Before the Storm

We are going to get hit by yet another storm. It’s funny when it happens for the first time - you are as excited as you are scared in the face of the upcoming ordeal. The second time you are slightly annoyed but try to keep your plans moving along, the third time you are really pissed off and don’t even bother with the routine, or the plans, or your responsibilities – you are just waiting it out. It is a big deal, and the central topic of any conversation, so following other people’s steps you make a public announcement that this weather makes you utterly depressed and unhappy. And now, as you think that your resilience has been depleted and the remains of your patience have expired, it happens again, the new storm is approaching with the potential to become the most severe of all. And you get serious - no more a cry-baby: you suck it up and keep moving about your life, focusing on things that matter.

How many hardships does life have to dump on us so that we stopped hiding our head under the wing, crawled out of the mental hideout to deal with life even as it’s not all roses? The first blow makes us panic, the second activates the defense system, the third makes us fight back with unexpected courage and boldness. Rough treatment, one gruesome trial after another will retrieve the inner warrior that can shield our sensitive side and add thorns to the thin skin. We will see then that there are no limits to our internal resources: we can withstand any storm, recover after harsh winds beat us down. The strength we are able to extract from the shrunken heart in severe circumstances is staggering.

So don’t be fooled by my initial whining, I was just assessing the challenge and winning some time. But now that the stakes have been raised, and another destructive storm has formed, it’s time to summon my wild self, to wake up my inner warrior that will protect me from hostile weather and get me safely to the sunny spot.

Loved

Who, being loved, is poor? -Oscar Wilde

Our need to be loved is so vital, as if it’s the only thing that can void emptiness spreading around us like poisonous gas. They will tell you over and over that being loved doesn’t validate you but you still refuse to believe. Someone else’s feelings for you form enough weight to keep you on the ground, to prevent you from disappearing into the endless atmosphere, become part of the faceless crowd.

Being loved is such an empowering feeling, it enchants you in a way that everything about you suddenly changes, and you become someone else, this beautiful person you always strived to be and now it’s happening without a slightest effort on your side. Your eyes are now deep oceans that reflect that adoration and admiration that you proudly carry with you like a torch of magic fire. For who would want to give up this light and go back to the darkness of solitude and desolation? And even if you have every reason to say “don’t love me”, you will always know that deep inside you want to hold on to this hot volcano, you want it to keep erupting all the love and passion till it’s empty.

We depend on love like it’s a drug. We believe that if we have it in enough quantity, it can carry us through the days, add that meaning to our life that’s impossible to have otherwise. Once love enters the gate of our kingdom, we rush to embrace all of it, we won’t settle for less. And despair that creeps in as love fades away is so painful, that we hit the walls from so much hurting. We shake the now dormant volcano in hopes of scraping out some of that love lava.

Jumping from one love epicenter to the other is a route of despair. The only way to lock love in your life permanently is to be its source. To be love. But it’s easier said than done, because love will always find loopholes to leak out of your heart as you are too busy with negative emotions that are much easier to retain. Love is something you need to practice over and over, like religion, because life sucks us in and we forget what truly matters. We can choose any mantra that sets us up in the right wave frequency. Or we can make it up by combining words to form the meaning we want to carry as a halo from morning till night: I am love, I am beauty, I spread love and it always finds its way back to my heart.

Letter to the Universe

Dear Universe,

I am used to not asking, I’ve been accepting what you’ve given me so far, no matter how happy or unhappy I was. I believe I have enough common sense to understand that we can’t have it all good all the time, we are to encounter obstacles in this life, to learn our lessons.

Yet in the face of this big test I summoned my courage to get on my knees and ask: please let me pass it. I’m twisted by uncertainty knowing that it can be an easy thing, a not so easy but I-can-handle-it thing, or a big problem. I don’t know the outcome, by the law of average I should be all right, but imagining everything that can go wrong has driven me into the worst despair and panic, which have been eating me up for the past several days. It was a long journey, and it was never easy, always filled with doubts, battles, unpleasant decisions to make. I don’t remember if I asked for help, I just dealt with it and somehow everything worked out. But I want to ask for help, huge favor now. I need to pass. I need to get through this one last time and move on with my life as I always wanted it to be. Here. I tried to envision the devastation if … but I will stop right here. It has to work out, too much is at stake. I may bluff with fake bravery but I understand too well that this is the line I cannot cross.

