Saturday, July 26, 2014

Love isn't Safe

What I want has nothing to do with me.
Love- a giving word
that does not ask for compensation.

I cannot create it
I cannot make it, I have no say.
Love is not something that can be controlled.
Love is surrender.


It is a force that does not come from without
but within.
A force, compelling and absolute
as life finding a will to live
as the planets trying to escape their orbit around a star
as a bird's unwillingness to become grounded.


Love is probably one of the biggest risks to take in a lifetime


because it requires complete openness to another 
and invested trust in them.

Love is transformative.

Losing it can strip you of everything you thought you knew,
thought you had built,
thought you were
and leave you soft and naked like a baby
discovering the world for the first time
crying from a forgotten depth of existence.

Love
As the lights cascade across the skies and down your cheek,
I want to laugh nonsense with you until the crickets hum us their lullabies.
I want to lay in a tent with you and listen to the rush of the rain.
As their drops trickle over our fortress, swaddled like children, I want to caress your feet with my soles, and trace the outline of your face up and down with gentle fingertips.
I want to hear the sound of the earth with you.
I want to bury my head into your chest and feel the deep drumming, dancing, the beat within you.
I want every season with you. I want to feel the changes, exchanges, and the rearrangements with you.
an exchange
an embrace
an invitation
to make meaning of our lives.

Stormy Nights

Fighting every emotional bone in my body,
I move
slowly initiating
my mind slowly swaying like a boat on your seas

out-
Put your hand on my chest.
Feel thunder inside me.
I am drowning in the storm.

and in-
The currents swirl like blue infinity around me.
I hold my breath. Calm stillness in the center 
to observe the capability of your insistence on destruction,
never apologizing
never taking accountability,
wrecking, breaking, blaming...

If I hold on, you'll take me down
to hit the hard, hard ground,
where I lay heavy with your tides flowing over me.
If I let go now, I might drift away, 
find some shelter in another lover
with two feet firmly planted, ready to make roots.

My hand cracks
as fingers unfurl, the only sutures left for hope of our salvation, 
I see through the splinters 
a yellow warmth, a singing light. 
As it rises over the horizon, breaking clouds, I know
there comes an end to eternal storm and night.





Thursday, July 3, 2014

Thoughts

You are not above your feelings,
how you respond emotionally defines personality.
Nor are you ruled by them,
how you respond with choices defines character.

Emotional responses are difficult because they ask us to be raw, to be authentic, honest and open when faced with a world from whom we want to protect ourselves. In order to maintain an openness and honest relationship with our emotional responses, we must understand and be comfortable with our true selves. Being in touch with our true selves requires work, because we must incorporate this into our daily lives which are wrought with challenges both internal and external.

Each day we make choices about how we carry ourselves into the world.

We all have a choice to live in fear of our emotions. We can choose to avoid them, act like we are above our feelings, or worse, like we are absent of them. This repression can manifest in great anxiety or depression, and sometimes outbursts of anger. We can fear being our true selves because being open and authentic, or feeling vulnerable, can lead us to great disappointments and feelings of rejection or inadequacy. These are complicated emotions that can be alleviated with help of understand and eventual acceptance of ourselves. The old saying still rings true, we cannot love others until we love ourselves. Loving oneself, in my perspective, means acceptance of the self. When we are honest about who we are, what we want and what we need, then we can better understand ourselves and the emotions we experience.

We also have a choice to let our emotions rule our lives. This too can lead to great suffering, because we become so consumed with the feeling in the moment, that often in doing this, we lose sight of the bigger picture and what is truly important in our lives. I am in no way trying to undermine great pain and suffering, because these can be felt acutely. However, most feelings are temporary, and how we feel today changes from how we feel three days, three weeks, three moths... from now. Time and space are invaluable friends when dealing with difficult emotions because they help us to gain perspective on the situation, and they allow us opportunities to gain insight into ourselves. Acting upon feelings in the moment can be exhilarating, but when they rule or lives, there is often a lack of stability. We must remember to let the choices we make today be the consequences we can live with tomorrow.

Feelings are part of the human experience. They can be a gift and a curse depending on the situation, but it is important to understand that while feelings are an important part of who we are, they are not us in totality.