Standing in the way of the Light

Before you write people off, start seeing the world in a monotone blur, accuse others of your own short comings and start to lose sight of 'the meaning', first be sure you haven't built your walls so high you've blocked out all the light. 

I have been afraid of judgement, because I have judged others. I have been afraid of rejection, because I have rejected others. And I have been afraid of being left, being lonely, because if all this is my fault, why not this too? 

But if I have been guilty of these things, I too have been guilty of loving, yet I fear love, guilty of kindness yet fear being hurt. We are so quick to be accepting of negativity, we expect it from ourselves, we give it to others, we acceptingly receive it too. 

Over the past few days I have shared my dark and twisty thoughts, these thoughts that have literally haunted me for years, they've cocooned me in a shell and walls of my own making and kept people out, made me resilient to others, giving everything but not accepting anything in. But these last few days, I have felt more blessed and loved than I have in a very long time, and it got me thinking, in a world full of hate and negativity it can feel like a very dark place, sometimes you have to stop searching for the light and make it yourself, but if you share your darkness you don't have to make it alone.

Stop baking (metaphorical) cakes

When I was younger my mum used to bake cakes and scones and buns, a large plethora of baked goods in fact, before everything she used to throw a lot of parties too, Bodyshop, Avon, Tupperware, you know the type. My Mum is an amazing baker but a lot of the time we'd get told 'they're not for you', now this was upsetting for my sister and I, not for some deep psychological reason, we were young, we wanted cake.

When I was a teenager I used to come home and tell my Mum how I'd cleaned my Dad's house top to bottom and made him dinner. This upset my Mum, probably even made her a little mad (a fact that only came to light this evening), at home my room looked like a war scene and the laundry pile was so heavy it ironed itself! She vented this to a friend who (rather insightfully in my mind) pointed out it was because I loved her and knew she loved me unconditionally back, and I wasn't sure whether my feelings were reciprocated by my Dad, so I vied for them exhaustively, coming home getting the gratification from someone who I knew would give it to me. She never got angry at me again for this.

Now I bake cakes (see how this comes full circle) and take them into work, for people I want to like me, telling my housemate and her boyfriend 'they're not for you', this doesn't upset them psychologically, they're human (... I'm a great baker), they want cake.

The point I'm trying to make is, when having one of my bi-annual counselling sessions with my Mum this evening I realised some thing, and by that I mean she blatantly told me something in a way that my stubborn mind could adapt into something it incorrectly believes I figured out for myself, I am constantly making people cakes. Metaphorical cakes that is. And if you're honest you're probably doing it too. 

Now cakes are great, they're comforting, loving, if you make them for people it makes them like you (remember cake is now a metaphor... keep up), when in reality if you're constantly giving people cake, they expect more cake. Lets face it if you need to give people cake for them to possibly, maybe like you... they don't deserve the friggin' cake(!), you have a whole pantry of things to give... pasta, cheese, the occasional salad and tinned fruit. You know who does deserve it? The ones that love you regardless (and inclusively of the rest of the pantry) and just see you're amazing lemon drizzle as a bonus.

I've been baking cakes for people my whole life to make them happy and so has my Mum, but truthfully all this time spent chasing unobtainable (and often ultimately undesirable) friendships has distracted me away from doing things that make me happy and from nurturing the unconditional, non-sugar dependpent friendships I'm already so blessed to have. It's seen me out of money, out of time, out of love but most importantly out of happiness... and that's just not fair.

So in the words of my wonderful Mum. 'Stop baking cakes unless you're baking them because you want to!'

Consider this food for thought.

Run

There was a time I thought my life was over, that it would never be as good as i had had it. 4 years and 83 days ago I landed back in England from New Zealand and it was dark, I was welcomed home by a family I was trying to escape and I was heartbroken. My first love and I were no more and I had to leave what I'm come to think of as my home, my new family, a job I loved, my friends, my dog. I was 19 and so naive.

My first thoughts were to get a qualification and to get my ass back, I gave up my place at uni and grasped hold of the first skilled uni course I could, an ODP. I wasn't interested in loving England, I was barely interested in loving myself. 

I've always been pretty good at running away, but all these strange events have lead me to a place I never thought I'd be. Home. 

