DAY34: Fantasy

 

I have always been a BIG fan of fantasy. Damsels in distress, warriors, wizards, princes, all of it...the less it had to do with the real world the better. I would spend hours just creating these stories in my head, and even more hours reading or watching fantastical stories created by someone else. I would be sucked up into those worlds, I would become part of it, I would be changed by it. Fantasy can teach you about honour (think about the noble warriors that never give up, no matter what the odds until order has been restored) adventure (think of all the quests and fantastical creatures) and it teaches that love is something that is worth fighting for and that you never give up on it. There is only one problem with fantasy...it ruins Real Life.

 

I whish I could figure out how many people and situations in my life are simply fantasy. Are the villains real, are the allies really what they appear to be, and oh the princess...where does reality begin and where does my fantasy end. Imagination is a wonderful thing, but what happens when imagination creates your reality....what happens when even you are a figment of your own imagination? You can pretend  things for a little while, but eventually the veil is lifted and you are left cold and bare in a world that almost seems foreign to you and you are left with the question "Now what?"

 

It is tough to give up on the realities you have created, because it means you have to step out of your head and become a hero in the real world...and this is much harder, the rewards are not that great and everyone forgets it so much sooner.

 

Good luck to all of us who dwell in many realms simultaneously.

DAY 33: Thanx

Today I am a blank slate. No emotions, I feel nothing. Nothing I tell you...NOTHING. It is calm and extremely boring. I am sure something will come up later, but now I am just chilling in the quiet.

Now is as good a time as any to be grateful. We spend so much time running around, trying to be all spectacular and shiny, trying to prove to ourselves we're worthy that we often lose sight of how much we indeed have to be grateful for....Awww isn't that nice...yeah I am not really feeling it....everything I am saying just sounds kind of lame to me right now. I feel like a sarcastic teenager that just wants to roll her eyes at everything, but I am going to commit. I am going list a few things that I am grateful for, maybe it warms my heart a little.

Off topic: I was playing around on the google box, searching things like "How do I find my life purpose" and "Finding your life purpose quiz"...you know normal things we all do on a Friday. There were a few quizzes but their answers were not that helpful..."You are a communicator"....yeah ok now what? There was one site however that said it could help you find you purpose in 20 min...it is quite simple, you just take out a piece of paper and write down a few scenarios about what  you desire from life, and what you want to be. The one that makes you cry is the one meant for you. I like the idea, I might give it a go later. I hope I don't have to write for days to find something that moves me to tears though...that would suck.

So what am I grateful for...let's see.

I am grateful for Youtube videos of animals being either amazing or extremely silly. It is a guilty pleasure but is sure makes me happy.

I am grateful that I grew up in a family that taught me not to take things too seriously, and that laughing at things really does make it better. The older I get the more I know this to be true.

I am grateful that I live in a time where information is so freely available. You can learn about anything at anytime, even your life purpose, and I for one freakin love it.

I am grateful for red cappuccinos. Since I cut out practically everything the red cappuccino has become my treat of choice. I salute its red, foamy deliciousness.

I am grateful for books...I wish my life purpose was to be surrounded by books, and I would get paid to read them...but I want to get paid a lot....I read gooood.

I am grateful for talkative strangers. I love talking to strangers, yes I am indeed a rule breaker. It is always nice to have random conversations with random people for no other reason than that the two of you were coincidentally at the same place at the same time, the world is a big place filled with many people so the odds of you sharing a path with someone else is quite extraordinary. Think about it and than go talk about it to a random stranger, but be careful of the dodgy looking ones.

I am grateful for hot chocolate. Yes, I have found the holy grail or that is what is feels like, I have discovered a hot chocolate that does not contain sugar, is extremely low in calories, it contains green tee extract and a whole bunch of other ingredients that actually help you burn fat, and the best part is it tastes amazing...o man am I grateful for hot chocolate.

I am grateful for that time in the morning when the sun has just come up, and the world sort of looks a little pink. You can feel the world waking up, and it feels like life is filled with possibility, and for a couple of minutes everyday it feels like you really can achieve anything you set your mind/heart to.

I realise now that there are many things I am grateful for, life even with all it suckiness and emotional rollercoasters is pretty grand.

Why don't you also list a few things that you are grateful for, don't go all deep about it, just list the silly things. The sarcastic teenager in me even stopped rolling her eyes.

Good day.

DAY 32: Come Here, Go Away.

Sometimes we push away the things we desire most. There can be many reasons for this behaviour. You may know that what you crave is not really all that good for you, for example chocolate cake, let's pick on chocolate cake for a while. Chocolate cake in all its deliciousness. Come here you delectable morsel...but no our love cannot be...go away. I have chocolate cake on the brain today.
As appetising as a slice of chocolate cake sounds right about now, it is not really what I want to discuss...mmm Chocolate cake.

