my kindergarten disposition

Yesterday I woke up to the sunshine wishing it would rain.

Today, I woke up and it was raining…with lightning…and thunder…and…wow.

All day I felt like I was in kindergarten again, and what a joyful thing that is to feel.

How I wish that everyone would feel the magic again of believing simple wishes do come true, just like you do when you are in kindergarten.

being alone

I found an old report card from kindergarten. My teacher wrote in the comment section that I seemed to enjoy being alone and she hoped she could encourage me to play more in groups.

Is the capacity for being alone without feeling lonely something to be concerned about? Looking at that kindergarten report card it seems for a long time people have worried I’m not okay because I’m generally okay with being by myself. It isn’t that I never experience loneliness or that I’m not social or don’t enjoy people and don’t want to have the bliss of merging with a special someone who loves me just for me and who is capable of receiving love from me without so many expectations, but being alone and being okay with being alone seems to make some people uncomfortable.

I’m not usually particularly concerned about this, except of course for the times when I do feel lonely. The “okayness” I feel with being alone definitely has limitations. I don’t enjoy doing social things by myself. It isn’t fun (and can even trigger loneliness) to go alone to an amusement park or miniature golfing or to the movies or a host of other activities, so I don’t do those things alone. But I also don’t feel a bottomless need to be entertained with the company of other people. During free time I can feel happy and fulfilled watching the hummingbirds at my feeder or reading a book or taking photographs or playing in Photoshop or writing or painting or listening to music or making jewelry or watching an old movie…or just sitting with myself.

It seems to mostly be people who absolutely find it intolerable to be alone who express the concern for those of us who do enjoy alone-ness. It hasn’t occurred to me to express concern over how uncomfortable they seem to be with being alone.

note to self

When we write about others are we actually writing to ourselves? When we give advice out are we not also advising ourselves?

The bible says it is easy to point out the splinter in someone else’s eye when there is a log stuck in our own.

Can I see the dark parts of myself in someone else? Are the things I object to the most strongly in other people the things I most need to see in myself? Making assumptions and accusations about others is easy. Turning the eye inward is harder.

It is a habit for me to take the blame for the behaviors of others. I apologize…a lot. I think at times I am apologizing that I am even here, living a life.

Writing, for me, is in large part about awareness. It helps me bring into my awareness the ways I am pointing fingers outward but really need to be looking inward. I don’t want to put up walls to myself and tell lies to myself and stay stuck in the same habits and loops of reactivity. But it’s so so easy. The part I am learning is how to peer ever more deeply inside, and instead of meeting those parts with judgment and fear, meet those parts with acknowledgment and awareness…and even a chuckle or two.

My heart has broken repeatedly for my perceived rejection from God. It is a heartbreak I repeatedly give to myself. God has nothing to do with it.  It has felt like the deepest of unrequited love. It is of my own creation, the unrequited love for myself. I keep offering myself love…I keep rejecting it. I have determined I am worthless, vile, and unlovable because I feel so distanced from the God I have created…an image, an illusion.

I once fully bought into the God of religion, which was so confirmatory for all of my worthlessness…it was so very easy to see myself as wholly unworthy. Priests and pastors and congregants were all too willing to play along in my charade with me. Every time I knelt in my sinful unworthiness I was congratulated for my submission and admission. I desperately wanted the fairy tale God they all worshiped, the God who is out there in form…the God to hold me, comfort me, love me, take care of me, and never ever abandon me. I craved the God that would let me explain away all my suffering and the suffering of others as some sort of test of faith. It was so easy to be seduced.

But I did know then, as I do know now, that isn’t God.

I still don’t know God.

I lust for the God I don’t know…it is a relentless aching. And I don’t even know why or what it is I desire so much, my flimsy grasp on the illusion of a form having been shattered over and over.

I don’t know how to pray. Which is sort of interesting given how much time I once spent in prayer. But back then it was easy. I was praying to God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit or even to Mary….out there, a worthless sinner approaching the altar of perfection and glory.

I start to pray now and it feels like I’m having a conversation with someone…and then I stop. Who am I praying to? God? Who is God again? Am I praying to something…out there? Prayer is like a conversation. A conversation requires two. If I’m talking to God, does this not imply two, and therefore separation? If I’m merely talking to myself, who are the two, and does this not also imply separation? How can you have a conversation with yourself in the first place? If you are just the singular you, how can you be talking to yourself? Who are you talking to?

Fleeting moments of thought become pixels on a screen, perhaps to be received with a flicker of understanding, gentleness and compassion…perhaps to be misunderstood, perhaps to even be hated and judged, but still…the words brought into form from heartfelt places do at least bring some deeper personal understanding, or maybe even just momentary relief.

when september ends

There are times when I feel like I’m ignoring some kind of calling of the heart, a calling that doesn’t really have clarity or definition. There are times it feels especially urgent, which is the case now. It makes me feel restless and dissatisfied with…something. I’m just not certain what it is I’m supposed to do. It does feel like I’m supposed to do something, and I’m just not getting it. It’s times like these I wish I could look up in the sky and see it all written out for me. I’m not confident enough to believe I would necessarily follow, but at least there would be some amount of peace to be found in the awareness of what it is I am choosing not to do.

I was going to walk away again from this blog, hang it up…what’s the point? Exactly why was I writing a blog again? To expose my vulnerabilities and fleeting thoughts and to repeatedly open myself up….to what…and for what?

But I always come back.

I wonder about that.

I don’t think some of the struggles I have had with blogging comments have been all that good for my confidence or clarity. At the same time it has also been a priceless experience in deepening my understanding of some things about myself.

Does that sound contradictory?

I think some of the feedback has been really awesome, and some of it very hurtful. Some of it has been confusing, some of it has been fun and thought-provoking. Some of it has boosted my confidence, some of it has repeatedly torn it down. Some of it has confused me, some of it has enlightened and inspired me. I know I’m supposed to be able to ignore words and not be so permeable to them. I know I don’t do that so well, online, or in person.

But I have seen some progress.

There are those who say the Internet is not a real place and the people on it are all putting on faces, creating masks they wish others to see. I don’t imagine this is that much different from real life. People wear all sorts of hats every day, revealing only what it is they want others to see of them. A professor I had in college compared these hats to the rooms in a home. We reveal our living room self to those we wish to impress, and we reveal our bedroom selves to those we most trust.

You can know a person for most of your life and then discover you actually only knew merely a fraction of them, the fraction they chose to show you…perhaps it was mostly their living room self. All it takes to see sides unseen is a specific set of circumstances or challenges.

I feel like I am constantly a disappointment to others’ expectations of me.

I thought it wasn’t possible for me to be surprised any more.

I was wrong…

…and it still hurts.

I care.

I trust.

I believe.

I’m naive.

I’m gullible.

I’m sensitive.

I’m permeable.

…and

I love…deeply.