Settled....

What does this even mean?  I have been unsettled for so long, continually planning the next "get away" or trip or move that I do not think I have been settled in over a decade.  

When we decided to move to Thailand I could barely wait to sell everything.. dresser, bed, couch, tables, speakers, bikes, tools, clothes, camping stuff, books, kitchen stuff... I got rid of shit recklessly, and it felt good.  For the two years that followed I pretty much lived out of a backpack and a small suitcase moving 6 times (not including the moves from America and back to America).  

All that moving and shaking across borders and thresholds solidified the "get up and go" desire that nags at my soul, and now it seems as though I really cannot get rid of it.  It presents itself at every turn, creeping in in the middle of the night, interrupting my slumber, reminding me that it is still there, lurking to move, go, get, run, flee, travel, bounce.  

Thiough some of that started to change once I lost my mom.  I felt conflicted, I wanted to feel settled, yet I didn't.  I wanted a home to fill the gap of her but I also wanted around the wolrd plane tickets to distract me from that same gap.  I thought feeling rooted would come in the form of a house with a dog and a yard, but oh how surprising it is that things are not working out the way that I planned them.  The reality... Settling is hard when you own nothing and want to roam around the globe. 

Well I guess I do not own nothing....  

I have two bikes and some locks for them.  

Camping gear.  

Some climbing gear.  

A yoga mat and a few accessories to match.  

An essential oil diffuser.

A himalayan salt rock lamp.  

Some books.  

A speaker.  An ipad.  A phone. 

Pants... so many pants...

Shirts.. A lot of those as well.  

Essential oils.  

Dried herbs to blend teas.  

A few very small decorations.  

And some bad ass jewelry.  

I would need so much more to settle in the way I envisioned at one point.  Like a house which means a lease or mortgage, which is a little too binding for the itch that drives my soul mad.  A car would be good too.  And what about furniture, a couch, a bed, a chair, a table, a book shelf.  Kitchen supplies.  Towels and bathroom stuff.  Sheets and bed linens.  Speakers.  Lamps and lights.  Curtains.  Decorations.  The list goes on... and the thought is daunting.  

Maybe I will never own stuff again.  Maybe I will gypsy around and live with my "wife" in Montana who already has stuff.  That way I can zip away when I like, buy a plane ticket, and not have to sell or store the things I do own, and disappear into the ethers for as long as I want or need to.  That sounds like freedom, or escape.

The settling I want to discover is that which comes from within and is shared in a community.  Settled in my friendships.  With a lover.  With my family.  With who I am in the world.  This is the settling that I have been searching for.  To me it offers more stability than the possessions that cause me to feel stuck, tied down, and restricted. To me it is the ultimate, the number one most important thing to be deeply connected to those I meet and know.  We can sit on the grass and share a meal and stories.  I can snuggle with a lover on the floor.  I can practice yoga anywhere.  I can build a fire and throw some food on it to make meals.  We can eat out of tin foil and drink out of our water bottles.  We can build initmacy with out the walls of a house, with out the comforts of a couch, with out the convenience of a kitchen...  We can be connected in these ways.    

My priorities have been simplicity for a very long time, and selling everything to move to Thailand made me the happiest thing ever.  I felt light and free.  I also believe in creating peace within myself, rather than externalizing it in the form of material (unless of course its yoga pants... those are an investment into your future), things.  It was easy for me to get swept up in the American idea of settling, only to remember after some heartache and confusion that it really doesn't align with what I want or believe is important in this world. 

Live well.  Live simple.  Converse.  Sit on the floor.  Love.  Communicate. Share.  Know what matters to you, because ultimately comfort lies within your own soul.  We can handle anything in the world when we are settled within ourselves.  

This is a rant....

My emotions are currently out of control.  I tend to sit on the quiet sde of things, even if I am spinning.  I think...  "No one wants to hear this shit, and my spinning is my responsibility", so I just shut my mouth and say "I am fine, thanks".  Which translates to I want to rip my fucking hair out of my head and scream until my throat goes raw.

Okay that may be a dramatization, but these days I am actually not to clear on the what is to be discussed and what is not to be discussed.  See, that is what suppression does, it confuses you.  Thanks Jeremie, I appreciate that you were to chicken shit to discuss emotions for 4 years, I feel like this scarring will last a while.  So, That was fun.  

