Nothing to be said

My voice feels blocked. My wounds have just recently closed. And still, tomorrow, maybe even tonight, I will venture outside of the castle walls. I know that there is something for me on the other side. Boy oh boy do I feel tired. Exhausted and asleep with each step. I have slacked off today, in whatever way that means. I have taken a hiatus. A vacation, a break from all of my responsibilities yet somewhere in that mix I still went to the laundromat and I still went to the bank. I have taken the day off yet still I went to a coffee shop and I drew what I needed to for work and I showed up for my friends when they needed me. I have taken my time and still I have shown up. Shaky today, for I was out in the world walking on new legs. Trying to get away from the reality of what comes to me. Who I am, who I am meant to become. Keep it vague and no one will notice, maybe no one will discover me. Though I still try, and I still breathe and I still practice my balance and I still build strength and I still put myself out there to then hide back in the shadows again. Parts of me wish to give up, save it all for tomorrow, another day when I can do it all again, on a full night’s sleep.

Last night I dreamt that I shot a man. Point blank in the neck. He died bleeding out in my arms. I held him there as he looked into my eyes and told me he never would have asked anything of me, all he wished for was to spend my birthday with me in complete presence. I watched as his life drained out of him until he was nothing but skin and bone and blood. I got up from him, I ran away because his father was after me with his own gun, ready for the kill. I told this dream to a dear friend once I woke up. She put her headphones in so it wouldn’t be overheard. I made sure to emphasize the parts that clarified that the man I killed was after my friends, that he and his father would kill us all if I did nothing. I shake and tremble as I recall and I breathe myself back to my center and I send a root down into the moment, the core. This earth. I wanted to share that I wasn’t the bad guy in the moment, that I did what I had to do out of necessity. That the violence inflicted from my own hands was once of self-preservation, and to save those that I loved. I now wonder why I felt so strongly that I had to communicate this to her.

A fear that I won’t be viewed for my true intentions if I tell the ones about what it is that occurs when I sleep. That I will be viewed or witnessed as some vile monster. I know that they would never think that, for they know my heart and they know my soul, yet parts of me wonder. Would they really see me for who I am? Especially if I laid out the truth without all of the details?

I wonder the same for this, for these writings. The times I have drafted or hidden things that I have written, from fear of being perceived in the wrong ways. I know the darkness, I know it like the back of my hand, I know it like the air that we breathe for this is my gift, to navigate these realms with a steady grace and willingness to bring forth truth. Yet, still, I have been afraid of how I will be perceived. If I let my truest self shine, let my most vulnerable sides be written and seen and witnessed by the world. What will happen if all of me is laid bare, if my soul is exposed, if you know what I do, what my soul does when I sleep, the things I see, what I truly witness, and what I choose to accept and love within this world.

It can be debilitating to venture into the unknown, the lands of the dark, and to not love. To go forth with nothing means to leave with nothing. If I go forth with love and clarity and innocence, I am sure to come out the other side viewing all that I see with these same attributes. But I pose the question, what if I let all of this go, what if I go forth and simply witness without seeking to change, without seeking to bring forth what is buried deep beneath the surface, and instead to just allow things to be as they are. I wonder if I am no longer in service to others if this is the case, or if instead I am serving more, because I am asking nothing. I am conjuring nothing, I am simply existing, watching, observing, and from here choosing to make my decisions.

I wonder if this is what the fringes of complacency feel like. I wonder if it will incapacitate me because I will no longer be working so hard to help. I wonder if it will instead allow me to rest, to be who I am, and to not demand so much of others who do not wish to be in something that they are not working to have. Parts of me see the wants, the needs, of the light within everyone to come to the surface, yet still I wonder if I should abstain from conjuring it up. From working to bring it forth, and instead allow people to simply be as they are without trying to help them.

I question this and I feel like I am sinking back. Into the abyss of my own world. I throw out the life preserver again and again because I do not wish to see those around me drown. Yet another more fed up part of me wonders if I should just let them. Let them go, let them choose, let them dissolve, turn to ash, and fade away with the breeze. I have spent many days, many hours, many lives trying to help so many others, and don’t get me wrong, I will never stop, but what if my help is best served in other places? Not seeking to heal the world, because that would require things to be wounded or broken, and instead allow myself to just exist. I feel like I am walking into the darkness in the opposite way. Yet I also cannot see my way around now, because I have decided to leave my light. I can conjure it up, yet I also do not know if I need to. Walking through abandoned passages, smoke-filled rooms, and places where nothing is seen. I sit on the ground and I hold my heart.

Why keep going? It seems to always return to this question. Knowing so many will perish, will die, I take on the pains of the suffering for I know what it is like and my heart breaks over and over again for them. That is why I have tried to keep them light, to keep them away from the heartache, from feeling it too much, because if they did then I would too. Secondhand, I feel it all.

I have drilled down deep into the earth, my safe zone. I have pushed myself far away into the farther corners, trying to get away. Not wanting to do it anymore. To sit and to breathe and to face it. “I’m tired Goddammit!” I wish to scream. Why must I keep doing this, why must I keep feeling so much, why must I keep going on? Yet still, I still myself, and I breathe and I breathe and I breathe and I breathe and I help them find their center and in their chaos I find my own, this is my gift. The storm chaser who knows how to live as the eye. It’s an exhilaration that keeps me alive in some ways, to be the grounded center in anyone’s chaos, to help them find their center point which causes the storm to fall apart. It gives me some purpose, some life, because I feel the life returning to the ones that it has been stripped from in the heat of all the uproar and flying debris. It feels good, because then another feels good. And their joy is my joy and then I understand what life is all for when I see it through someone else’s eyes.

