness, integrity, good relations.
I know that the choice I make today will determine so many other things in my life. I just got played and got my heart broken. Again. This time, I saw it coming and stepped right into it. Is it possible that I could do anything or be anything good, God? I am losing faith. I need to see You and hear You and feel You boldly.
I know this post is fragmented, but I’m going to post it anyway. If you are a friend or family of mine, don’t worry about me. I will be fine. Or I won’t be. I don’t know. What I need more than anything is just to be Loved. Just to be seen as a good thing. Please don’t ask me for anything. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to listen. I just want to be seen as a good thing. Just see the goodness in me. Just see the possibility for a good life for me. I can’t see it right now. I can’t see the goodness in life right now, but I know that just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, and so, God, I’m going to stay here, willing. I’m not going to pretend. I’m not going to lie to myself anymore. I’m not going to say I feel what I don’t feel or that I don’t feel what I feel.
But I am going to stay in it. Ok. That’s what I can do. I can stay in it. And I can keep taking steps as I’m directed, the best that I know how, religion or not. I’m gonna go do what you said now and apply for some money and read a book. Bless You, Everyone. I hope we make it through…
Sincerely,
Laydie
Day 524
Stay In It
I’ve been crying for a long time. Been crying so long, I started getting dark circles under my eyes and my used-to-be-white eyes started looking reddish and brownish… Vanity wins again. I looked at my brownish eyes the other day and said, “something must be done.”
Yesterday was the first time in a long time that I didn’t cry. It was lovely. My eyes got almost white on that same day. I felt a freedom. Ninety-eight percent of my brain was cloudless. There was a lot of tomfoolery going on with different things, but I didn’t feel sad about it. I was OK. I spent Christmas eve alone in my dirty room, and I was OK with it. I was even proud of myself. I had gotten invited to go a couple places. Men – the bane of my existence – had invited me out. Men who wanted me in ways I didn’t want them. I was proud of myself because I didn’t go. Even though I was alone and would have preferred company to being alone, I would have preferred being alone than having encounters that would ultimately be more detrimental than good for all parties involved…
I woke up on time this morning. Got up before my alarm. Ate my two oranges and drank water before going into yoga class. I made it to yoga class. I added my physical therapy stretches into the yoga routine and sat in the warrior pose as long as they told me to, even though it was painful… I was supposed to be meeting with a friend this morning and was thinking about asking him for us to get breakfast burritos when we meet up. They have awesome breakfast burritos on his side of town.
A voice in my head said he was gonna cancel and I should go buy ingredients to make an egg sandwich instead, the kind my brother made for me when he nursed me back to health. I had to go to the store anyway, because I had to buy some items to groom my feet and hair. At the Walgreens that I went to, they didn’t have the food that I wanted to buy, so I bought the stuff for my feet and hair. Then I sat outside in my car to meditate for a bit. I was feeling really grateful. I looked up at the sky. The sun was just barely rising and in the foreground was a building that had a “Bank of Hope” sign on it. Bank of Hope resonated with me. I took it as a sign. Took a picture of the sky. Maybe I will use it as my Facebook cover, I thought. And Bank of Hope, too. Maybe I am entering into a huge bank of hope, I thought.
Then I got a text message. I already knew what it was. My friend was canceling our meetup. He did. In classic, stank, cold fashion, like he always does when he cancels stuff. He said he had a dream that told him not to meet up with me now. I was heartbroken. I know. I’m not supposed to be. But whatever. That’s what happened. This particular friend is actually my ex-boyfriend. The first “official in-person” boyfriend that I ever had. We got together when I was 19 and he was 18 years old and stayed together for a year. I ended up dumping him because I wanted to see some old raggedy man whom I (thought) I was in a long-distance relationship with and had been in love with before said boyfriend, but who disappeared from my life without exit for more than a year. Old Raggedy had reappeared on the scene. Called my mamma’s house and left a message for me. I had to see him, but couldn’t see him with a boyfriend in tow. So I broke up with the best man I’ve ever been with. Crushed his heart. Of course it didn’t work out with Old Raggedy. And after seeing Old Raggedy, I couldn’t get back with Best Man. I liked him very much and didn’t tire of spending time with him, loved him even, but I wasn’t passionate about our relationship and I wasn’t pulled towards him the way I was pulled towards Old Raggedy. Being with him was more peace than I’d ever known, but there was a part of me that just wasn’t sure that I’d be with him forever…I couldn’t crush Best Man’s heart like I did ever again, and I wouldn’t get back with him unless I knew that I was never going to leave him again…
But I couldn’t commit to that. I thought he was too young. I thought he didn’t know who he was. Nothing bad had ever happened to him. He lived with wonderful parents – a pretty homemaker mom and a handsome psychologist dad – in a house with his own bedroom, and his two siblings were nice to him and he had a lot of good friends and his dad gave him his car when he started college and he was just awesome. But he had never been hurt by anything, and because of that, I didn’t trust that his idealistic view of life and positive attitude would last. I couldn’t commit to being with someone who had never been hurt. He would change, I thought, by life’s first blow, and I didn’t know what he would change into. At the time, it didn’t even occur to me that maybe I could protect him from all the painful stuff in life, and maybe he could protect me.
