My cure for writer's block is to blog about Art, Love, Romance, Books, Technology, Media, Politics, Writing, Culture, Religion, and Society with Humor, Style, and a little bit of Poetry.
I've always experienced a sense of duality within myself. Its a study of masks and how we portray ourselves in the world and what is true within ourselves. Needless to say I believe identity is and should be an ongoing pursuit for all people. In many ways my writing confronts this on another level. However before my pen became mature enough to relate this, my art always seemed to encapsulate what I needed to express.
Herself Myself was started as a rough pencil sketch that I then fleshed out with chalk pastels.
In this self portrait both women are me. This is the face I show the world, brash foreword facing exposed and unapologetic in the stance.
The other is the hidden me who is afraid vulnerable hiding behind the other and sorry for even existing, always striving for perfection knowing its utter impossible and unattainable nature.
This statement is the peak of a very important conversation
I was having with my bestie last night about love. At the onset of the New Year
I made a promise to myself in regards to my emotions and how I express
them.For as long as I can
remember I've tried to make myself as unemotional as possible.I saw it as weakness as a lack of
discipline and self-control.I
thought it was base and beneath me. I dislike scenes and emotional outbursts
but more than anything I disliked them on me. It was very simple. My emotions
give people power over me. I will rob them of that power.
It’s a very authoritative idea of a ruling mind.I believe astrologically it is a very
masculine Pluto or Mars disposition. In women it is likened to the Eris, Lilith
position which is of the Queen of the Underworld Persephone herself.Robbed of her innocence a new
embodiment is given. Let's just say the story has always felt. .familiar.
Hades and Seph
I always told myself that my emotional disengagement was
just a sign of advanced maturity. A hallmark of class and grace under pressure.
Which it can be seen as. I believe those who have had to deal with me when I am
in an emotional clinch call it something else. . . cold, icy, quite a bit
frosty. And it is.The statements
are calm, and poetically polite. My face dead cold giving not an ounce of
emotion and my manner dismissive.
It is the defense of a child robbed of innocence of being as
emotional as she can be. It is the foolish attempt of one who feels deeply at
mastering what can be an all-consuming opus. My emotions always felt like a
cliff overlooking raging rapids that plunge into a waterfall that ends
somewhere at the center of the earth.The levels of emotional lost I could and still can experience are
extreme.So I've always practiced
at being practical in regards to them because practicality is the last of their
concerns.
In many ways my emotions are always battling my intellect,
which is the heavy Mercurial influence in me. However being a highly
instinctual person I realized that denying emotions was the first step in
taking away my natural gifts. So balance had to be attained. Which meant I had
to explore my extremes on both ends.I'm just glad I survived it. It was a near thing.
So back to my new year's resolution. I told myself I was no
longer going to stifle how I feel about anyone.I in fact practiced this by sending very personal very
gushing messages of love to my closest pals who in some way inspire me by doing
nothing more than being who they are. The results were as I expected.I got back some gushing replies and
silence.I knew who would do what.
The gushers are just what they say they are.The none gushers, the silent, were whelmed. You see all of
these people feel as deeply as I do and I know what such a message would've
done to me. I would've gushed back but first I would've needed to be
silent.And sometimes when you're
silent you just are because "Wow look its a unicorn, how cool is
that." Bask in the moment.
Me and my bestie in film
As my bestie and sister from another mister put it, all her
life she had thought that family should respond and behave as I have with her
and yet due to never really seeing it our having it, my acceptance of her
became like walking into your living room and seeing a unicorn. In the message
I sent was what it was always supposed to be but never quite was, forcing the
person to truly believe deep in their soul that it cannot exist. And then holy
smokes there it is.It was a very
pertinent explanation that stuck a chord with me and made an odd kind of sense.
It led me to a thought process that became spoken that symbolizes most
relationship troubles in this world.If you walked into a room and saw a unicorn what would you really do?
The response tells us a lot about how we as individuals
process love. But not just any love, Unconditional love; this facet of human
emotion few of us experience and none of us feel worthy of. The truth is of
course you don't deserve it, but look it’s a unicorn.Its beautiful, wondrous, miraculous and most of all a gift.
Would you shoo it away for its own good or would you keep and cherish it for as
long as it would let itself be yours.Most of us say we of course would choose the second option.However the truth is many of us
actually choose the first.
What they are made of
Let me explain. Relationship patterns are an interesting
process because usually the person committing the pattern cannot see it.In someone else eyes its so clear.Oh you date the same fundamental type
of person and are always surprised at the results? The person watching shakes
their head and considers this a lost case and cause.And it is but not for the reasons you may think.Those people aren’t stupid; none of us
are really stupid.We love patterns.