I have seen it many a time, and I myself am guilty of it, but for some reason we tend to run away from the things that we really want, because it makes us a little uncomfortable. We pursue things, be it a goal, be it a love interest, be it a dream, whatever, the moment we get close to it, we start subconsciously thinking about losing it, and we might even convince ourselves that we never really wanted it anyway, then we abandon the whole pursuit. Our species has developed a glorious knack for justifying our actions, the good and the bad. We lie to ourselves and don't really want to admit that fear has caused another failure. We tell ourselves things like "the thrill is in the chase" because it keeps us from ever having to admit how badly we really want something "It was stupid anyway" we might say. Sometimes we are cowards, but who wants to confess that.

 I know I spoke about fear yesterday, but it is a big topic and it has a major influence on us, so I am going to touch on it again. There are three fears I believe that stops us from achieving our goals or attaining our desires. There may be more but what do I know I aint no psychologist and I am just speculating.

The Fear of Rejection: We do not like to be rejected, do we? And who can blame us it really sucks, but in all honesty it is not so bad, it only stings for a little while, and its sting is much better than a lifetime of 'what-ifs'. In the end it is going to be the what-ifs that gets you, you wont even remember the rejections. You get hurt, you cry, you feel sorry for yourself, you get up, you try a little harder, and when you get where you need to be you stop.

The Fear of failure: We don't want to be losers, and failing is embarrassing isn't it? It doesn't have to be. If you have not failed at anything, you must be an alien, and you are indeed a unique snow flake you glorious creature. The rest of us have failed at things many times...or at least I hope so, I hope it is not just me. Some of my favourite people in the world have been considered failures at one point in time. And know this, no one really pays as much attention to us as we think, everyone else is also just busy trying to figure out who they are, and it is a full-time job. The ones who are all up in your grill, and who judges your every move need to seriously get a life, so pay no attention to them. Failing is the best way to learn how not to do something. So let's fail a little, lets fail at love, lets fail at life, but only for a little while, then we regroup and we crush it. The world loves to root for the underdog...the underdog must just never give up. The important thing is to try.

The Fear of Success: This one is much worse than you think, because what if after all of our efforts, all our tears and struggle, when we finally get what we want, it disappoints us.
And now a little bit of lyrics to emphasise my point.

I gotta check myself before I get what I want
Find out it's not what I thought it was - Kwabs:"Walk"

Honestly you can always go back to what you were before you achieved your success. It is your life, it is your choices so do what makes you happy, and here is the thing...at least you will know...and knowing is way better than wondering about something, even if it doesn't turn out the way you hope.

I know I sound all preppy and yeah life today, but trust me these fears cripple me. I have said it many times by identifying things you can defeat them, and that is exactly what I plan to do. You can call me many things sir...but never a coward.

I am going to find a nice sugar free chocolate cake recipe now.

DAY 31: Fear

Lets give a shout out to Fear, that crippling, defeating, foe that is always waiting in the wings of the theater production we call our lives. Fear is the only real enemy, but it has so many faces that we don't always realize when we are in its presence. It holds us back by pretending to be common sense, it prevents us from taking chances when it wears its false mask of reason, it kills you while it lovingly whispers that it only wants to protect you.

So I am now in the home stretch of the journey, I have reached the countdown mark...10..9..8..7..6...you get the point, and do you know what the result is...tears...every emotion that I didn't want to face has flooded to the surface and I cannot stop crying...ok that is not completely true...i still function in public, I cry when no one is looking, but I am sure everyone has their suspicions.

We fear to face ourselves, and why wouldn't we? It is a painful process where you have to look yourself in the eye and admit where you screwed up, where you have to acknowledge your flaws, and deal with the fact that perhaps you are not the worlds most special unique snowflake (Just kidding I realised that a long time ago, but I guess you always hope that you are.) But there is more to the story, the hardest part of facing who you are, is to be patient and kind to yourself, to stop judging yourself so harshly, and to love yourself a little. That shit makes you cry. I have never believed this little voice, but now its whispers are becoming louder and louder and it is telling me that maybe I am good a girl after all, and that I should not be so hard on myself. Now I am thinking about Pinocchio when the fairy granted his wish. "I am a real boy". I guess I just want to be real girl...whatever that means.
So what does all this have to do with fear? The answer is Everything.

It is scary to let go of everything you know, all the illusions you have created around yourself, to hide yourself, not just from the world but from you. It is terrifying to face the unknown to reinvent yourself, to find your path. It is much easier to just hang around the parameters of your comfort zone, and to ignore the stirs of change that you can feel happening inside you. When life beckons to you, obey...but I don't want to it is scary. Fear is only an enemy if we allow it to defeat us. My mind is unraveling.

