into beauty

A shotgun series of questions to see if I’m close. Did I live into the dreams that the young bright eyed boy dreamed I might, before he knew about all the malice and greed in the world? Did I learn to connect and care well? Did I create safe places for myself and others to become more truly themselves? Did I find my way on the dangerous path of healing towards a wholeness I’ve longed for deeper than anything I can remember? Did I remember you?

I hope you’re well wherever you are. It’s not always easy to say yes to the aspects of ourselves or life that are asking for attention. Sometimes I think it’s maybe one of the harder things. Fear is the mind killer though. I was thinking back over this last season and how that energy has been a prominent voice in my ear as I’ve decided to follow a sound deeper than fear into beauty. It was a situation where, had I materialized what fear was telling me I needed to do, I would not be where I am right now. I wouldn’t have learned the things about myself that I’m learning in the same ways. I think the merciful thing is that I keep getting chances.

Life isn’t some binary situation where there are only two outcomes. There have been times when I gave up, but I realized after awhile that I had to keep choosing to give up and that’s really depressing to do. That’s a journey down a path that takes me places I have no desire to be. Saying yes is also a practice. It’s something that grows inside of me as I lean into the process of becoming. It’s so much more interesting than listening to fear. I’m violently opposed to the governance of fear in my life. There are deeper more true sounds to follow through this varied terrain we’ve collectively come to call life. The topography changes and sometimes I am running out of clean water or really have to poop and need to find a situation where that makes sense to do.

(Or) make it to the ocean and remember something about myself that I’ve forgotten. Sometimes I might make new connections and get to learn how to navigate the experience of new *asks* around someone I don’t know at all. The initial decisions of small trust, small vulnerability. The respect of self and others. Seeing the way codependency wants to make me erase myself or the other and how I’m waking up enough to see that in live time! We’re live timing it now, bay-beeeee!!!!!! LETS GO! Lets get our healing! Fuck yes!!!!! We don’t have to keep repeating cycles of trauma! We can grow, we are resilient! Our future doesn’t have to look like our past! Lets go! YEAH!

I’ve been thinking about codependency a good amount lately. It’s been coming up in different conversations and I’ve had three different folks show some sign of realizing something from what I’ve shared about my own process through unlearning things that have been sort of self evident in my process of inter relational dynamics throughout my life. So I’m just gonna share here what I’ve got right now, while sifting through my ways of being in the world.

These are some things I’m moving out of so if it sounds like I’m “present tensing” it here just roll with it. This isn’t how I see myself moving through the world now as I’ve healed some, but it’s been really painful to see these wounds in myself. Jumping right in. There’s an eraser and an someone being erased in the codependent dynamic. This role switches and in this dynamic I am both abused and the abuser. It just comes out in different ways. I can’t see you and you can’t see me because I’m so focused on not fucking up or getting fucked up.

When I am responsible for managing other folks emotions it becomes impossible for me to be present to myself. I assume that your anger/sadness/irritation/aloofness is about me. I did something. I have been harmful in some way and my brain just auto corrects to this response. This keeps me from seeing you and puts me in a shame dynamic that is really unhelpful in cultivating deep connection, which is what I’m really hoping to get from you, even though I don’t know how to do it. It’s super sad to become aware of the truth that my whole situation is (in part) due to the way that I’ve been navigating my life. (This is where self compassion and self forgiveness come in handy). Also, when Jesus said you can’t be forgiven unless you forgive he wasn’t saying like some religious opinion about some “thing”. He was stating a universal way that energy functions in the universe. If I bind this energy to myself and refuse to release it, I literally cannot move through the world in a different way. I can’t receive my healing, because I’m holding onto my resentment.

The thing that’s super hard about this is that trust and vulnerability are difficult and scary and when I’ve been hurt it makes it harder. Like being as vulnerable as I know how to be with someone and having them peace on me is fucking hard. Especially when I have specific hang ups around that sort of behavior and have built what I thought was a lot of trust with this person. Yikes. Codependency sucks. So getting back to the dynamics I was talking about. I think I’m just realizing that at some point processing trauma also means living into a different way of being in the world. It’s like the cool, fun, awesome part of slogging through the fucked up shit. That stuff has to be acknowledged and worked through, but sometimes I think I’ve gotten stuck in the slog. Then there’s this dangerous period where I don’t know how to get the healing I desperately want and that can get bad. Eventually it was like, well vulnerability and trust building has been a shit show in the past. I guess I’ll try the trust and vulnerability thing again. Oof. Oooooooof. In some ways this journey is really unique to the individual, which is part of why it can be confusing af, but then certain parts are universal and resonate hard.

I just think like, lets get our healing, you know? Let’s forgive and find different ways to move through the world. Let’s find ways to move beyond the self sabotage and the self hatred. Let’s be drawn out into beauty, curiosity and wonder. Let’s cultivate deep connection and care for one another whenever we can. Why not care well? Why not be curious about what’s going on in your body? Why not show up for yourself and build trust through the scary, wild, perplexing, beautiful, (keeps going) landscape of life? If you aren’t already doing this, maybe ask yourself, “is what you’re risking by not doing it really worth it? Is living inside a prison I’ve created of other folks view of a false person I’m projecting really worth it?” I know it’s scary. I really do believe in healing though. I’m finding it and that’s why I believe in it. Why pretend to know something you haven’t experienced? It’s way more freeing to just say honest things.