Sometimes, the words

Sometimes, the words don’t come.

Sometimes, the words seem frozen behind an impermeable layer of uncertainty and hesitation.  You can see them staring out at you, waiting for you to step forward to claim them, to write them out, to give voice to them.  You feel them at the back of your mind where you have placed them, hoping to be freed from their persistent calling.  You hear them whispering to you in your waking dreams and you shove them away from you in favour of easier pursuits.  You move further into the morass of your own making, where movement occurs in slow motion and limbo is your reality.  You deny, deny, deny.

Sometimes, the words flow out of you like honeyed poetry, dripping down and off the page in a glorious sweet mess, golden and sticky with inspiration.  You roll around in the joy of the words and emerge sated and stuffed full of sugared goodness.  You come back to the words again and again, drawn to their nectar and feverish in your need for more.

Sometimes, the words are not enough for you to be able to overcome the fear that clutches at your heart.

Sometimes, the words are your only and greatest salvation.

Sometimes, the words fail you and you are left blank and grasping, gasping for meaning.

Sometimes, the words are your everything and you are simply their holy vessel.

Sometimes, the words.

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Some jumbled Wednesday thoughts

You know those days where:

– you’re in the office at sunrise, and it’s after sunset when you leave?

– you really want to be outside with your camera but have to settle for your iPod touch and Instagram instead?

– you get nothing productive done even though you’re buzzing around like a bee in a bottle all day?

– you’re reduced to squeezing in workouts and not getting the satisfaction from them that you’d like because you’re focussed on other things?

– too much coffee is never enough?

– you know that there must be something more than this but you just don’t know what that MORE is, no matter how much you think and puzzle and wait for inspiration about it?

Yeah.  THAT.

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Peeling the onion

I’ve been having some therapy sessions recently.  Well, reiki sessions, actually.  This is the first time I’ve ever had reiki, although I’ve been interested in it for a while.  I have been extremely fortunate to find someone who not only is a wonderful intuitive counsellor, but is also a reiki practitioner.  I didn’t know what to expect from my first session, despite my Google expeditions – “first session reiki” and “does reiki make you cry?” and “what is reiki like?” and “reiki benefits”.  I could go on but I won’t.

I have no idea how reiki works – although I’ve read the theory about it – but I am overwhelmed by the effect it has had on me so far.  Such an immediate effect.  Within 5 minutes of starting my first session, I found myself experiencing the most amazing depth and range of feelings – sorrow, grief, shame, emotional pain.  Love.  Confirmation of such love.

The personal revelations started almost immediately and just kept coming.  Things that I’ve been pushing down, down, down inside me for so long that I no longer knew that they were there.  Such as:

It is love I fear.  I fear being loved.  Even though I long for physical manifestation of the love of one in particular.

I fear being someone I’m not when I am loved.

I fear the feeling that I need to be someone else to meet a beloved’s expectations.

I fear that I will never find a relationship in which I am free to love myself and be myself – without alterations – without feeling that I need to change myself somehow to please my beloved.

I need to value myself more than I do, because a lot of the time I don’t.

I feel like I am not valued enough by others.

I need to respect myself and my body more than I do, because a lot of the time I don’t.

Everything is happening for a reason, and will keep happening for a reason, and in the mean time I need to do what makes me happy and healthy and brings me joy.

I fear my spiritual side and what it possibly means for me.  I fear the changes that are happening because of my growing awareness of another part to me – although there’s nothing new about that.

I am not the same as I was, and I need to stop resisting that.  I need to open myself to that and all its possibilities.  I am intuitive and empathetic and I need to embrace that.

This reiki work is hard, and leaves me in great, gulping tears each time.  My instinct is to curl up in a corner and hold my hurts and fears and sads close to me, because that is easier than addressing them and bringing them into the light. Instead, I know I have to stretch myself out, like a cat stretching in the sunshine, and own each of those fears and hurts and sads before I can own my truth.  Right now I don’t know what my truth is.  I thought I did, but so much has happened that I no longer trust that it is as I thought.

Now begins the real work – changing the beliefs that lie under the reiki revelations that I am experiencing.  Reminding myself that there are other ways of thinking about the world and embracing those new discoveries.  Owning the fear and having the courage to move past it.  Believing that this work will bring me where I need to be – layers stripped back like an onion peeled, at the core of my truth, embracing my light.

I am enough.

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The wooden hallway

One of the things I love most about my house is the way that the light changes during the day, the different angles it creates, and the changing hues that the light brings out of the walls and ceilings and furniture.  I loved the way the winter sunshine was striking this wall and warming the wooden floorboards.