I succumbed to the freezing dread, but I also kept hoping shyly. I do want to be more bold in my hopes, to believe that I deserve it.

Please give me your blessing that day, spare me luck and courage, help me be calm and believe in myself and the positive outcome. Take away my fear and instead fill me up with certainty that it will go well. Easy. Simple. With the victory granted. It is about my whole life and I believe that since I came into this world, my life matters, so does my happiness.

Please get me through this, let me pass the test, let me live the life of my choice at least in this aspect.

Yours truly,

K.

Waiting for the Summer

Vast grayness poisoned my life for weeks. I wished someone could hold out their hand and pull me out of it for I sank in that swamp up to my head. Flu knocked down the whole family. Trapped inside the house for days, when we finally got out we had to endure a weather more severe than I could recall ever dealing with. Freezing rain, icy winds and a hostile takeover of all the walking space by slush and dirt. I felt soaked with gray in and out. Sitting on a coughing bus on my way to work, looking at the dirty gray sky through the dirty window I was thinking: is it possible to feel worse than I do now, numbed by grayness, the prisoner of winter...

And then fresh snow fell and covered everything with purest whiteness. The sun came out after days of cowardly hiding and the sky dressed up in bright winter blue. Not a hint of gray anywhere outside, its heavy weight finally lifted off my heart as well.

Why, oh why can’t we withstand external circumstances? Why can’t we be these weightless, free-spirited creatures that thrive in any weather, climate, condition? Why do we let misery press us down till we give up resistance and let it drag us on for days?

I was thinking what I can do to fill harsh winter days with some light and warmth to defrost my heart, to make hope and anticipation spring back up. I do rely on books to help me read the winter away, to plunge me in the sweet oblivion till I’m ready to lift my eyes from the comforting lines and witness life again. But mostly it’s about waiting, the tense process of anticipating the future by half-ignoring the present. These days will pass and I won’t look back, I won’t feel sorry for this chunk of my life to be over, for wasting it on waiting and wishing these days away. And some day I might move to a place where it’s never ever cold: eternal summer with eternal happiness.

Not About Me

All of us sooner or later incur the need for self-exploration. It’s like you reached the dead end and in order to continue moving forward, you first need to look inwardly and try to sort through all the chaos you are bound to uncover, and then, hopefully, the door will materialize where there was only a wall before.

Without doubts last year was the year of discoveries for me. I set off to explore the huge underground life of my psyche and came across a number of dark corners, spots that remained hidden until now. But as I kept traveling down the long twisting tunnels, I went from feeling relieved and empowered to frustrated and lost. Once the triumph of initial revelations wore off (aha, another inner issue uncovered, my life should be a little better now), my enthusiasm was replaced by perplexity: where is that line, that nth solved puzzle when I will be granted some peace and wisdom to fuel me for some time? As I was opening one door, I saw there were three more doors behind it, and three more behind each one of these three. An endless labyrinth. I went down too deep and found myself in a box.

Nothing is wrong with self-digging, if we don’t understand ourselves we are very likely to make the same mistakes over and over, to keep banging on the same locked door even though there is another door wide ajar nearby. But obsessing with it sooner or later will lead to negative consequences called “too much thinking” – a hard to diagnose and even harder to beat addiction. The need to ponder on, analyze, break into pieces, look under the microscope and understand all the whys and hows for anything that happened or was felt.

Okay, so maybe I should stop trying to question and understand everything and be more spontaneous for a change. Maybe I could trust that things will keep happening regardless how much or little I understand. This year will not be about me. Enough with wandering. The goal now is to empty my mind and see what will find its way in.