Love

Love can be a big enough struggle, with out the influences of others opinions on what it should look like.  The skepticism only makes my head and heart spin worse, which is not really where I want to be.  But it seems to be knocking at my door these days and apparently I need to answer it or its gonna keep fuckin pounding away.  

I have survived a lot of really shitty relationships from punches and slaps to drug abuse, to porn abuse, to cheating, to deception.. whatever, we all have.  The choice is in how we handle it, do we introvert and contemplate, do we dwell, do we go screw 23 different people in a month, or do we range somewhere in between the black and white, dancing in the greys? There are soooooooo many choices and everybody has their opinion on what YOUR healing process should look like, whether it comes from loving protection, jealousy, or personal experience.. we are all too happy to express it, even if it only feeds a demon that is bashing around your demented mind already.  Right now I feel more inclined to say that people are happier to display concern than celebration, but I might be reacting off of hurt feelings.  

So here it is.  After a 4 year relationship that was great minus a few small communication issues I cried for a day or two, got angry at the deception for a few weeks, and then saw it for what it was and am moving the fuck forward.  This forward motion also consists of a so-far-sweet-brazilian-dude  Thank god I met him, he has kind of been my knight in shining armour.  Coming in a whisking me off of my feet with his ability to communicate, touch, give, and laugh.  His sweet words that I haven't heard the likes of in over 5 years.. they kind of make me melt.  When he touches me it is electric.  And after a week he was saying things that implied longer term, and maybe I started to as well.  It is not easy for me, but it is healing.  I am scared shitless really, but what do I have to lose?  Is he going to kill me?  You who know me also know that I can take down anyone, so I doubt the case is my impending death by this so-far-sweet-brazliian-dude.  However.. I want to randomly throw in there that I am learning just how confused and fucked up I am about how the world works.. his kindness makes me cautious... thanks to my addiction of previously challenging relationships I seem to believe that you should watch out for people that are nice.  Fucked. Up. 

Let's address the outside skepticism I have received from so many on this recent exciting love story:

"But it has only been a week"

"But you just got out of a LONG TERM relationship"

"But you JUST got out of a long term relationship"

"You are not ready"  

"It sounds too good to be true" 

"But you don't really know him"  

"Rebounds rarely work" 

It is great to share your thoughts and concern, I never ever thought of any of these possibilities, thank you for reminding me that things can turn out shitty, I know it comes from your love for me, but what I really want to hear is "Are you happy?"  and then "That is so awesome, I am so excited for you, tell me everything".  Because for shit to work it needs excitment, support, and encouragement.  It does not need to be fed negative nancy shit that I am already having plenty of to begin with.  I am perfectly aware that there is potential for "failure", I am just not sure what failure means in this situation.. not trying or it not working?  

For those of us that do not trust others judgement (which is all of us at some point in time), it is time to recognize that we actually do not trust our own, and with that reflection sometimes it is better to keep your mouth closed or feign happiness.  

Nobody knows the needs of my heart more than I do. 

I am swinging through excess, from a depletion of love over the past few years, not just boyfriend/girlfriend way, but from loss, deep devastating loss of people who could predict my needs before I could speak them, which is nurturing and until it is gone you have no idea what you will be missing.  I am hyper aware of this, deeply in touch with what is swirling in my life.  

Maybe I should divulge my approach to love and to the world.  

I am devoted to this world.  I refuse to believe we are doomed, because what does doom really look like?  Do you know or do you just know what you have been told?  I believe in jumping in, leaping off of the edge, letting go and knowing that something, whether it be myself or friends, will catch me when I fall.  I believe in letting your friends do the same thing and telling them over and over again that you will support them because you love them.  Support does not mean enable or critique, and thats a balance that we have to find.  I believe in opening more and more to the amazing possibilities of life.  I would rather reflect and do the work instead of shutting down.  I believe that love will save us all and the current perception of it is the root of disease and unhappiness.  I believe that we are all working through our own shit, but that doesn't give us the right to throw it at others.  Ever.  But we do it and those we are close to fogive us and we move forward. Not one of us better than the other, just gently shifting moments of clarity, we reflect them back reminding and inspiring love.  

We need more celebration in our lives, it is like oxygen, we thrive off of it.  We all deserve it, even if we know someone is going to fall flat on their face, that is not our business, we are community to support those around us, to know that it only effects us if we allow it too, and that we can just be there when shit falls the fuck apart.  Others experiences are not about us, and when I find myself distorted from this reality then I try to refer back to the agreement to Take Nothing Personal.  

I guess I should take my own advice though and take nothing anyone says to me about me personally, but that doesn't make it any easier when I am battling my own fucked up habits and need some help to pull myself out of it.  And that is where community comes back into play... we are here to pull each other up when someone is down.  

