please enjoy another day of nothing

xoxo Saturn

originally posted on Substack

This has been the most challenging post I have written so far. To be honest, it's been a challenging month overall. The words were coming, but they weren't connecting.

I was feeling defeated by my pain. Victimization turned into justification, frozen in anger. How can hope thrive in a place like this?

I gazed into the depth of my creativity, and said no. I rejected myself over and over again. Sitting there, wondering why I feel wrong. I feel off, I feel lost. It was me. I became the perpetrator of my own pain.

You don't have to punish yourself for being alive.

All the pain I ignored for years trying to keep my head above water is loud and present. I can't ignore it anymore, I have to accept. The pain has to go somewhere; where do I want it to go? How do I transmute despair into hope?

I decided to stop trying to kill my demons. I decided to understand them. I cannot kill what makes me whole. Now they are my friends, my fiercest protectors.

Very few talk about how the transition to great is an oath you make, repeatedly. I have to feel the waves it takes to get there. They come one after the other, can I survive this storm?

Everything is knowledge which makes everything valuable. This includes the things we don't like or don't agree with. Agreement is separate from truth. You can never deny what exists based on preference. You either accept it, or you don't. That will inform not only your politic but how you interact with the world, and your reality as a whole. It's not that a lack of acceptance isn't it's own kind of reality, but it's also showcasing the vantage point of thought.

When you're in a valley, you can only see so much. It's not an ideal vantage point to see the bigger picture. You go up a mountain, you can see more in the distance. The trade off are the details. Some people don't climb mountains, some people live in the mountains, some live beyond them, and some like to travel to both. This is usually how I gauge perception.

I find people intriguing either way but conversations, interactions, relationships are a lot different with people who decide to never venture out of the valley. Depending, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Their relationship to that area will be explored in ways that the nomad will never fully know. Depth comes in countless forms and love is universal.

I myself am a nomad. This started before I had a choice, one that I was born into. Changing environments frequently means it becomes harder and harder to relate to those around you, especially those that have never left the valley, those that either weren't interested in peaks, or were children trapped, with no rights or guidance, forced to create their own way. Some leave, most stay.

I was a flicker. Someone who popped in their lives and left just as quickly.

So I got attached to things. Snapshots of moments, physical memories. Everything changes so often, I've stopped remembering details. Photos, writings, some kind of object. A reminder of where I've been.

I didn't trust me for a very long time, memories slipping through the distance. I’m used to sinking not floating, pain being the catalyst for my doubt. I hate when doubt creeps in.

What is doubt? Doubt doesn't exist.

You are in a constant state of belief.

To become aware is both a blessing and a curse. With understanding comes the responsibility of choice. Every time I think I understand what it means to just be, I have to confront another side of me. The thing about memory is sometimes you don’t get a say of when or what you remember.

There’s so many little things that get buried under the chaos. Little things that sneak their way into becoming big things. In the way that I think, in the way that I’m feeling, in the way that I’m connecting to my body.

Another way of experiencing life was hidden from me. What place was I born into? Traveling so far that I don’t even feel where I am. The instability, the shaky foundation. Every where I turn, something is broken. It’s overwhelming, and can be debilitating. It’s the feeling I imagine quicksand to be; a slow descent into suffocating to death. A Category 5 hurricane of depression and anxiety while living on an island in the middle of a sea, already injured from centuries of neglect. Otherwise abundant, it’s barren now with pockets of what was reminding this fleeting time that abundance can never truly be hidden.

Abundance is the definition of now. You don’t tell abundance who she is, she show’s you if you dare to look. It takes a trained eye to see her in everything. Darkness becomes an extension of her beauty, the only way to understand the beauty in and of itself. What is easy without hard? What is up without down? What is good without evil? What is pleasure without pain?

What is everything without nothing?

There comes a point in the transition where the physical hasn’t changed, but your thoughts have, and the part that got you there is terrified. Why aren’t you scared of your reality anymore? Nothing’s changed. But we have.

Haven’t we?

You're almost there. That's why the fear is so loud.

It's supposed to look like this in the beginning.

The drive has to come from within.

Trust the versions of you you haven't met yet.

