Winter Musings

New years resolutions, dying, and preparing for dreaming forward.

I thought I'd regain the energy to write last year, but I didn’t. To be honest, I barely had the energy to be alive. Most days I didn’t want to dedicate the energy towards it. I know we’re not “supposed to” say things like that - admit our morbidity - but it’s true. I came head to head with all the ways I've deeply engrained overwhelming, abandoning, and complicating my own life and saw how when I faced it, there was truly now where else to hide. Truthfully, a lot of this was in the realizing of the reality of what it is to be alive. To exist under the rule of capitalism, to feel incapable of escaping an oppressed life.

So I stopped putting my pen to paper. I stopped pressing keys on the board of my laptop and told myself I could no longer form words. I said i couldn't feel them. Because I didn't want to find and form the words of what felt too hard to say, to face. To tell the stories I didn't want to tell. 

Mostly, I realized I didn't want to tell the stories to myself. About myself. To admit the failures that felt so wrong. I didn't want to feel pain I could not control. And I wanted to control how I showed up and was perceived in the world. 

I don't think you really realize that you're falling until you're pretty close to the ground. That you've been falling for a while - or even for how long until everything you thought was you or mattered is scattered right in front of you with no hope of piecing it all back together because it feels too messy and hard.

This time of year everyone wants to shout all their hopes and dreams. Tell the stories of how they're gonna do better than they have before. It always leave me feeling more empty and isolated, because my soul knows that if we never let parts of ourselves rest or die, we will eventually stop blooming, that we eventually won't be able to rebirth. Over time we decay and lose our strength to shed, fall apart, and thrive. Which means we lose our will to exist beyond just surviving to stay alive.

This time of year reminds me of the elasticity that exists within our body-mind-heart-soul. That keeps our skin thick and our bodies soft. That sharpens our tongue, and cages our hearts. The fluidity that opens our eyes and makes our touch tender. This time of year reminds me of deep intimacy that entangles grief, closing out what's finished and opening towards what might never be but, nonetheless, lingers possibility. 

photo story created with Mike Saavedra - more at selfstudylab.com/art