I don't have all the answers, I just have a lot of questions, and the more  I look for answers, the more questions I gather. I don't know how to defeat my fears, the fear of not being good enough, the fear of failure, the fear of abandonment, the fear of my own mortality and limitations, and the worst one of all the fear of letting go. Maybe more answers will come eventually, but now I am just stuck with all these emotions and I have to confess that no matter how much of a fight I put up, I am just a scared little girl. Maybe by acknowledging her I can find the warrior within, and then finally the curtain can come down on the theater production dominated by Fear.

"Fear is an emotional response induced by a perceived threat, which causes a change in brain and organ function, as well as in behavior. Fear can lead us to hide, to run away, or to freeze in our shoes. Fear may arise from a confrontation or from avoiding a threat, or it may come in the form of a discovery." - The Internet

DAY 30: Recurring Themes

Wow!!! day 30. This journey is almost over and if I am honest I do not feel redeemed yet. I hoped that by sacrificing so many tools of instant gratification my head, body, soul, mind, all of it, would become aligned and I would find the answers that I seek, but honestly I feel more confused than ever.
There is something I no longer can deny, I have never had the guts to admit this because I didn't want to offend anybody, and I was scared to alienate myself, but I have noticed that I am a champion at alienating myself anyway so I might as well spill the beans. The only reason why I feel it is important to confess  this, is because maybe there are others out there who are silently struggling with the same thing. My name is Edith and I have two parts that are constantly battling, and they have been battling as long as I can remember. I am the reluctant Atheist and the hopeful believer. A part of me believes in everything, a part of me believes in nothing. Forever torn. Forever wondering, and this is the true core of all my confusion and suffering, because I cannot pick a side.

I had a long conversation with an extremely wise women today. I am always grateful for our talks because she has this wonderful ability to put things into perspective, always guiding never judging, always more helpful than she ever realises. She is the same age as me, but in some ways she is many years ahead of me. She brought it to my attention that I have removed all my coping mechanisms in one go...the smoking, and drinking and all that...and now I have to come to terms with all my defence mechanisms; How I push things away, how I rationalise things, how I obsess, how I want to control everything, how I protect myself from the world, and how I often look for the path of least resistance even tough I know it is not what I truly desire. Her advice was that I should not be so hard on myself, and that I should give things time, and that I should have faith that my psyche will only allow me to make a move when I am ready, and not a moment sooner. My immediate response was "But how does one stop being mad at God?"...I guess that means that I must believe in him considering that I have been mad at him for a very long time. "Stop being mad at yourself first" was her answer. I wish I knew how.

Let me tell you a little more about my conundrum. Some of you may be able to emphasise and others may not have a clue what I am talking about but here goes...To have faith, you need to believe in things that you can not see, and things that cannot be proven. You have to have hope, and hope and faith are often confirmed by feelings, emotions, by someone trusting their gut, trusting their heart. The reluctant atheist in me thinks this all just sounds like wishful thinking, and it wonders where the line between delusion and hope is. I have said before hope can trap you. Also I do not trust my heart or my gut at all anymore, I have before and it lead me to places I would have been better off never to have visited in the first place. So I am left with my mind, and what I call the voice of Reason. My wise friend said that I named it the voice of reason to make it sound like it has authority, but maybe it is not really the voice of reason after all, still it is the only thing I trust at the moment. The voice of reason does not believe in anything it cannot see, or cannot explain, it looks at the facts and then draws a conclusion, it is not emotional, and believes that everything is completely in my own hands, I am the master of my own fate, and that I should eliminate anybody that stands in my way, holds me back, or doesn't serve me. I don't like the voice of reason. I love the idea of destiny and that we are all part of a grand story, but just because I want to believe in things, doesn't mean I can. My mind simply doesn't work that way.  My recurring prayer is that the voice of reason will be proven wrong...but it never has been and it seems like it never will be...perhaps it is the part of me I should give into, the part of me I need to become.  I have heard many times that you have to find the truth within yourself, that there are some things that you just know, and my response is that there have been many things that I just knew, things that my heart and my gut swore to me to be the truth, and it turned out to be false, heartbreakingly false. So the only reason for me to have faith is if something external happens, something magical, something majestic, something  that I could not have just imagined or believed I saw simply because I wanted to see it, something beautiful is necessary to restore my faith, but that is not how things work is it. Still,  I am hoping for this to happen, and my hope has trapped me in a loop. I do not trust my own feelings about anything anymore and I definitely cannot trust someone else's feelings. This is my dilemma, the battle between hoping to have faith, and not believing in anything at all. The storm that is continually raging, and the worst part is it is completely beyond my control...or I guess that is not true, I do have a choice. I can choose to believe in nothing at all...I understand the logic, but for some reason this saddens me.

To be continued....