So we broke up, and I wouldn’t get back with him, and I became his life’s first blow, followed by women who treated him worse than I did and so many disappointments and heartbreaks.
When I moved to California, he came shortly after me. After asking for us to get a place together and then flaking on the day we were supposed to pay the money and move in, we lived down the street from each other for a year or so. He’s an artist of all sorts. He was supposed to draw pictures for a children’s book I wrote, but couldn’t. Didn’t. I edited his first published work. Or at least I edited the first draft. I didn’t like working with him. He wasn’t taking my notes and was chopping up and taking out all of the best material from his work. And he was mean. He was in this phase where he felt like he had to be mean and strong and dominating in order to get things done. I was in the beginning phases of recognizing my deep need for kindness and flow…
When he was broke and down and out, I would help him with money, food, my heater. I ask him for help with stuff sometimes. Sometimes he comes through… We have lived between five to fifteen minutes away from each other for most of the time I have been in LA. For the past four or five years, we talk on average about six times a year at the most and see each other maybe once or twice a year. Sometimes we pass along jokes or ideas via text…
He had been depressed for a long, long time, and started identifying with the dark things in the world. In the past year or so, he started seeing a counselor or psych person and got diagnosed as autistic. He is public on his social media about his diagnosis and also about the fact that he has been starting to feel happy and optimistic about things. He joined a fraternity and started hanging out with a new group of people.
Yesterday, I had such an urge to hug him. I wanted to see him. I wanted to hug him. I had this hug in me, and it wasn’t for just anybody. It wasn’t for whatever men were calling and trying to meet up with me. It was for Best Man. I called him and we talked. I told him I Loved him so much and I wanted to hug him. He said it was the nicest thing he had heard in a long time. He said he had been around such cold people and had forgotten how warm people can be. I was so looking forward to seeing him and hugging him…
After writing out our story, I understand why he flaked today. It was too much. How dare I open up his heart if I’m not gonna stay? I’m not mad at him. I know, you’re probably mad at me for breaking an innocent’s heart. I’m mad at me, too. I wish I could take his heartbreak away, and every other thing that happened as a result of it. What would his life had been like if he never met me? I don’t know if he would have finished college. I used to tutor him during his freshman year. He couldn’t pass the math test to take college class and would complain about how the test was unfair and how it was too hard. In my classic bully way, I told him that if he couldn’t do college math, he was too dumb to be in college. He took it as a challenge, and through our tutoring, was able to pass the test and prove to himself that he wasn’t too dumb to be in college, or too dumb to do anything if he put his mind to it. I never thought he was too dumb to be in college, by the way. I knew he could pass that test if he got over the idea of thinking that it was too hard. So maybe I did something good for him. I made him believe that he can do stuff, even if it’s hard and even if it takes a long time. Who knew that he was autistic and he would need to believe this in order to get along in life. According to him, 80 percent of people diagnosed with his condition at his level can not function on their own in life.
I’m sorry that I hurt him. I’m so sorry that I left him. And I’m so sorry for the bullshit experiences of friendship and love that he has had for so long. I still can’t marry him. Maybe I could, but he is stubborn and he is deeply entrenched in the survival game of life. You know, in America, we learn all these theories that don’t hold water in other places. Here, we learn to only be with someone if you want to be with them exactly as they are and don’t think about changing them. In other places, like my mom’s country, they are taught that people will change and grow, so, if a person has a characteristic that you don’t like and you want to be with them, just be with them. And try to change them. LOL. It’s ok to try to change people in other places. And sometimes people change. Sometimes they don’t, though. I don’t know which theory is better… For Best Man, though, for today, he did what he did to protect his heart. I know the feeling of being in love with someone and they leave you only to come back in your life and tease you with their love and leave again.
I’m not mad at him. I wasn’t trying to come back and tease him. I just wanted to hug him because he so needs a hug and I so need to share all this love in my heart with people who I actually love who won’t hurt me.
God, what am I supposed to do with his hug? You say to give it to myself… And let the energy radiate out from me to anyone safe who will receive it. And so I will.
The good news is, I am finally willing to forgive myself for hurting my angel of a Best Man, and I am thinking about being willing to forgive the people who Loved me and hurt me tragically. Maybe they didn’t mean it. I’m sure some did, but others didn’t. And I’m sure if I look hard enough and imagine how my life would be had I never met them, I would find that they have given me some key tools that will carry me the full distance for this part of my life… Have a beautiful day. Merry Christmas.
Day 523
Merry Christmas
hownottocryeveryday 