All these things that happened lead to a bad year... Or two. I genuinely felt alone and lost, but I didn't feel I had the support to break down. My structure wouldn't allow it and I don't do failure. This last year my foundations have been laid, joists put in place, and I found space to brake, but amazingly not fall apart. I'd built everything I'd ever wanted... I hadn't even noticed. Right now I have the support to be everything I want and deal with all my skeletons. I realise now that to be happy anywhere else I had to fall in love or at least mutual civility with everything I'd run from. 

Are you here?

This world sometimes in all its vast and expansive glory can feel so ironically confined, so much there is of it that even with dedicating your life to it, would it ever seem possible you could experience it all. But yet I feel so imposingly the walls within it, within my house, my mind, the material, the metaphorical. It's suffocating.

Where is your phone? Right now? (Mild panic... found it?... you just checked for notifications didn't you?)

Sometimes I just run outside so hemmed in by the dissatisfaction, the emotion pent up and passion unreleased inside of me, like a knot and I can't frikkin' undo it! Jump around, dance it out (usually to some angsty, melodramatic tune I can scream un-melodically along too), just get it out, this... this immature, sporadic, enthusiastic child inside of me that fights for release, but through my own self limitations has been stuffed in a pretty little cupboard - probably shabby chic finish to keep up with the Jones's.      Just so you know it's pretty dark and twisty in that little cupboard, that little cupboard doesn't give a fuck, it's loving it in there, it's way more expansive through that Narnia like cupboard, than out in the small, walled world out here.

I have been brought up being told how I should feel, brought up with the open prejudice of the world that I have had the naivety to ordain thrust upon me, I honestly don't know how to just feel. How odd is it though? Because the world isn't prejudice, the world never said 'here, have these lovely lush meadows, by the way you look fat in that dress and that house you built from my carefully configured sediment is sooo last year', it's all about the people, hell it's all down to you! We're the one's feeding the stereotypes, nurturing the separation, all you need to do now is turn on the TV to see that's true, if we all stopped judging people on recycled expectations and started thinking for ourselves, then maybe identities wouldn't be ripped to shreds and bombs wouldn't be aimed at whole countries full of individuals with independent worth- I'm not saying there'd be world peace, this is no 'save the world' speech, I'm no Miss Congeniality - I'm just fed up with all the pressure, all the negativity. It seems this all stems from everyone trying to have the best story, have the most interesting life, a life justified by 'likes' and re-tweets.

Pretty soon you're going to need to go on detoxes for technology, take away Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, how will you ever justify your days activities? God forbid we may have to pick up a phone or go meet up with an old friend rather than check a timeline, on that visit why not throw caution to the wind and not look at your phone, instead spend time consumed by the present moment. Get to know a person by the contents of their brain and heart not their posts, soak in the love, the laughter and all that cheesy crap, don't spend your time living through an LED screen. Listen to the crazy ideas, the pondering thoughts, the unimaginable escapades, just because its not the norm it doesn't mean it needs to be fixed, not every crazy idea is a bad idea(... some are... learn where the line is).

This is a rant, as most of these posts are, and also with most of these posts there is a message, I love these sights; these sites open so many doors they blind you from the ones they close (like the one out of  the house), but like your Mum used to say when you were younger 'everything in moderation'.
You're profile picture or tweet won't make your life anymore poignant than anyone else's. So for the love of God just BE HERE. We all are - you don't have to prove that to anybody.

In the habit of hurting

I'm not in the habit of hurting people. Like it's not something I do. Or want to do. Or intentionally do. But I do.

I think we all do, some more intentionally than others. But I seem to be hurting people a lot lately. Which kind of makes it feel like a habit. A horrible habit, I kind of habit I hate about myself. 

As a human race it is not in our law to be cruel. We hurt people but not out of cruelty, but when feelings are involved especially in love it ends in one of two ways; love (obviously), or war. What I'm beginning to realise though is that I have previously looked at people who have been the heartbreaker as strong and worldly, they don't care. I was wrong, I (upsettingly) continue to be wrong, because these people have taken a little bit of this hurt and buried it, they don't face it, they are strong because it has made them strong. No one admits the heartache only the wisdom it has given them. 

I don't feel too strong right now, I'm feeling that break, a lot of that break.

Because I've hurt, and in doing so have (apparently) done the right thing. I have no idea what to do with this pain because previously I have run away, in a way that I have never actually had to deal with emotional heartbreak head on. In the game of emotional chicken I have lost, facing the car head on I've never been the last one standing. How about that, at 23, I've been hit but never stayed to find out the damage. I've been the driver I've dealt with it by looking in the rear view.

