i became exasperated with change

it's that time again

originally posted on Substack

Sanity is built.

It’s always a collaboration. I became the one who never agrees and never creates. What a lethal combination. Everything becomes a competition, how exhausting. We work in intervals, in cycles.

Constantly operating at top speed is deadly. It destroys before it creates. In my mind, these are synonyms, but ain't nothing wrong with a preference for peace. Transmuting despair into hope requires stillness and patience is a manipulation of time.

It’s when the days become longer than the years. A lot of elders across cultures speak of this.

I look for the universal truth, there’s so much noise out here. Details that can get lost in frequent movement. These are the messages you hear no matter the environment, the culture, the people. This is truth, everything else is perspective.

I can understand my own allure. To be seen by me is to be seen by you. Most want it, few are strong enough to hold it. There’s a knowing no one can break. At a certain point, your belief becomes unwavering. The foundation is solid, it’s found at the center of Earth. A portal, a black hole, the eye. There is no negotiating with that.

Sometimes I visualize my energy flowing through my body to my feet, seeping into the Earth connecting to the center. In that moment, I anchor myself to the beauty of existing here on this planet no matter what’s around me. It's a blessing to feel pain.

What is struggle but the beginning of a fairy tale? A hero’s journey or the depth of a villain? Struggling is storytelling, the conceptualization of what we are and the ability to consciously create a physical reality. Do you understand how magical this all is?

"I am in awe at what this world has offered,

raw energy taken and conformed."

There it goes again, my own poetry echoing back at me. Proof that the present is all that there is. What can I want more than this? Who am I so desperate to become?

I’m so used to catching up to my surroundings, I became exasperated with change. I became used to walking lightly, speaking silently. I erased any proof that I existed. My memory is silent, invisible to the local or any passerby. I wasn’t actively fighting it but I was begrudgingly accepting my fate. Which in a way, prolonged the pain. Pain will always exist but suffering is a choice. I didn’t look at change with excitement, I would cling to agony hoping for some relief I didn’t have to create.

Please, someone save me.

A child wishing for safety through a vision. This can only feel bad if there's a knowing that there's something different. I only wish what I feel.

Here we go again. Every time I think I understand, I find something else. Is this worth the energy?

I find out what I'm capable of when I say fuck it. I turn around and get reminded why I want to leave, why I want to know who I am free. The responsibility of choice doesn't have to be heavy. Responsibility itself is a choice, you can choose what you carry. Showing up in a certain way isn't a burden, it's a portal. What does it mean to be true to yourself?

I tend to write out portals through my subconscious. More often than not, I don't know why I wrote something down until it becomes relevant later. Or I'll go back to read something from a specific time and my energy then is the reminder I need now. Sometimes it comes in a list, sometimes it's my voice, sometimes it's a journal entry. All snippets of a present that wanted to be remembered.

"2/2

Brain Dump:

No matter what, keep going.

You're doing great.

You're creating, creating takes layers.

0-1 is the hardest.

2/5

Be in your body more.

Notice each change & accommodate the pain.

We are in recovery.

2/16

No need to force the topic.

What's relevant to you right now? Work with your creative bursts.

Schedules are for collaborations, not your creativity.

This massive reflective period is about to come to a head.

2/17

How amazing it is to be free in the midst of pain. To feel unburdened by the weight of what caused it. To sit with it. Create space for it to exist authentically and without expectation. Pain is a friend not a foe. What is a foe when everything is me?

Is it crazy to not fear what I can't see, what I don't know? How can I be scared when everything feels like me? When everything is an opportunity to experience freedom differently?

I am cherished. I am loved. I am taken care of. I am heard. I am seen. I am respected. I am poured into, the waterfall hidden between mountains, beneath forests, nourishing the rivers of its home.

2/18

We keep going, we pivot and we keep going.

Hot water in the morning.

Rest, rest, rest.

Urge to use phone or bored, get up and move body, brain dump, write.

Completely let go and let yourself rest with an audience.

Aware before annoyed.

Me not resting is not trusting.

This is my last challenge."

There is no clean slate, there is only embrace.

Monsters are created from pain. They are wounds brought to life, shamed. They've been shunned, attempted removal but nothing has the power to cease existence. If it's here, that's it. After, it becomes a decision. How do you want to interact with this? Distress begins to propagate in the dark, resentment and insecurity becoming alive in the crevices of the mind. Lurking and growing, the ignored mutating to be felt. You can't ignore this.

How can I reduce the importance of pain just because I don't like it? Wisdom doesn't care to be liked, it only cares to be true.

I'm stepping into a world that can only come from me. Who else needs to believe in my vision when I'm the only one who can see it?

If change is the only thing I can count on, my relationship to it has to shift. I have to change in order to accept change. Nothing fundamental but acceptance is acknowledging that a door exists and you have the capacity to open it. Change is always available. Stillness in the face of it is a choice. An act that creates friction and requires a decision.

To act, I need to accept my role in the moment, acknowledge that I have a choice, an ability to create change just as much as I experience it. What am I creating? More fear? More love? More courage? More art? What do I even want to create?

Doing the thing imperfectly is still doing the thing. That step is as important as the next.

What's available to harvest right now?

We are in a collective drought. What do we have a plethora of?

Stress.

There's so much pain. Where are the alchemists? Here I am, hidden. Isolation is a harsh teacher. There's beauty in brutality. We seem to be mesmerized, forgetting that it doesn't have to be like this.

There goes the responsibility of choice again.

In the midst of all this, I can't help but be in awe. What am I calling in that requires this much depth? I can feel it. I've fantasized about it, seen glimpses, heard whispers. But I have yet to experience it, the freedom of being seen. Isolation has become a cage I can't ignore. Now I'm here sharing what I've found in the dark. A bit battered and bruised, still breathing, still laughing, still loving. Even with the fresh sting of betrayal, tender in a way only family can do, I can't help but see the beauty in that too.

I'm a Pisces Venus, what can I say. One's the blessing. One's the curse.

Every tear is a symbol of my depth. You only cry this much when you've explored where no light can reach. I grew up with such little light, so few and far in-between. You get used to the shadows, not aware that you're the one creating them. It doesn't matter anyway, when you can't look away. Can't help but be vigilant in a way that helps you survive until it doesn't.

I'm at 'it doesn't'. Battle scars the only signs of war. Awareness is a heavy crown. The pain in my neck is loud. Decades of tension breaking down one way or the other. There's no pushing through. There is only rest.

Rest is alchemy. Rest is trust. Rest is joy. Rest is love.

I'm not good at resting, especially when I don't feel safe in my physical environment. Being aware of people and patterns can have you separating silently. Where I'm going, there's no room for this. A title means nothing if it feels like this. I define luxury differently. Luxury is beauty. Luxury is practical. Luxury is sustainability. Luxury is Earth. Luxury is Mother.

Legacy without quality is an empty shell. It's pretty but there's no life in there.

It's an honor to experience agony in this way. Authenticity is a prize worth agonizing over. I am worth crying over. I am worth fighting for.

I’ve been scared to put roots down, in people, places and things. I’ve been uprooted so much, I don’t know what community is. In theory, yes. I will always advocate for it. In reality? Not so much but I'm only at the beginning. Most people who would fuck with me, don’t know I exist.

Relief is a shift away.

I'm in a rhythm of creating, adapting to the change. Exasperation becoming intrigue. The unknown is mother. She is a figure of knowing, watching you develop your own. She is beyond and you are here. There is a collaboration at play, an opportunity for creativity to express itself in a new way.

Sometimes you gotta feel the curse to understand the blessing. Patience is always rewarded.

What change can you befriend?

m.c.