Love Letter to Myself

My love – you are a wonderful person. Your compassion and kindness shines from your eyes, your laughter lights up the room. Your sweet gentle presence calms people, grounds them. You listen and people feel heard; people feel seen. Your silliness makes people laugh, lightens their load, even if just for a moment.

People respect you, your insight, your intelligence, your quickness. When you stand tall and proud, and your confidence shines from you like a light, you are unstoppable. You move forward with the things you need to do, exuding grace and calm under pressure; you realize that pain is part of life, and even though you sometimes lose your grip in the intensity of the pain, you always come together again, stand up, dust yourself off, take responsibility for your part in it, and move on.

You are stronger than you know, and more lovely than you know, too. Your soul is light and kindness and gentle strength, insight and wonder, You see the mystery in all things, even the pain and suffering. You stop in awe at the flight of a bird. You drink in the moonlight as if it was an offering from God, which it is. A flower is a magical being to you. A rainbow stops your breath. You see what others don’t, and you want to share it with others.

Your frustrations are based in wanting others to see the wonder and beauty that you see. Your frustrations in love are based on wanting, more than anything, to be able to give of the incredible amount of love you have inside you, and to feel that love from another. When you meet your partner, the light will grow a hundredfold, and the two of you will fill the world with sacred love.

You don’t just see people as a means to an end, but as sacred beings. That’s why they sometimes frighten you; because you don’t always believe that you are sacred, too. But if you can see your own light and stand proudly in it, you will be a goddess, capable of anything. Your humility stops you, because you feel intimidated by the grace you possess – you are, as all are, a sacred conduit to the universe. Your purpose is to see this, to witness it, to bring it out in yourself and others.

The sacred, divine light shining from your eyes is a beacon to others that says “come out and play, divine one. “ All it will take for you to spread your wings and fly, as your favorite song says, is for you to embrace your own divinity, to stand in the light of your own grace, and let the light shine from you like a star of peace and wonder, embracing all in the universe, uplifting all.

Your lover

You

Sometimes you get kicked in the teeth. Not in a bad way, but in a way that says "wake the hell up." That happened to me last night. Someone I love very much, struggling with his own frustrations and fears, took off the kid gloves and made me look at myself in the mirror. After I got over being defensive, hurt, and angry, I realized that, though he maybe could have been kinder about it, that he's right. I am holding on to the pain, I am choosing to be here, in this morass of confusion, hurt, disappointment, and anger. I have lost my way, become somebody I'm not proud of. I continue to cling to things that no longer serve me, and I'm deathly afraid to let them go. My ego is ascendant, trying to force him to be someone he's not because it would feed my ego, because I think it would make me happier. I've become a whiny, depressed, sad little child, hungry for something I can never have, and I continue to seek solace in the cave of my own fears.

In talking about each of our fears, I remembered going into a trance once, at an experiential workshop in Portland, and encountering, in a deep, dark, dripping, primordial and feminine forest, a laughing fox and a beautiful laughing naked woman who took me on a flying, laughing tour of the forest, and who told me I was perfect, that I'm in the right place, that there's nothing wrong with me. I had forgotten the feeling of being OK, deeply, profoundly, perfectly OK, the way the enlightened ones say we are.

Remembering it again made me sad - sad that I had let go of the memory, and sad that I can't seem to let go of other memories and other stories of who I am. Me the lonely, misunderstood one, the ugly one, the one nobody loves. My friend, who sees auras and energy, looked at me with tears in his eyes and told me that he can't understand how I can't see myself the way I am, can't see the kindness, compassion, beauty, and light that he sees. I felt like crying, too, wanting more than anything to see that.

He told me something that others have told me: that one day, I will drop the baggage, just open my hand and drop it, just like that, and that only then will I be free to embody my true self. As he said it, I felt a deep sense of fear, fear of letting that pain go. As if that pain is my only identity - what makes me who I am. Fear of having to discover a new way to be, one where the self-pity and sadness, so comfortable to me, are no longer valid paths. The one where my ego is not the most important thing in the world, where my longing for someone to make it all stop hurting, and my tendency to take out of rage and hurt on others, is simply no longer acceptable. The one where it's my responsibility and mine alone to be my joyous, kindhearted, compassionate giving self, and where I can no longer blame the world or anyone else for how I feel. That kind of responsibility is terrifying.

I don't know if I have the strength yet to let go. Even knowing all this, I feel the fear and the resistance. I make plans to hole up with vodka and movies, to numb myself yet again because I don't want to face the truth. I worry that I'm losing my friend, yet know that this worry is just my own grasping on to something I'm comfortable with, even if our relationship has been painful and confusing almost from the beginning.

For awhile now I've felt that I'm transforming into something, someone else. This kick in the teeth is part of that, I feel. Maybe, as my friend said, I'm not yet ready, but maybe I'm getting closer. Maybe I need more kicks in the teeth. Or maybe I can steel myself to face myself, finally, in a way I never have before. And to let all those old stories of pain go.

