Friday, December 23, 2011

Fortune Cookies

Calamity is the touchstone of a brave mind. I pulled this from a fortune cookie while riding down Frankstown Ave today after a deep conversation with one of my closest friends. I sometimes feel like I'm always riding the edge of calamity. I'd like to think myself brave, but I watch the waters of unknown swirl around me and I feel the push of fear. This polyamory, this openess that I proclaim, the entering into relationships a a full person, a person who is reclaiming herself, who is no longer willing to harm herself,  is a risky business. I find that I am finding myself reflected in so many challenging, rich, deep, and scary ways, that my mind is constantly reacting as though I'm on the edge of calamity. How to remain open... when it hurts? when I don't know the answers? when I have never been secure enough to be vunerable and honest with myself. This practice of openess is a practice of relationship with myself. A practice of self-care, self-love. A practice of listening to my own needs and having compassion for others and their needs.And loving, constantly challenging myself to love... so that I heal and support the healing of others.

The touchstone for my mind is often not calamity, but death. stillness. finality. the opposite of living. It's been a struggle to have a baseline that does not include harming myself, physically. The struggle has been for me to find value in myself. To feel like I am worth life. I have been conditioned, trained, brainwashed...
to feel that I am worth no more than I sacrifice for others, I am worth no more than my martyrdom. There is no bravery in martyrdom, in purposefully throwing yourself on the pyre when you haven't taken the time to realize your own beauty, to worship the stars in your own eyes, to feel the purpose of your own heart. The world needs no more martyrs, but lovers.

Sometimes us
lovers may die.
but if we die, I say let us die while living,
let us not wait to die,
let us not hold our breaths
and wait for our crosses of suffering.

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