dying
Right now, I’m currently sitting in the SDU VIP Lounge in RIO before my first flight to São Paulo, then Florianópolis. Even yesterday, I felt this “air of change” glowing all around me. I genuinely relish this feeling. Everything seems more vibrant: sounds, tastes, colors. It’s honestly natures form of ecstasy, without the hangover or depression thereafter.
All is good.
But, as I sit, here, listening to one of my favorite albums, Mr. Money With The Vibe, with a belly full of warm food and delicious coffee, I realize that I am overwhelmed by the sensation of being in free-fall. Despite feeling soothed, focused, and empowered by my continuous ability to handle and take care of shit, I feel this heaviness within my chest.
I feel alone. And I feel terrified.
This sensation isn’t new. I actually think these two emotions are a constant, and I’ve learned to simply accept them, love on them, and allow them to fade into the background while I go on with my day-to-day life. But, every couple months or so (at least twice a year), I go through cycles of reaching my max capacity, or I make a grave mistake that offsets my carefully constructed sense of rootedness and balance, and I have a week or two of panic attacks.
I feel that energy building within me, now. The truth of this is actually filling my eyes with tears as I write this… I know that it’s related to be seeing this guy, again, and realizing that - with certainty - that delusion is ending. All delusions associated with him, really, are coming to a close. The epic journey of the last 4 years is ending, and a new journey of an unknown purpose is unfolding, but jaggedly. A part of me feels weary, like I’m on the verge of breaking and not having the wherewithal to get back up….
Again, I always allow space for these emotions - we’re human; we cannot escape the experience of emotions - , and do my best to self-soothe why I simultaneously do my best to identify the best path forward, perceptions that need to be adjusted, and next steps that need to take place in order to establish a new semblance of balance, again. (This is just one of the ways that I’ve learned to leverage my polarities for my benefit).
….I cannot escape the reality that old parts of me are dying….
My continued ability to handle extreme life events and stress in isolation is both my greatest gift and my most debilitating weakness. I have trained myself, and most of the people in my life, that I got it. I can handle it. I don’t need the day-to-day contact or the time investment. I’m good.
And, yes, when I’m going through disaster, I do genuinely prefer to go through it alone. I struggle to rely on others, and even when I do, I sometimes feel like people want to focus way too much on the pain or the “I’m so sorry you’re having to go through that” instead of taking on the perspective that I am more than capable of finding immense strength in any situation that comes my way, no matter how challenging. I think this is where my “Inner Genius” is, in transformation and moving through struggle with renewed and newfound strength. So, I don’t feel like I need someone to hold my hand when it is quite literally my gift to power through.
That said….
The day-to-day communion is something I learned to devalue because I keep choosing people in my life that don’t feel the need to invest in the little things like that. At least, this is my experience with female friends..
I have a surprising amount of close male friends, and yes, they are all non-romantic in nature. I’ve actually had direct conversations with each of them about this, either initiated by me or by them, that there was nothing short of deep love in the dynamic, but not romantically so. The straightforward and reliable nature of my male friendships is something that provides me with stability and sustenance without me feeling suffocated or boxed in. These friends send me “check-in” messages, and we make time to have a genuine exchange, even if it’s quickly in passing. Intentions transcend words, so the mutual affection is received without having to strive.
I have a few female friendships like this as well. There’s this soul link to us that we both feel supported by and empowered to be free…. My most cherished moments are when my female friends offer do tarot readings for me. My friend Kelly is like that; she helped me prepare for this month by giving me a couple readings, and recording them for me so I can reference them during this next month. I deeply cherish being allowed to receive this, since I love to gift the same to my friends.
But, unfortunately, the more common experience I have with women is me giving, and essentially taking on the masculine, and them happily receiving, essentially taking on the feminine, but in an imbalanced and net draining dynamic.
There is this imbalance in the feminine right now where abundance and receiving are “deserved”. Yes, that is also what I believe and how I feel about it, but there are always always always a positive and a negative expression of every energy. In these female friendships, these friends take on my generosity as “deserved receiving” without a need to reciprocate. It’s as if they accept that the Universe is providing for them, through me, and that they role is to accept and bask in the abundance received. Again, also true. I think Spirit works through us all, and I’m happy to share my always-growing abundance with others who I love. I love love love doing that. But, in these dynamics, if I am to receive, I have to ask and ask and ask, wait and wait and wait, and then I get pennies, if that.
But life is all about energetically-equal reciprocity.
I receive love by the presence of someone in my life in a consistent and reliable way, especially when it counts. I can say, without hesitation, that the female friendships that fit into the pattern, above, are never there when it matters. Truly. Unless I beg and grovel, and bend to what works for them, and continue to empowering their feminine, they are largely unable to acknowledge or carry out the same energy in reverse.