Akhilandeshavri - trust me you will want to read this

The Never-Not-Broken Goddess.  

"The Goddess Who Blesses Grief And Disaster 

You may have bumped into Her occasionally hidden in the dark alleyways of life, but turned your gaze away. You've likely fallen into Her embrace once or twice: in hospitals, at work, watching the news, or in your car, but broke away as quickly as possible. 

She's the kind of Goddess you don't want to take home to meet your mother -- She'd give your mother nightmares.

But Her power is unparalleled.

Pronounced ah-kee-LAN-desh-va-ree, "Akhilandeshvari" translates as "Never Not Broken." She shows us the power and opportunity of being broken into pieces by heartache, disaster, great fortune, and other life changes and traumas. 

However She takes this to the furthest extreme, purposefully keeping Herself broken wide open, allowing Herself to flow with every current, creating and fragmenting and recreating Herself endlessly. 

She steadfastly refuses to paste Herself together into a stable form, shunning the limitations that She'd have to abide and the false identities that would hide Reality. 

She rides on a crocodile: the very survival-fear that keep most of us chained to the known and routine is Her flying carpet! She is not controlled by the need to keep her identity consistent, or even alive. She dances and spins and breaks herself into shards of light, tossing out new possibilities for herself like flower petals from a cherry tree. 

The Goddess Never-Not-Broken promises that the greatest magick is in the transformative moments: the heartbreack, the uncertainties, the pause before we hit the ground... and what we do with ourselves after we land. 

She is the Goddess of Surrendering to Change, and we are getting to know Her well these days."

She is a source for me these days as I tread and manuever my way through the tumultuous seas of loss.  Her force, her power, it has been boiling inside me... so I decided to tattoo her name on my chest above my heart as a reminder.  In the face of "struggle" you cannot afford to shut down and close off, not if you want true and authentic happiness.  

I generally do not give a fuck about things like the appropriate-ness of a chest tattoo, I have been a rebel about conforming to the standard my whole life, and in fact if I am honest, would say that if the general population thinks that you should not do something, it is usually fuel for me to try it out.  My mom always used to wish I would learn by listening rather than doing, but I like the climb, the hike, the exploration and discovery of myself and how I handle situations.  I was not wired to navigate my way with a compass, I would rather throw it all to the fuckin wind and see where everything falls.  I would rather inspire the world with this freedom...  

I have desired this inspiration my whole life, so much so that "healthy" sleeping patterns stopped when I was 3.  Instead I would lay awake and think about how I wanted to save the world.  I would think about the homeless people I saw, about Saddam Hussein and how I could stop his reign of power, about the way some people looked at me when I carried a black baby doll, and so on down the line of what I knew at a very young age to be heart wrenching ways of life.  To this day my sleeping patterns suck, leaving me exhausted and hyper aware, privy to a wide variety of emotions at any given time.  Which I understand could quite easily be misinterpretted as crazy, but I want to stick to calling it passionate.  Either way, to this day, I lie in bed and remind myself that I want to inspire intimacy and connection and love.  I am real about it, I do not generally speak in flowery terms full of metapohors about dancing rainbows through our chakras to open the bright light within ourselves, but rather my language is littered with explicits, strongly expressing whatever it is I am saying, generally which is a freak out about how much I love what is happening right there at that moment, whether it be yoga, beer, hugs, or traffic.  

I use the term freak out as it was recently delivered to me on a day when I had covered my head with my newest favorite beanie in a failed attempt to hide from the world, only to be called out in so many ways.  Walking, chin down beanie pulled low through a packed yoga class and hearing my name loudly announced I tentatively turned to see one of my favorite women among the sea of faces.  It was a treat to stumble into her and hear her later say to me something along the lines of "I have never seen anyone freak out like you do, you are so expressive in those moments, and I think you need to share that with the world".  It might actually be the best compliment ever, as I have never heard my freak outs described in such a way.  But the whole conversation caused me to reflect on the recent reverberation to my collar bone, the goddess that I tattooed there to remind me of this exact authenticity.  

We truly have nothing to lose, some of us just do not know it, I only feel aware of this because these last 2 years have been a loss of mom, friendships, a pretty decent though emotionally void relationship, the best dog companion ever, and mostly the belief that people will not abandon you.  They will abandon you, whether it be in times of need or a natural course of action, it doesn't really matter, it is just what happens.  The thing we must remember is that these losses are inevitable, it is how we choose to handle them that speaks of our character.  Be brave, be bold, be big, and think of the words that Akhilandeshavri inspires, there is power in vulnerability and brokeness.  You can be that power, you can freak out, and it can be productive.  

Just make sure to own your shit when you do it, rather than a projectile vomit of excuses and justifications.