Out of the Shadows

So wow - this is me back to blogging, then.  What's brought this on?

The urgent, fiery need to create something out of what turned out to be quite a traumatic experience.  I usually find - after I've gone through some pretty tough crap - that what I needed to do was create something out of it, rather than try to squash it and push it down and bury it.  An eminent astrologer, Liz Greene, memorably said that whenever you bury something (she was talking about planetary energies) it ain't going to be very pretty when you finally dig it up, or it burrows its way out.  Which it will, if you don't get your shovel out first.

So what was it?  A job - which I won't talk about in detail - which I started off loving and which, after several weeks of pretty intense learning, I found was overwhelming me.  I did the only thing I could do, and stopped. I lived with some dark shadows for several days, down in the dark spidery corners of my psyche.  I wasn't alone - I found kind souls.   I found them close by. And gradually, with space, I found peace.  And it's amazing, isn't it, what peace and space and kind souls do for you.  They made me realise how little peace or space or kindness I've been giving to myself. Past tense - I'm remedying that now.

That sort of realisation puts you in a bind, I can tell you.  Why the hell not?  Why be kind to animals and other people (including those who make you want to tear your hair out in handfuls) and not to the self?  Is it something about me that doesn't, somehow, deserve that?  Because if not, why not?  I don't like the answer to that one but I'm sure as hell asking myself the question.  And what on earth use am I to anyone else shrivelled up and sobbing?  None whatsoever, except if you want to scare those who love you.  And I've no wish to do that.

After a period of two weeks, I thought I was ready to return to my job, only to hear that because of funding cuts, it no longer existed. I was out, and it was totally out of my control.  I was caught up in a myriad of conflicting feelings - gratitude both for the opportunity and for the money, fear (that old devil) and panic - how am I going to pay the rent now?  I went through a dozen changes of heart and mind about whether I was disappointed or relieved.  Both, neither, one, then the other, then both again. 

Something, through all this thinking (and boy, sometimes, do I overthink) was nagging me.  This much emotional investment in anything that you do to pay the rent really isn't sustainable or healthy. I should be surfing the stars, taking myself lightly, marvelling at the beauty of the universe and working out what is my part in the great scheme of things.  Instead of which I'd managed (and not for the first time - to my shame, the third time) to get myself sucked into a greedy, grasping black hole which would carry on taking every ounce of my energy if I allowed it to.  How many more times?

Well - no more times.  That's when the reality hit.  This kind of thing is Not For Me Any Longer.  No Can Do if I want to stay emotionally, physically, mentally and crucially, spiritually healthy.   Which I DO and that realisation is stronger than any need for control, any desire to prostrate myself on the blessed altar of hard work just so that I'll be thought of as a better person.  The wise ones - and there are plenty of them about, too - just think "why?".

 I'm told I'm wise. I may be around others, I haven't been over this. I'm wising up, fast.

I did a little meditation this afternoon and saw myself, as if from outside, struggling.  I instantly visualised wrapping that tearful me in loving arms, as I would wrap any suffering soul, and saying to her "you don't have to carry this. It doesn't have to be like this. Walk away and let go".

Let go, and create.  Which is what has led to this blog, the first for months.  I've edited it a bit, but not a lot. This is writing in the raw - writing for creation's sake, writing for healing's sake, writing for the sake of loving myself.