I feel like I'm stepping off the world into some kind of void. The sadness threatens to rise up and swallow me whole. In some ways, I welcome it - it feels like a sort of death, but as death is, also the start of something new. But in other ways I'm deathly afraid, ashamed of the actions that brought me here, embarrassed at how I continue to not be able to let go, afraid that this feeling of deep, soul-shattering emptiness will never fade, and that I will never embody the person, the energy, that I feel I'm meant to. That I'm a waste of precious breathe and space. The longing is immense - more than any one relationship or any one situation. When the tears come, they're not just tears for myself, but for everyone and all the pain that exists. I feel nobody else understands this. I feel so alone. The thing that keeps me going is the tiniest glimmer, the smallest spark of an idea, that maybe my solitude is the chrysalis, and that maybe, someday, I'll have the energy to burst out of the protective cloak and become something I've never been before.

My lessons/gifts from the universe today

1) A gorgeous, amazing day and the inspiration to drive up to Napa

2) Classic car show in Calistoga - damn, I like a nice Ford Mustang, and those 60's era Chevys are nice, too. Turn me on. (Message to me: accept that you are a car ho. )

3) John Lennon singing "To Everything there is a season" in the cafe (message to me: things happen for a reason and nothing is permanent, so relax)

4) A road sign pointing to "(a very significant person in my life's name)'s Way" which I did not take. (Message: who knows)

5) A spider belaying on its own thread, a very, very long way between trees (message to me: I have no idea)

6) A really pretty metallic green and yellow bug with a red underbelly (Message: I don't know - metallic bugs are pretty?)

7) A lady relieving herself in the woods (???)

8) right after the lady, a convenient side trail to a pretty creek so I could go sit there and avoid seeing the lady on the trail, saving us both embarrassment

9) the realization that I had just been thinking of the word "Abundance" and had separated it into "A Bun Dance", and laughing because the lady was doing a bun dance! OK, maybe only funny to me.

10) The image above. (Message: Be patient with yourself as you would a child. You're still learning to walk....)

On Uncertainty

I have to say that this is the hardest thing I think I've ever done. I feel pathetic writing that, since it's so ridiculously mundane compared to what a lot of people go through, but it's true. It's triggered all my deep-seated fears of abandonment, my hidden conviction that I'm worthless and unloveable, my terror of the unknown and the uncontrollable, my longing for someone to stay with me, love me, and protect me. There's a reason why I never liked those scare-inducing rides at the amusement park and never liked taking physical risk, never liked watching horror movies or telling ghost stories; I don't like being afraid, being out of control, and having to sit with uncertainty. Let's just say that I am not a candidate for sky-diving.

Now, sitting here, surrounded by the unknown, by the infinite possibilities generated by my very imaginative brain, and the worst part: not being able to check them out with you or reach you at all, I find I'm terrified. And in response to that terror, I worry. I worry incessantly, with all my soul. There's an ache in my gut, a gaping chasm of blackness; there's no trust that things will be alright in the end, no hope that we will ever get through this, and a nagging feeling that you are now lost to me forever, almost like you never existed. Sometimes I fear you are dead, and that I will never know, because nobody would think to tell me. I recognize this worry as a way to try to control things, like somehow my worry will reach across the physical space between us and help things turn out alright. At least I'm not just sitting here doing nothing! Because there is nothing I can do. And that terrifies me.

To deal with the terror, which some people may call anxiety but feels like absolute, crippling terror, I turned to a technique called EMT, or Eye Movement Technique, based on EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). It was easy, I could do it by myself, and it works for me. During one session, trying to calm my anxiety, I concentrated on this gaping terror-feeling in my gut, and after a half a minute of tapping, I had a vision of a little girl, cowering in absolute fear in the corner of a dark room. It was more than just fear of some specific threat out there that she was feeling, it was an all-encompassing panic-stricken fear of the world; of where she had found herself by being born. Like a wide-eyed, horrified sense of "What the hell is this place?"

I felt such compassion for her and concern for her that I started to cry. I wanted to hug her and tell her it was all going to be alright, that she was safe. It sounds so cheesy, but I know that little girl was me - my inner child or my inner terror, anyway - the thing that is terrified of being brutalized by this bizarre place we call reality; the little girl who hides and cowers, trying not to be noticed, and not knowing how to stand up and blossom. So that lasted for a few minutes, and then I felt a little better. But the worry, the agony of the not-knowing is still in there, if a bit calmer.

I wonder what I'm supposed to be learning by having you in my life. How to let go? How to deal with uncertainty and impermanence? How to ride the waves? I worry about you, I want you home, I send you all my love, and yes, I let you go.

May you be peaceful
may you be happy
May you be healthy
May you find joy