In general we choose what we know, what we want and what we expect. Dating the
same type of person guarantees that every relationship ends the same way.There is comfort in knowing where
you'll be before you get there. And we humans are nothing if we aren't addicted
to comfort.Even if that comfort
is pain.The need is sometimes
nothing more than to fulfill the pattern.
This is also a very sad declaration on the nature of love
and how it seems to be increasingly viewed as a burden that takes away instead
of as a gift that gives. Most of us choose to chase away the unicorn not for
its sake but for our own. The specter of unconditional love is such a miracle
blessing that many of us instinctively choose to avoid it due to a higher
self-preserving fear of loss and potential rejection in regards to attaining
our dreams. The irony is that I think most of us do believe in some part of
ourselves that we really can’t have it all.Living your career dreams leads to sacrificing your
relationship ones.
Often I explain that I don't do something or haven't done
something because I've had peak experiences of it and now can't be bothered by
less.The real reason could be
that I honestly don't want to find anything that would make those past
experiences less beautiful. I want them preserved as the peak to make the pain
I experienced worth the effort in the long run. And I use them as a road map to
attaining something similar thinking that this time it might work. It is an odd
sense of displaced loyalty to a younger me that had the illusions of a child
looking for pixie dust in every kiss while telling herself there is no such
thing as pixie dust. When faced with pixie dust you will deny deny deny until
you have no choice but to see that the weird horned horse is really a
unicorn.But if I were honest it
didn’t look like a unicorn then, but somehow it looks like one now.We either traumatize or romanticize our
pasts.Its human nature.The bad relationship was really bad;
the one that got away was so wonderful.But it is the lackluster present that enables a dramatic past because if
we’re honest the lackluster present is actually a lot more like the dramatic
past than we like to admit.The
implication being we are still making the same mistakes and learning nothing
from them.
Oh naughty black unicorn
It is the same for a person who continues to date those who
can never really love them the way they need to be loved. But this is a
different level of affliction I think. Addiction to love is a terrifying thing.
It is a declaration that someone else has a level of control over your well-being
that could potentially end your desire to exist without them. It is a lure and
a trap that many find no solace or comfort in the idea of attaining.They instead choose to forge temporary
unions with tried and true results of interest, excitement and inevitable
endings.They tell themselves it
will end differently this time.Deep down inside however they realize that it’s too similar to previous relationships
which are why they are preferred. At the core of this is the desire to win the
heart of the one that started the mess to begin with. In every new person that
holds the attraction the way the one before did, they try again expecting
different outcomes.
The result is a declaration about self-worth and what you
consider sacrifice to be.Love is
within itself a paradox, a selfless selfish thing. It gives and takes, it
births it kills. It is all and none. The true fabric that holds this thing
together because it can be everything and nothing at all. It fills in the empty
spaces.There are many people who
lack the proper perception of their self-worth, mentally, physically,
emotionally, and spiritually. It is a fundamentally human flaw and sometimes it
takes viewing yourself from the eyes of others to temper it. But self-worth is
a highly misunderstood concept.It
is a process of finding all parts of yourself worthy of care and love. It is
why religion is so popular. Most religions are based on an idea that the human
spirit that embodies a human body is worth unconditional love just by dent of
being a creation of an all knowing all seeing all wise and powerful God.It establishes the ultimate authority
on loving yourself. But this is not really a love that can provide a true
understanding of self worth.For
some religiously minded people they have done the work, the soul searching and
the forgiveness. Some are just going with it.But a true dialogue that defines self worth starts with
self.Its starts with looking at
yourself under a harsh lens and being very critical. This is why people usually
find self-worth through either successful or failed love. The successful lover
loves your flaws to the point that you realize they aren’t that bad.A failed love affair forces you to take
those flaws to heart and may make you aware of them.In the last is where self-worth is mostly lost, as some
people don't hold the glass up to see what is worthy in them, just why they no
longer have a lover.
Me and my bestie in our heads
In the core of that thought is sacrifice. The trick to the
thing like all else lies in sacrifice. In order for my bestie to find that
unicorn she had to sacrifice, thoughts of family, thoughts of herself,
everything.For people like me, my
privacy, my truth must not be held in, it must be made public.My hard fought for emotional self-control
must be ripped to shreds at my feet.
My favorite song about love is by Mumford & Sons. Its
called White Blank Page.Within
this song is the pathway to the light. In this song is the greatest
sacrifice.As the singer finally
understands a fundamental divinely uncontestable truth about love that the
heartbroken hardly ever ask themselves. The thought centers around the idea,
that you can be better, you can do something different and love will be the
result. You can read articles about your attitude, consider new style
trends.All the things you can do
to make yourself more lovable will not change one simple thing. Who you decide
to love. In the end you might just need to date someone you would never date
and consider a perspective you’ve never considered.Sacrifice all of your thoughts about your fault in something
and accept a truth about your inherit worth.Accept that the person was never able to see it and no . . .
that was not your fault.