I feel another move coming.

I don't have a destination. I don't have the money. I don't have the physical support. And yet, I know it's coming.

I can always tell when I'm about to physically move. I usually feel it way before I even know where or how. Now I know the premonition is a catalyst for presence. A reminder to look before it all goes away. I often grieve before the loss, the energy so present, I can't help it. I'll spend more time in my favorite places, take videos, and intentionally create new routes to discover every bit I can before my daily changes yet again.

For most of my life, stability eluded me. The world around me felt very chaotic and left no room for safety.

"I never knew safety until I found it within me."

Letting go wasn't a summit I committed to in search of higher meaning. It was a firm teacher who cared little for tact, and focused on the bluntness of honesty, the beauty of truth. What will you do in the face of an immovable force? How will you act at the height of uncertainty?

Who will you become under such pressure?

It can be challenging creating an identity out of fragments of time. How do I settle in my reality when nothing ever looks the same? Everyone I meet has a timer I can't see. What can I attach to outside of me? I can't anchor, the waters are too deep.

When your environment is constantly changing, you are forced to stabilize within the chaos. The chaos becomes familiar in its uncertainty. What relief that the only thing I can control is me. The unknown is the safest place to be. The only place you are. I'm never somewhere, I am always here. The anchor is the present. Sometimes it's not time yet.

Turn that time into space.

Stability is confidence and confidence is trust. What am I committed to? My role in this life is part of the intelligence. It has nothing to do with worth. It's being able to channel energy; manipulate, alchemize, transmute, allowing it all to flow. Experiencing the magic that is being alive.

There wasn't another person to guide me, to show me what being human can mean. I was trying to understand people into understanding me. Where am I allowed to be seen? Where is it acceptable to be me?

The reason external validation is unsustainable is because you can't contain chaos. The very definition wont allow it.

You are the point. You are the portal. You are the eye.

There's no need to wait for someone else to believe in you, to help you feel safe, to give you permission to be yourself. Your existence is all the cosigning you need.

When everything is temporary, it's up to me to define stillness. Where can I grow roots so that I can make sense of the world around me? What seeds will grow in such violent conditions? All of this is an experiment. How can a human understand the totality of possibility?

What is impossible in the face of infinity?

"I am wanted wherever I go. Rejection is love, honoring what is in alignment or not. I am no longer a product of what happened to me, but a creation made from love and exploration. My personality is not fixed, and my foundation of self is unbreakable. I am evolving. What does acceptance look like?"

This was written during a move last year, around the same time. The pain of last year seems to have clouded my optimism. It's still there, but the effort to see has been taking much more energy.

It means it's time to pivot. At the beginning of this, I kept calling it THE transition. It has since lived up to its emphasis. I'm still in the midst of it, settling back down until the storm lets me know “you can come out now, I am done.”

Destruction is creation.

I wrote the section below the day before my birthday.

"Why are people shocked that things are what they are?

It’s the day before my birthday. I wasn’t excited. Now I’m neutral and well, a win is a win. This has been a hard month. I mean, it’s been a hard year. A tremendous amount of loss. Somehow, that type of pain doesn’t lose its intensity. Our numbness to it reflects that. Sometimes you have to disconnect to make it to the next day. That’s real. I don’t know why we shame this.

I grew up around people who got lost in the disconnection. Chaos is chaos, energy is energy, infinity infinity. It’ll do what it do no matter what direction. Getting stuck there, it’s a very destructive loop. Whatever is built will not last. Loss is inevitable no matter what, but the intensity is increased when destruction is instinct.

What’s a child to do in a place like that?

She dreams.

I’ll be 31 tomorrow. Sometimes the number doesn’t reflect the depth.

As much as this time has been difficult, it has been rich. There is wisdom I have that only heartache could teach.

She’s beautiful in all her sorrow.

Drowning becomes my pastime. It’s seductive in its sedation.

What’s a child to feel, witnessing so much grief?

Empathy, a connection so deep. I see me therefore I see you. Most people just want to feel seen. Like they exist for a reason, as if they need any more validation.

What a crazy concept. To doubt yourself. Waging war on yourself when the point of Earth is survival.