Okay, but let's be real.  Thanks to myself for thinking that it was okay to be in a relationship that was emotionally void.  In a relationship where we said I love you less than a handful of times in 4 years, where I had to cry and scream to get him to be in Fort Collins when my mom had just died, in a relationship where he asked me ten months later why I wasn't over her death, and that when I was getting blood tests and ultra sounds, he said shit like... you are always in chaos.  

What the fuck was wrong with me?  Why would I think that was a partner?  Clearly, I am the dillusional one, I stayed, even when I knew better.  However, as a disclaimer, he is a cool dude and we had so much fun and adventures, but if it wasn't fun, he didn't participate.  It was all on his terms.  And I let it be.  Because it takes two for that shit to happen.  

I was in a yoga class the other day and I flashed back to my mom saying "We have a bedroom set up downstairs for you and Jeremie to stay in when you visit", and Jeremie saying shit like "I don't want to stay at your parents".  I just wanted to get up and start smashing shit.  Fuck you for not participating in my life, her death, our relationship.  

This is clearly a rant.  

So the origin of this rant is that while hanging out with this cool Brazil dude, I do not know what I can talk about and what I cannot talk about.  I have been tip toeing for 4 years and now I have lost my footing and am in a puddle of limbs on the floor.  Can I's or Can't I's swirling in my head.  And he just wants me to communicate.  But I do not know what that means, or if he really wants to hear what is in my head....  

Oh the joys of relationship and communication.  Can't live with out it really.  But these heart pounding insecurities that someone might not really want to know you... well that makes me sad that I sometimes think I do not have enough to offer a person that they would want to know me.  And as usual it comes down to myself, and peace coming from within.  But I cannot help feel a little jaded at the last four years.  

So, that is it.  Thanks for listening.  All my harsh words mean nothing about who he is, it is mostly about who I let myself become.  And the end of that relationship was inevitable the moment I had to explain why he needed to come to CO for my moms funeral.  

Love has no fear and no vengeance. So go love fiercely and listen carefully to others. 

  

Coconut Fruit Bars

It was an innocent enough night, as I say in what used ot be my moms chair and ate ice cream while hanging out with dad.  He was eating a fruit bar.  And when I realized what he was eating it was like a nail to my heart, and it hasn't stopped pounding since that moment. 

I want a cigarette.  I want it to slow down.  I want to be under the stars.  I want my mom back.  I would trade the whole world for her physcial human existence again.  

The night we took her to the hospital for the last time she was in bed, the bed in which she hadn't left for about a week.  She stopped getting out of bed when she fell in the shower because her left hip would just no longer work.  It was a downhill spiral from there.  Which led to bed pans, hospice, medications, and endless silence.

I came upstairs to check on her and touch her hand and offer some food, which she had just not been interested in the past week or so.  She asked me if we had any coconut fruit bars in the freezer.  I would have flown to fuckin Egypt to get her one, lucky enough, we still had some.  I brought it up in a bowl so that she could rest it when she was too tried to hold it up.  

I sat with her and watched her struggle through.  Her left hand had quit working, or maybe it was her wrist, or maybe it was the whole arm.  Either way, she would be holding the bar and then it would just drop, hand and all, onto her chest.  Typically this sent her into a frustrated frenzy of "What is happening to me"  and "I do not understand what is going on".. but that night, she just picked it up and took nibbles while she could.  

I have never seen anyone enjoy something so much.  

Normally I would have pestered her and nagged her to drink carrot juice or have something more substantial, but I just knew, there was a peace to her eating this bar, and I was just happy to see HER so happy.  

It was both gut wrenching and joyful to see her in this process.  I knew what was coming, though nothing could have prepared me, and I seemed to be the only one in my immediate family that understood that she was leaving us.  I had known for months.  And here we were sitting together, her half aware lost in the delicacy of a coconut fruit popsicle, and me lost in the simplicity of it all.  

It was not too many hours later that she asked to go to the hospital, which became the desperate turmoil that loss like this is in those fucked up, confusing, hectic moments.  The ups and downs, the really fuckin hard conversations, the even worse decisions....  

And until now, I had forgotten about that sacred coconut fruit popsicle, not that banana coconut one, (which I had mistakenly grabbed first), but the simple, single flavor one...  over a year later and out of the blue it hit me like a bus to the chest, and now I am a mess of tears, in my room writing this recalling the depth of pain that is her loss.  

