break you hard

“Kiss the boys and make them cry.
Don’t need your heart cuz I got mine.”

This song came on randomly today and pretty much matches my mood.

I don’t really want to make boys cry (much).

The truth is, I am just noticing my shadow these days. Watching it get pissed off. Watching it want to lash out. Not indulging these desires but just watching them and doing art instead. Dancing and letting my imagination free for a bit so that I can exorcise the demons. I’m taking a class about writing horror fiction which is helping me to loosen the monsters a bit and learn what I have been avoiding so I can look at it squarely in the eye. I don’t always want to look because, frankly, it scares me. It’s hard to acknowledge the inner vampire or other oppressive monsters lurking around in my psyche.

“Slammin’ doors and breakin’ plates
there’s something else I’d rather break…”

Yep.

I once showed a lover (who wanted to idealize rather than love me) this collaged self-portrait:

It says, “I am all the love and terror you have ever known.”

He was obviously disturbed. That was not my intention. I was showing him something of myself that I hold dear: That I contain many worlds. After years of pretending to be good, pure and selfless, I got a lot more real and began exploring life more fully and honestly. I have learned that my brightest light can be my deepest darkness. Isn’t that true of everyone? Isn’t that how we write superheroes? I’m realizing that I am the one who always wanted to be idealized in my relationships. I am the one who couldn’t own her darkness. Yes, people are always telling me (still) that I am “sunshine” and “a beam of light” and so forth. I am often sunny, happy and I am truly a kind person. I also have been hurt and have hurt others. It’s human. We do that.

I am writing this today as an acknowledgement, not a manifesto. Sometimes I am so very flawed. Bleh. However, I have zero desire to present a static image of myself to the world. To live some fucking cookie-cutter version of womanhood or human beingness is ridiculous and impossible. We grow. We stretch. We cast off. We change. The philosopher Heraclitus said, “Change alone is unchanging.” We all contain infinite possibilities inside of us. I believe life is way more interesting when we accept that truth, own our complexity and unleash the fullness of ourselves into the world. My favorite people are a brilliant mess, not a picture of obedient tidiness. Life is an endless sea of change and diversity.

I recently realized that somewhere on a planet light years from here, someone is watching the earth star die. And somewhere else, someone is watching it be born.

I find it oddly comforting.

Here in Seattle, a woman embraces both her light and her darkness and indulges a moment of wanting to break a man’s heart. You can find that comforting or disturbing.

Life is filled with choices.