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Why I can face this week

Last week was a funny one. I love my job and I love my colleagues, but I’m really struggling at work at the moment. I don’t know whether I’m bored, or tired, or in need of a holiday, or all of the above. There’s something that’s just not quite “clicking” for me at the moment, and I find myself easily distracted by pretty much anything. Even when I tell myself that I am going to focus on a particular task for a specific time period, I seem to end up trotting round to the staff kitchen to make a coffee, or finding something “interesting” on the internet requiring immediate examination. I felt dissatisfied and disappointed in myself, and there were a couple of days there when I felt positively down.

A quiet weekend spent with close friends, family and some alone time has restored my balance somewhat – at least enough for me to be able to brave this coming week. It’s also made me realise that, even when I’m feeling pretty rubbish, I’m still able to recognise the many good things in my life. I’m grateful for so many things, and these are the things that come to mind right now:

– Baby E, and her beautiful parents, not to mention their willingness to let me monopolise baby cuddles when I’m with them;

– takeaway morning coffee at Little Press with my gorgeous colleague;

– listening to winter rain on my tin roof in front of the heater;

– supportive and new friends who offer thoughtful advice in relation to my (possibly overwrought) dilemmas;

– My home, which I love despite its many quirks;

– having a strong body that is getting fitter every day and lets me push my limits (within reason!);

– being fortunate enough to be able to afford to travel to new places and experience different cultures;

– Parents who make encouraging and admiring comments about meals that I serve to them, even when they’re not necessarily sure whether they like the food or not;

– growing awareness of an internal, intuitive life of which I’ve not previously been aware; and

– online vision boards. So easy, so fun.

For what are you grateful?

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Blocked

 

I’ve been feeling blocked lately.  I’m not actually sure what I mean by this, except to say that I feel like there is a lot of stuff going on inside me that needs to come out into the open – but I’m not quite sure how to make this happen.  I tend to internalise personal issues a lot – partly because I feel like those issues aren’t of sufficient importance to warrant bothering others with them, and partly because often I can’t find the words to express what’s going on inside me.

I have had to do a lot of learning and thinking so far this year about ideas and concepts that are very foreign to me.  I am uncomfortable with a lot of it – not because I don’t believe that such things are possible, but more that it doesn’t seem possible that these things could apply to me.  In a way, I am frightened to let myself spend the time considering how these notions might be relevant to my life, so instead I stick my head in the sand and hope that either it will all go away or, even better, it will suddenly become clear to me.  The need to engage with these matters and the fact that I am fumbling with it so badly intimidates me and makes me want to pretend that I’ve just imagined everything, and that I’ll wake up tomorrow and be the same person I’ve always been.  I know it’s not going to happen that way.

So here I am.  Trying to find the courage to face what I must face by writing about it cryptically on the internet, because I’m not brave enough to put names to it either in my head or out loud.  I know that my sense of being blocked won’t really shift until I start dealing with this stuff, but I’m just not sure when I will have the emotional fortitude to do so.

I don’t suppose anyone can sympathise?

 

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On being surprised

Reaching out …

Have you ever felt as if there was something missing in your life but you weren’t quite sure what?  When I started writing on this blog again a couple of weeks ago, my ideas about what I wanted to achieve with it were pretty vague and unformed.  I knew I was looking for something in my life and I thought that perhaps the writing process might reveal to me what exactly I was searching for.  With all the wisdom of nearly three! whole! weeks! of consistent blogging, I can’t say that I’ve completely worked it out, but I do know that I am getting closer to understanding it.  I keep dancing around saying that I want to be more creative and braver and more honest, even though I’m still not quite sure how that is going to manifest itself.  This won’t ever be the prettiest blog, or the most creative blog, and it most certainly won’t be the best written blog.  It’s not intended to be.

I did, however, think that it would be a mostly introspective blog.  By this I mean that I expected that the process of trying to become more creative and braver and more honest would require a lot of time wrestling with my inner self and having heart-to-hearts with my heart and mind.  Which of course it does, and continues to do.  What has really surprised me is the extent to which so many other people out there in BlogLand seem to be doing the same thing at the moment.  Perhaps it is something in the water?  I’ve spent a bit of time over the last week or so wondering what it is about our daily lives that dissatisfies us, or fails to provide us with enough fulfilment.

I don’t have the answer, of course.  Still, my growing awareness that other people are engaged in the same exercise that I am is making me realise that, while there are elements of introspection to this exercise, there are just as many aspects that are causing me to look outwards and to find connections in new and different spaces.  It is really touching (and exciting) that people take the time to reach out and leave a comment or a “like”, and it reminds me that I’m not the only one seeking inspiration in unexpected places.  That, in itself, is inspiring.

So now my delightfully unformed plan is to keep writing and reading and reaching out as consistently as I can, because keeping this to myself isn’t going to work.  Although I may get personal satisfaction from existing in a reclusive blog bubble, I’m realising that there is much more to be gained by creating connections and sharing the ride.  Will you join me?

[Photo credit]

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