All over the memory of a popsicle.  

Regress to Progress

I want to go back to Thailand.  Shit was easy there.  And it was warm.  

And I am here now.  So really, I need to be present here.  I am evaluating, calculating, witnessing.. this is how my construction zone of a head works.  Analyze, process, act.    

Needless to say, I am in that uncomfortable stage of regression.  The stage where I want to tear off my skin and disappear into the ethers, or buy a ticket back to Thailand.  Neither of which I can really justify doing because I would just be prolonging the process of my growth.. and I am not into dragging it out.  Get in.  Get it.  And get the fuck out.  To progress, we MUST regress.  We must look at how far we have come, and process how much further we want to go.  WHO do I want to be to this world? 

Don't get me wrong, I am not in a crisis, I am just growing.  My life has crumbled around me and I still stand erect most days.  Though cigarettes, lorazepam and an occasional drink before noon do seem to be staples for this erectness some days.  Survival.  

I like to run.  When I am comfortable I like to scamper off to what is uncomfortable.  And when I am uncomfrotable I like to freak out and demand my comforts back.  Ever satisfied?  Hmmm deeply satisfied with my life, not satisfied with stagnation though.  Fuck. That. Shit.  

   

2.0.1.5.

Thank fucking god.  Though that is what I said when we rolled into 2014 as well, and I am still not sure which year was the worst.  The flames of transformation are hot as hell, licking away at me from the inside out, tormenting everything from my guts to my ethers, demanding that I do more, be different, trust, and progress.  

We all have these moments, we all experience the demands, and we all go through shitty times graced with thoughts "It couldn't possibly get any worse", only to be proven wrong.  

I do not know how I got through it, I tried to lay down and die, I really did, it didn't work. So I just picked myself back up off the floor and worked it out.  But I do not know how.  It is still a mystery.  Though I think it has to do with introducing some reckless abandonment to my interactions.  Moments of "Well, fuck it, I don't really have anything to lose".

I see people who never do this, never picking themselves back up after tragedy.  I suppose it is easy to get lost in the endless streams of emotion that you who still have your loved ones cannot imagine until they too have left.  

I am off track though so let me pull it back.  See, lost in the endless streams of emotion.  Fuck.  

I have a best friend, actually, she is more like a wife.  Actually she is a wife, we just don't get all sexual, we both like men too much.  We have conversations that I have never even had with a man, we get tattoos together, we have talked about the business we will open, the bank accounts we will get, the possibilities and the way that our lives will look 40, 50, and 60 years down the line.  We are committed to each other and each others growth and progression in life.  She came into town for Christmas, we both had twisted and demented years that tried everything in our lives but our friendship, so it only seemed appropriate that we be together to celebrate survival.    

To feel a bit better about ourselves we dressed in one of our 15 new pairs of recently purchased yoga pants, painted on electric blue eyeliner, and glitter bombed one another.. we drank some beers and headed out for whatever randomness that the night held.  African dancing.  Saisons.  Midnight yoga and meditation.  Martinis.  And an endless supply of those confetti explosion champagne bottles.  We rang it in right.  Neither hammered nor completely sober we just couldn't have given a shit less.  It was likely the best new years I have had in a long time, maybe even ever.  

The yoga class somehow seemed surreal, the things I saw... the things I felt, the way I feel now.  Somewhere between the likes of deeply wounded and iron man super hero, I feel at rest in this space.  Indifferent to effort because I know what is to come, and more importantly I know it is not going to kill me.  As long as I do not lose myself in the desperation that is the desire to be loved by friends and lovers alike, reminding myself over and over again that I will be okay.  

I feel like that is the hardest thing, to remind ourselves that we will be okay, because we always have been.  And as we jump on the boat of risk for love, work, and community, we are constantly gambling with loss, we have always been okay in the past so why would it be any different now?  The only time we are truly endangered is when we believe that we have arrived, that we know it all, or declare what we know as though it is permanent.  This is spiritual suicide, and if you don't have spirit, what do you have?  Translate spirit as you wish: god, buddha, south park, soul, nature, self, wisodm.. whatever makes you grow.  Personally I choose South Park, it doens't let me get away with thinking that anything is more sacred than another thing.  

I hope you find some humor this year as you look at whatever inspires and defeats you, that you can laugh in the face of it and know that you too will be okay.  

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.