This people pleasing part of me, the part of my that is quite literally trying to “buy” love and loyalty, is one of the parts of me that are currently dying.
As I’ve referenced in past post, the people-pleasing side of me has been dying for some time. I’ve been working on it, consciously, for years, but we all know that our mentalities are like icebergs. We can work all we want on the conscious, above water, bullshit, but at some point, we have to essentially wait until the roots of the mentality are unearthed and conscious-enough for us to clear it out, fully.
So, all the work I’ve been doing over the past several years is working. All those wack ass mirrors of self-realization, all of the inner child work and the work on self-forgiveness as well as self-ownership. All was not for not. Just because I still choose friendships like this, I am less and less comfortable in them for less and less time. I’m finally getting to the roots of the matter. To the last bits.
Does it piss me off to look at the actual, financial, cost I had with each one of these friendships? OH fuck yea. As I said in the last post, the true cost has historically been in the $1000s of dollars. But, for some reason, I’ve always had this delusional awareness of my true abundance, so I allow myself to reframe these as the cost of the lesson. If I don’t want to keep shelling out $1000s of dollars for lessons, I better make each one count, and get every fucking learning I can from them.
So, right now, as I sit in the airport, I lament over the fact that my path is still one of solitude because I need to clear more energy, and some people, from my life to continue on. Do I hope they want to reframe with me and create a new dynamic? Of course. But, what I’ve learned over time, is as soon as the explosive defensive reactions occur, that person has already decided to stay the same. And I can’t carry a boulder with me if it’s continuing to reopen wounds that hold me back (and without any care or willingness to work with me to change the dynamic).
My life does not have space for unreciprocated dynamics. I love truthfully, and I love DEEPLY. I want to grow with my circle, not empower them at the complete personal cost to myself. Me being a self-made martyr is probably one of the weakest and most manipulative things I can do as a person. I have to take ownership for the fact that trying to buy love is actually exactly that: manipulative.
As this manipulative part of me continues to die, the part of me screaming to be owned in its entirety is my Queen of Swords nature. I need to embrace my impossibly high standards and my desire for high-quality and present relationships, and really, truly, accept that I’m not for everyone. I don’t expect people to change for me, but I do expect people to change with me, I don’t want or desire for people to bend to my will, but I do expect my inner circle to care about their impact on me, no matter how unintentional. I desire for true, meaningful, connections. Ones that feed my heart just as much as I feed theirs. Ones that show up for me just as much as I show up for them. Ones that invest in my uniqueness without me begging for it, or diminishing my needs to fit to what they are capable of providing, like how I go out of my way to invest in their uniqueness.
My soul is starving, and it’s my responsibility to clean house and create space for these dynamics to come into my life, both physically and emotionally.
If you want to be in my life, come correct. Or I’ll simply remove you.
That being said, I really don’t know what the fuck is next. I feel lost and aimless, like there’s no true understanding and connection to a specific goal. All of my desires to be an author, to be creative, to learn languages, to travel - all of this feels so… empty. Like there’s this lifelessness to me. The current culture seems to teach us that this isn’t worth it, that you can find inner fulfillment and happiness, alone.
And I am here to refute the fuck out of that.
I really despise all of these half-measured positive thinking and spiritual jargon because, on paper, I actually have accomplished all of those things. I’m financially independent, with a solid career, I’ve lived everywhere I’ve wanted to live, in the lovely, lavish, apartments,, like in downtown Santa Monica, and had uncountable US-dollar funded vacation-living in some of the best cities in the world. And while there are more things to “check off” on this list, I’m fucking tired of living by someone else’s rulebook. Even my attempts at divergence become the new norm; I started looking into being nomadic and manifesting that life in 2018; come 2020, 2021, 2022 -> being a nomad is actually quite normal and actually ruining/ heavily impacting economies worldwide. So much for veering from the norm….
But I do know that I gotta stop holding back. I gotta allow myself to be the bridge-burning that I am without the negative connotation around that term. I wanted a life like this. I crave a life like this. I am only fulfilled in a life like this.
I think the crux of the weight is from me playing too small because I just wanted to be included. But we cannot make circumstances work. They do, or they don’t. And I say this from the perspective of “the right fight is worth fighting”; not just for an easy life, but for a fulfilled life.
My soul is starving because I’m starving myself……(I do genuinely hate how I can always find a way to point responsibility back to me)….. but at least I’m in control of me, so I can make changes and be done with it.
One day at a fucking time…..