The biggest lie ever told to us that we constantly tell
ourselves is that the height of true love is the act of sacrificing your own
happiness for another's. Its
sounds so very noble and gallant doesn't it? Very Christian, for God so loved the world he sacrificed his
only son. The truth is that we are not gods; we are mortal beings with finite
existences and a limited amount of time to achieve a sense of true self and
happiness.
True selflessness doesn't come from sacrifice to another for
the sake of love. This is an egotistical idea and is based in an exaggerated
sense of self-importance and aggrandization. It is an ego trick that we play on
ourselves to attempt to trap another person in our lives. True selflessness
comes from existing as you are created, as you are, and being willing to give
as much of who you are to the world as possible. Thus the idea of being without self.
Mermaid Sacrifice
You are not you, but everyone. Fulfilling your needs is just
as important as everyone else's because we are one. Selfless. Please keep in
mind that this message is coming from a romance writer. I love the idea of the
big sacrifice, but I'm a realist and I believe in love as it is more than the
love of a nihilistic ideology fairytales and religion have peppered us with for
decades now.
This supposed sacrifice is instead just the opposite of true
nobility. It is not a sacrifice
but an attempt at martyrdom to attain some unseen prize that only the person
claiming the sacrifice can truly name. But what do they really attain? Resentment. When you have sacrificed all that brings you happiness and
joy for someone people have unrealistic expectations about what the outcome of
that should be. How is the other
person supposed to respond? Is
there any response that is good enough?
Just death right?
Seppuku
I think back to the days of samurai. They would commit ritual suicide before
suffering the humiliation of losing a battle. How many people died this way without accomplishing
anything. The margin of error is
too small and unrealistic. It is something that has always been held as a brave
and honorable act to willingly face your own death without flinching when a
grave injustice has been done.
But when the injustice is only to pride and ego, where is
the glory gained? This was an act of extreme cowardice. Instead of learning and growing from a
lost battle, these men refused to endure the momentary sting of shame from loss
and instead chose to end their lives. They let a simple perception of ego self
devalue the entirety of their lives to that point. I believe people do this in regards to relationships as well
and it is equally cowardly.
Resentment
We all know relationships are hard work. But we as people enjoy work. What we don't always enjoy is the work
that is available to us. This is
where we need to talk about the difference between people who work fueled by
passion and people who are passionate about work. Because there is a reason besides monetary gain that work as
an institution exists. We need it.
Our souls, our bodies, our minds need the constant interaction and adjusting. Our greatest strength is our adaptability.
So we must flex this muscle often.
We are different each and every one of us. Some of us work tirelessly fueled by
our passion to work while others are passionate about working. I think most
people can be separated into these two quadrants.
People who are fueled by passion for their work are an odd
breed. Artsy, athletic, doers who
need to feel like what they are doing carries some importance and weight. Beyond that they self identify in a lot
of ways with what they are doing for a living. Its' not a job its a part of who
they are.
Inexplicable Superhero Couple Nightwing and Starfire
When fueled by passion to work the relationships need to
embody similar principles or it will not work. They don't have to be identical,
however the core beliefs have to center around work being a craft that is
constantly growing and changing.
Renewal is very important with these types. Understanding of temperament and the occasional huff about
nothing at all. They need an air of excitement and mystery. A hint of constant revolution and
change. A keen understanding of something not just being done right, but as
close to perfect as humanly possible.
Those with a passion to work can do nearly any job that
gives them the basic things they need.
These people are luckier when it comes to relationships because they
like the work of being in a relationship as opposed to how the work identifies
them. They are truly the love the one you’re with type. They like the structure
of someone to come home to. The
idea routine of knowing how the night is going to end and the next day is going
to begin. They enjoy the simple
pleasures of life. Human
companionship, warmth and those stresses of day-to-day life because they are
service oriented.
The key to understanding what relationships work best for
you is understanding what work is best for you. Often you’ll find people in a dead end job they hate in a
relationship that is only slightly better. Sometimes they have an amazing job and their relationships
suffer, or vise versa. But in this work life which shows what people are
willing to do for what they need is the key to what they need to be happy in
all aspects of their lives.
Avoid resentment and live for yourself. Understand what you need in a relationship
and why it makes you happy.
Compromise is path to self-delusion. You should always love the work to the point that is doesn’t
feel like a job and never settle for something less. Know that your happiness is worth the wait and whether in a
relationship or not, you will have it.