Turns out hurting people becomes a right of growing up. 

You take the hit because you can't break a heart with one hand and hold it together with the other. 

You can't push someone and be there to catch them when you're falling too.  

Who knew.

Beautiful

I'm a thinker. I'm a dreamer. I want everything now, miss out the middle man and just be, most of the time I don't want to put the work in, I want it all and I want it yesterday. How familiar does that thought process sound? I think it's reminiscent of so many people I know, I love people with ambition and drive, to do, see and be, but so few of us actually go, act and live.

I watched 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty', I watched it at the cinema and I watched it the other night and I'll be damned if I don't watch it another few times before this month is through. It is so prominent and honest, exaggerated and crazy, but there is this one line, and it gets me, grabs me holds me tight and gives my heart a little caress- 'beautiful things don't ask for attention'... and I have asked for a lot of attention.  I wonder if James Thurber when writing this quote thought of the impact this would have on someone’s life. Now I genuinely stop to think, beautiful things can be all aware of their beauty or completely independent to its existence yet so rarely are you asked to clarify the beauty exists. I believe everyone has that possibility but so many people and things now seek validation in life, so much so that any beauty is quickly lost or hidden for fear someone may question or object to its being.

I know all too well that these may just  be the ramblings of a nothing twenty something year old, or at least that is was the media has told me I am, because if I'm not getting 10,000 views a day or going viral then really who am I to comment(?). But it is lines like that, when they grab you and make you listen and you feel that little flutter, like something inside you just wakened because it resonated back, it spoke to some part and that part screamed "exactly!", that you can start to use it. Because I have found lately that I have seen things (an article, a picture, gossip, another person’s achievement), I have tried to be things (yogi, chef, bi-lingual extraordinaire) that I almost feel if I can have them validated they will become part of me to help define who I am to everyone else. Yet as a person I don't need that, I shouldn't need another person’s approval to feel worthy and yet so often I do, but if you are that thing you’re trying to validate, that's it. End of. Just be.

Life is a statement, not a question.

So I'm trying to look at things now without justification of their beauty, including the mirror, including my ambitions and dreams. To have a life that is beautiful it needs only the validation of its creator and it's a process that could take to the very last breath. You’ve got to go, act and live, because life is already happening whether you’re in it or not.

Sweet Dreams are made of this...

Where am I? Where’s the door? How’d I get here? Come on we’ve all been there, no you haven’t just woken up in a strangers bedroom after one of those ‘I’ll only have one… oh look where did that second bottle come from and why is it empty’ nights, no, you’ve just woken up from a really vivid dream. You know the ones where you wake up believing you’re in your childhood bedroom, you’re seven again and momentarily all you want is sugar and your favourite teddy bear… just me? I digress.

This has been happening to me a lot lately (the vivid dreams that is, not so much the sugar and teddy bear part), maybe it’s the weather that’s been transforming my room into an unwanted mid-slumber sauna or maybe it’s the funky smelling cheese I called supper the other night, who knows!? But I have a sneaking suspicion it may be all the wild and inspiring thoughts that have been lacing, neigh laying rampage to my thoughts recently, quashing and dampening the self-loathing negative thoughts of late to one side and rendering them ever so more obsolete.

(The next few posts may come out in quick succession as ones I have been scribbling and doodling down for mere release, which will inevitably explain more about how this post has come along, but for some unbeknownst reason have not made it to the light of day.)

How strange it is that these dreams, when you allow other thoughts and options into your mind, seem to flourish and all of a sudden you’re not dreaming in monotone but everything is in high contrast and clear but yet all so puzzling so that you wake up feeling as though a tiny little switch has been released and yet only fleeting images are all you’re left with to try and explain why. Things feel different this time although I can’t quite place my finger on why, when or how, I think it’s this house, I’m not scared of it like I have been about so many before, it’s like my little night light, I never feel lonely here. When Em and I first moved here we dubbed this ‘the healing house’, and sometimes I think a whirlwind can appear from no where if only someone can start the breeze, kind of positive things from positive intentions. All I know is with a little bit of patience I think I’m starting to feel my darkness shift and these vivid dreams, although sometimes unnerving, are starting to work through all my clutter and fog that has been weighing me down.

“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

-          Albus Dumbledore

I believe I fully understand now what JK meant when she wrote this line, or more that I’m starting to believe that I believe it.