"who are we to exist?"

I love when my poems haunt me. Echo in time. A whisper in my ear, “remember this"?

Oh, that’s why I wrote that.

Whimsy has been sneaking up on me. She’s a little trickster of fun. Whimsy is safe, she’s the aunt that you crave.

I have a niece. I’ve lost an aunt.

Becoming an aunt a month before my 5th birthday, I grew up being called Auntie. So I became Auntie, not just to my nephews and niece but to my reality. If I have no guidance, I become it.

What’s a child to do with a considerable amount of responsibility?

She becomes a warrior. Her spirit strong even if her body is weak.

My niece called me a warrior once. It’s my favorite compliment.

She doesn’t even realize that she’s witnessing her aunt go through one of the most painful parts of her life. I became the person I needed. I get to heal me by showing up for her. Not an easy road when you’re the only one breaking cycles.

But hey, destruction is my mother.

It’s cold on the day before my birthday. I don’t mind it. I enjoy most weather, each one bringing messages. Different environments, different patterns. You adapt quick.

I am grateful I’ve made it this far. Surviving poverty is a feat. Escaping poverty starts and ends with the mind. That can take a lifetime.

I feel the shift. I don’t see it. The friction forcing me into stillness. So here I am reflecting on the memory that my future exists.

I’m realizing I don’t want to be perfect, I want to be polished. Like the gems that I have. My favorite crystals are half polished, half raw. That says something about me, I think. Sometimes I think we mean beautiful instead of perfect.

I can’t skip the part where she finds herself."

I keep arguing with how long temporary is. I’m fighting it, complaining about it. I used to feel victimized by temporary because of how uncertain and often it is. I discovered that embodying it is the beginning of changing it. That agony I feel? Real, now what’s next?

I joke that half my life was spent in a car. It’s mostly true. 8 hour drive? That’s nothing. Time blurs together.

I’ve been pouring my heart out recently, making space for more. Actually leaving pieces of myself behind for others to find. A hidden gem, something sparkling in the distance.

My thoughts are always scattered, one after the next. As close to overlapping that thought’s can get.

This whole time, I’ve just been trying to catch up to me.

I deleted just about every social media I’ve had, always deleting me to never be found again. Probably making the various people I’ve met unsure if I was real or a figment of their imagination.

But here I am. Hiding and breathing. Sometimes barely, but barely still exists.

Every time I discover a wall, I just stand there, looking for any fractures. I just know that there’s more behind it. I don’t stop till I see something, a small sign of beyond. That’s all I need, a little push.

I saw the story of that tiny angler fish who swam from the depths. Someone said, “She finally saw light she didn’t have to create herself.” What a crazy coincidence, to find yourself in random things living a completely different reality.

All I’ve been doing is trying not to lose me. My life makes a lot of sense to me, a testament to who’ve I’ve become.

I want this to feel like letters to yourself, or maybe even letters from a stranger, or a long distance friend. If any part of me resonates, I’m living the dream.

Would you look at that, you found me.

I’ve been embracing the parts of me that stem from my circumstances. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t experience my life this way. I used to be so overwhelmed with the memory floods, the realization of how tough everything has been.

I had to learn how to breathe properly. I took my breaths short and shallow, like I didn’t have any time to waste.

What the hell is waste? In infinity, no less. An insult is what it is. They are finding organisms that can eat plastic; who knows, we might just figure it all out. There will always be death.

That’s why we focus on life instead.

Moving a lot taught me that. Seen a lot of real death too but I recognize death in much more than breathless bodies. Most of the time, death needs acknowledgment, for its presence to be understood.

Death comes in a multitude of forms. Grief follows. It’s death’s contribution to love. A depth of love that can only live within loss. A knowing that elevates the sweetness of your own existence. A life is a life, there’s no arguing with that.

And truly, death is only an interpretation of transformation. So technically, life is all that exists. What if nothing is actually a preferred state, the peace we seek? Nothing is life and everything else is perception.

My birthday came and went. I’ve never feared getting older, I've only feared not getting wiser.

I found it, right there. A fracture in the wall.

A glimpse.

m.c.