(no subject)

Today, Like Every Other Day

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

-Rumi

"Spiritual Retreat"

Fair enough.

So it was a rough, brutal weekend. I don't think I went a full hour on Friday or Saturday without crying. I didn't sleep much, I couldn't eat what passed for food there (I lost 5 lbs). It was pretty fantastic. People there kept asking me if I was enjoying myself, and the answer was, "I'm not supposed to be enjoying it, but I'm doing the things I need to do." The other thing they asked me was whether I was ok. The answer to that was also no, "but I will be". Yeah, I react to intense emotional experiences especially intensely, and so often I'll be very much more into something than everyone else. Well, than most other people.

Good call on going, therefore. I needed some space to figure things out.

I've done a lot of things. One of the things I've done is to set down some of this pain I've been carrying. You know the thing where the person hurts you by going away, and what you have left of them is the pain, and if you let it go it's letting some of the last things about them go? And then you're left without them?

Well, I let some of that pain go. Man do I cling tight.

I also went into the ocean (it didn't feel cold at the time) and danced hard a little and was held by people when I was crying. Some of those people even seemed to understand.

Upon coming home to familiar things and leaving the mindspace with the place, that's let me realise something else about letting go. I don't need to set my relationship rules right smack up against my actual boundaries; I don't need to stretch as much as I possibly can in a relationship. I can set them in, away from the edge, closer to comfort levels than breaking points. That way things would go smoother for me, should I want them smoother. I think I might.

Am I indoctrinated into a cult? Nope. Will I go back next year? Likely. Has my religious/spiritual belief system changed? Nope. I still use the tools available to me when I need them, and this is a good tool.

I am so very tired, and fairly hungry. These are easily remedied. Cleaning the rat cages really drives it home that I'm home, yannow? Work happens tomorrow, it's a self-directed day at my other job so it'll be really relaxing to get outside and put my hands in the dirt.

There was a point this morning when no one was there and I was walking back from the ocean, all alone in the drizzle, and I was sad because I had let a whole mess of pain go and I was grieving it for a little bit. I wanted to hold someone's hand, but there was no one there and besides, no one's hand seems very steadying anymore; everyone leaves, right? So I held my own hand for a minute, it felt really stupid to do if anyone was watching, but it felt really good. I was holding onto me, and I was real, and I was there for me.

There was also a point, near the end of the morning, where I walked around hugging my friends. It's been a long time since I felt like I wanted that kind of contact-- not hold-me-up hugs, but just a nice sort of sharing there-together physical experience. It was good. I don't know that I'm going back to that sort of lifestyle, but it is good to revisit it.

I also descended into near-full hippie regalia at points. That is always divine.

Tell me, what would you do differently if you felt that your life was a blank slate, starting now?