I hear you
My constant companions
Some whispering, some insistent
All desperate to be heard
Reaching from behind to steer me
Safely through the world
A world you did not survive
I hear you
I do
But I must find my own way
Must live new mistakes
And leave this world
Having lived new ways of being in it
I hear you
I do
And I say
Thank you
And I say
Goodbye
I have finally come to terms with Life
We’ve come to a compromise
Instead of me wanting a different one or mine to end
I’m giving myself fully to this one, no holding back
In return, Life agrees to continue to be fully what She is
(And to let me think it’s a compromise when really, She has won me over)
I take a deep breath
Connect to all who’ve been before
Feel my mother’s mother’s heartbeat in mine
What I yearn for
I don’t always understand
Whose dreams am I living
Are they of the present or the past
Well, it happened.
I thought I published yesterday’s post, but I just saw that I did not.
There is a part of me devastated by this error.
I call this part of me “Perfectionista.”
If I am not vigilant, she drives me. She wants to get things right. She wants to be the best at whatever she does, all the time. To be seen as the best. Perfect.
She hates making mistakes.
So breaking my daily posting streak of many months? Not going over well with her.
I try to reason with her. Technically, I did write it yesterday, and though clearly I messed up and only thought I published it, I created it yesterday. And after all, the point of me doing it daily is so that I do at least one creative act daily to stay connected to my creativity. That’s it.
So cool. I did that. Yay me!
But that part of me, Perfectionista, she wants more. And what she wants has to do with what she thinks others think of her.
And she is loud.
She creates suffering for me. She is going to incessantly remind me of this flaw, trying to create a very unsettled feeling that will saturate my system.
“You blew it,” she says.
Hers is a world of extremes, of black and white thinking, of a self-generated pressure to meet somewhat randomly selected standards and performance deadlines and levels or else…
She lives in world with an almost life and death internal pressure to seem perfect to others.
I cannot live from her world view. It’s too exhausting, too exacting. And empty.
I. Just. Can’t.
My world? I try to simplify these days. What a waste of precious time, worrying what others will think about me missing a randomly-decided goal.
More and more, it’s about doing my best on any given day and letting that be more than enough.
Don’t get me wrong: I still strive to be “the best.”
The best I can be on any given day.
As for what others think of that? No longer my business, thank you very much.
Lay down next to me
On a bed of pine needles
Underneath a silversmith moon
Let me tend to your wounds
Take you into my body
Gonna wrap you into a cocoon
Of warm skin and breath
Pressed breasts and lips
Leave our selves, become one in our spoon
This life is
Such a mystery
I’m puzzled at every twist
A Rubic’s Cube
I’ll never solve
My answers, always miss
Sometimes I feel like Lucy
Life, just like those chocolates on that conveyor belt, is going by so fast
Time is speeding up, so I try to stuff as much of the chocolate as I can
However I can
There’s a wound I hang on to
Like a cavity I won’t get filled
I finger it with my tongue
Test it out each time, anew
Is the pain still there? Yes, it is
This old friend, this pain that feels like me
Invisible hand
Grips my neck
Stifles my breath
Can’t break free
Of me, yet not
If I drown it
I drown me
Who’s there, yearning, in pain
In the dark of my past
I look behind and see
The silhouettes of the many
From whose dreams I was born
I feel their unrealized needs
In the needs of my present
What they have not let go of
Holds me now, outside of my life
I see you, I say
I’m sorry, I say
This is yours, I say
I lay their burdens at their feet
Look them deeply in their eyes
Thank you for dreaming my life
I’ve got it from here
Beyond the Skinny Branches 