Wisdom from Pain, Learning fromThe Earth, And Living Fully
Submitted by olinka on Sun, 11/16/2008 - 11:07amMaybe I think too much. I've been told that before. Maybe I feel too much with too much intensity, maybe I remember too much as well. Well you know what, quite honestly, fuck that.
I have spent my life so far believing my experience wasn't valid, being embarassed of my abuse, feeling like I take up too much space. I am done with that. That's what we are supposed to exist as, not individuals that are integral part of healthy sustainable communities, but dependant on the system, stuck on self destruct, scared of death and scared of life. Full of crippling fear.
I'm not making sense. it's too early in the morning to make sense. i just know that i don't want to die just yet. and i don't want to die for a while. and i don't wanna slowly kill myself through bingeing and purging and fucking up my body, or getting addicted to medication.
(i haven't purged in a week by the way and that's a huge step for me. let's see if i can make it another one. and i flushed my klonopin down the toilet.yay!)
But I want to live again. Not the semi life I've been letting myself live, with half of me closed off, full of memories that tell me I'm a waste of oxygen, that all i do is ruin.
The kind of life where I relize my time here is finite but sacred, where I allow myself to feel, to mourn, mourn the dying autumn, see the beauty in decay but to appreciate life all the more for it. Appreciate the love I feel, the staggering love thats not just romantic, but the love I feel for existance, for people I hold dear to me, to the earth, the love that's sometimes inconvenient, that cannot coexist with denial. when we live in a culture that is based on denial, the denial of death, the denial of the dirty shitty things about existance on this planet, the denial of environmental destruction, war , death, and poverty, and how our lifestyles are completely dependant on these things, we live semi lives. we don't mourn or grieve, the love and compassion and pain in our hearts is silenced. it's incompatable with surviving in the way we are used to surviving.
But I've really realized i can't do that anymore. Throwing out a life I was blessed enough to have is so wasteful and unappreciative, throwing it out because I'm too scared to feel and too acknowledge? That is such bullshit. And as of right now, it's over. What precious and limited time I have to learn, to create, to love and have fun, and to learn from grief and pain. That's how wisdom is aqcuired after all. Wisdom isn't acuired through denying our ugly feelings, but from feeling them through. Pain and death have something to teach us. And I am learning from this season, through observing the earth growing through it's cycle of death, rebirth, and bloom. Through my many attempted deaths, and through my many rebirths. And I am young but I will no longer waste my time. Otherwise I find myself giving up on dreams at 18. Thinking, even though it's been my life long dream to be an artist with whatever medium seems to work for me ( so far poetry and fiction i believe), i can't, thats ridiculous. I'm useless when it comes to activism, i'm disposabe. Anyways, I'm going to dismiss the above.
Recently, I've begun to further explore my spirituality. I was raised Russian Orthodox, went to Catholic School, and abandoned all of that at age 13. I became interested in witchcraft and paganism but then began to feel way self conscious about it.
I've recently begun to connect to my spiritulity again. In really simple ways, like going outside and listening to the leaves rustle in the wind, meditating, praying. And here is my view on the divine, on the spirit. It is not something I "believe in" anymore than I need to "believe in" rocks or trees or the fact that i have two arms with 5 fingers that are typing at this key board. It is something empiracally observed, in my case, if I just listen, pay attention. It is not above or below or outside of us, but inherent in everything. It is the smae thing that drives the creative force within us, the same thing that fills our hearts up with compassion, it's not at all seperate. And it is something I no longer want to deny, but instead to acknowledge and embrace and learn from. Witches have always existed, they were the town healers, midwives, wise women. This is an identity I should embrace, a history I should learn about