“We’re all dead inside” my friend said to me as we looked into the fire. I don’t wish to spend my time editing. I wish to just let it be what it is so that I can carry on, so that I can go to bed and fall asleep quickly.

Do I let my cat kill the mouse he has just captured? I let it happen. Death will become all of us one day. Maybe I am also dead inside. I didn’t want to accept it when she said it, because I don’t want to be so locked up in that idea, yet when I truly let go, when I really surrender, when I let my words pour forth and my breath to move me without trying, I feel like nothing. I feel like a husk of a person. Something with various masks that I have thrown out and burned but just a shell. Bones and skin and flesh and so many fucking emotions. So many things moving and nothing that is certain, I feel like I am nothing until I do something, until I help someone, until I see life returning to them. I know that my life is not meant to be lived for others, yet many parts of me feel like it is. What is life for if not to thrive and help those around us thrive too? Yet if my only form of thriving is within seeing others living their joy, then am I really living too?

I don’t know what it is that I desire. I like my time with myself, I like my home, I like watching silly videos and I like eating my food. I like reading my books and I like going outside and exercising. I like sleeping in and I like going to work. I really do like my life and I do not know what it is that I desire. Must I really leave these castle walls to find something else when the life I live right now is just fine? I explore the empty halls, I go into the dark without a candle for a burst of something new, and now I wish to save this mouse that my cat is playing with. Things are changing. Though it is dark and lonesome in here and I must leave in order to live again. To breathe the fresh air again, to know that there is so much beyond these four walls. There is life to be lived and there are experiences to be had and there are dreams to be actualized. I have things that need to be done, and not always in the form of a battle. I can go out into the sunlight without my armor on, I can go out and let it wash over me.

I feel into this mouse as my cat moves it with its paw. His heart is racing, yet I feel as though he feels no fear. Just little shrieks of confusion. I am both this cat and this mouse.

I caught him in a jar. I brought him outside. He was a mole. The one who can see in the dark through his sniffer and perceptions. The only fear I felt was my own. In not doing the right thing, in what others would think of me if I didn’t catch him, if I didn’t let him go, if I let my cat kill this creature, which is in the truest nature of what a cat is meant to do. I wonder if I am like this. What is my truest nature, when I am not trying to be anything for anyone else. When I let my most raw and authentic self be. When I share my heart freely, no matter if others do not like it. What is my truest heart when I let the demons be what they are. When I let them swirl and howl and scream their cries. What is my truest nature when I lay down to rest. Am I the flower, am I the bud, am I a daughter of death? What am I?

I curl up in a ball, trying not to feel it anymore, because I have already felt so much. I am not the victim and I am not the perpetrator. I simply am and I simply am feeling and maybe that is enough. Maybe I just allow it to be what it is and maybe I just let myself be with it. Maybe I just breathe with it without trying to change it. Maybe I don’t know and maybe I will never know and maybe I am mourning who I thought I was. Maybe I am letting die what I thought I was supposed to be. Maybe I am throwing to the wind all fo the expectations that I have lived within for so damn long. Maybe it’s time to just let myself be free.

To know that there truly is love out there that treats me the way that my friends do. A best freind. Those that hold me when I cry and see my truest heart and let me vent and be honest. Maybe it is as simple as that. Someone who knows me, knows when to push me to rise and knows when to hold me when I fall. Maybe I can be vulnerable and let it all out. Let the magic of my heart let it all out. Let it all be. Let it all become what it needs to be. Let my heart sing, let it hold on when it needs to and let it all go when it needs to too.

I wrote something last October, around Halloween time, about the one with the passion. I wrote it sitting in my car after a long, tiring day, about to venture into another world where I would simultaneously surrender and learn more about myself. I wrote it and then I went into the battleground. The place that twists my gut but that I preserved through. I heard something today about how maybe love and loyalty is not something that we are here to just endure, but instead something else entirely. Devotion as an act of empowerment. A slow and soft opening. A trusting, a freefall, and a doing it together. Holding hands as we step out into the unknown. The cold, the warmth, the tenderness. Maybe devotion is adaptability and a keeping on with moving through the blocks with someone that we know loves us without restraint. Maybe true devotion is saying everything that you mean, even when it’s to someone that you barely know but feel some way about how their eyes shine. Maybe vulnerability is continuing on with the writing even when my wrists feel bound and I feel afraid to continue. Maybe love is stepping out into the unknown, over and over and over again, until I realize once and for all that the sun won’t burn me and that it is safe to take off all the layers and the coats that have kept me warm in the cold. Maybe love is taking the risk and the leap out into a potential for something greater, something grander than what I have ever known before. Maybe love is saying “what if you allowed yourself to be chosen” what if you gave up the preparation of rejection. What if I allowed myself to be seen and loved and cherished and everything else that I said, with someone that I am yet to know, so deeply, so completely, and in such dynamic union. What if I allowed myself to dream and open up to this possibility?

It feels like breath filling my lungs again, it feels like the truth of putting yourself out there, it feels like asking for what you want and then receiving it. It feels like accepting the outstretched hand that is pulling you up, knowing that you can do it on your own, but you no longer need to. Maybe love is as true as all that is written in song and in poem and in story. Maybe the fantasy books are written on reality and maybe they resonate and hit so deep within me is because I know that they are true. That this is a multidimensional reality and maybe it’s simply my own story being read back to me. Maybe I can allow attraction to pull me in and maybe I do not need to run. Love tells me that I can trust myself and that this time I will not be thrown overboard. This time I will not be asked to sacrifice myself. For I have done it and I have learned, and this time love is offering me something entirely different. Something nourishing and sweet and full and rich and so completely true. This time love is guiding me and welcoming me home.