DAY 29: Define Me

Today I am going to write a poem...because I am all out of ideas and why not write a poem. I haven't written a poem in a while, and I have no idea what is going to manifest on the page...mmm...let's see shall we.

I am not the person you knew yesterday.
 I am fluid, I keep moving.
  I flow, I leave behind.

Do not label me 
  Do not confine me to the prison of your mind 
    Do not judge glimpses of me.

I am my own worst critic.
  Your words are not needed.
     I fall, I cry, I get up, I move on
       Do not try to keep me down so you can understand me.

I am not the person you knew yesterday.
  I am fluid, I keep moving.
    I flow, I leave the past behind. 
      I am undefined.

Ok all done....very short I know, but I am not going to force it.
Man I do love words...I love poetry. I think we should all write more poems, even if no-one sees it. It is really good for the heart.

I challenge anyone out there to also write a poem today. Feel free to send it to me if you like.
I guarantee I will appreciate it.

DAY 28: Story time

Today I am in the mood to write a story so that is exactly what I will be doing.

A Night at Jack Dandy's

The slightly depressed clown walked into the bar. None of the patrons of Jack Dandy's paid any attention because the bar welcomed all sorts and it was a well known fact that most clowns were slightly depressed. "Whiskey straight up" said the clown and the barman obliged. The clown lit a cigarette as he scanned the joint. It was a quite night, the barman was wiping the counter trying to look like he had something to do, there was a man wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt just staring at the stage, and while the clown inhaled he noticed the broad at the other end of the counter. She was a big girl, you would struggle to find a country where she would not be considered obese, but that was not what made her stand out, what caught the clowns eye was her outfit. She was dressed as a ballerina. The clown immediately imagined the dancing hippos of Fantasia, and while he was doing this the ballerina started to make her way towards him. "Do you believe in love at first sight?" the ballerina asked as she waited for the clown to light her cigarette. "No" said the clown as he lit it. "Do you believe in love at all?" she asked, now making herself comfortable next to him. "No" he responded again as he put out his cigarette. The clown wasn't aware that the obese ballerina had a thing for clowns. There was something about their red noses that just made her want to give herself to them completely, and she also had thing for their big feet. "You know what they say about the size of a mans feet" she would joke. It never occurred to her that maybe clowns just wore big shoes. "What is your name?" asked the ballerina. "Gary" the clown responded. "No I mean what is your clown name" she said. "Gary" the clown replied. "Mmmm...Gary the clown. I will remember that because I hope to be screaming it later." She said and then she bit her bottom lip and brushed her hair behind her ear. "O why the hell not...sure beats being alone...and I am not getting any younger." the clown thought to himself.  "Why are you dressed as a ballerina?" the clown asked, if they were going to do the dance of two lonely lust filled souls, he might as well get to know her a little. "I do what I like. No one is going to tell me what I can or cannot be. I love to dance, and if I feel like a ballerina...I am a f@king ballerina." She responded rather defensively. "Why are you dressed like a clown?" she asked. "Because I am a clown" he responded. He lit another cigarette and started to over explain things, in the way that slightly depressed clowns often do. "I wanted to be a stand up comedian, but I didn't want to put myself out there that much. I prefer the anonymous life of a clown. I make you laugh, but you just see my mask, you will never see me." said the clown as he took another shot of whiskey. "Why not be both darling." said the ballerina. "What do you mean?" asked the clown. "I mean, why don't you be a clown that does stand-up comedy. You can tell your jokes and no-one has to know who you are....there is a stage right there...why don't you give it a go. I promise I will laugh" said the obese ballerina.

"Nobody takes me seriously." said the clown who was now doing his stand-up comedy routine. The guy wearing the tie-dyed T-shirt, came out of his trance and exploded with laughter. This encouraged the clown. "So how many old people can you fit into a minivan?.....well it all depends on how small you chop them up." It turned out the clown had quite a dark sense of humour, but tie-dye guy and the ballerina were cracking up over his material. The audience of two laughing at his material made the clown forget that he was slightly depressed, and he felt alive. Tie dyed man seemed to be crying from all the laughter, and the clown knew he had discovered his destiny. "My Beautiful ballerina ask me again if I believe in love." the clown said. "Do you believe in love?" the ballerina obeyed. "Tonight I might." the clown answered. The game was over, they would definitely end up in bed together. That was all the ballerina wanted anyway, that was the only reason that she was laughing at his jokes. The man in the tie-dyed shirt was also not really laughing at the clown. He was a Starseed from the Glaxton nebula, sent to earth to help with the ascension of the enlightened ones, or at least that was what he believed, and it is so much cooler than believing that he was merely a 37 year old cab-driver who lived with his mother. The tie-dyed Starseed smoked a lot of pot...a lot, and he was high, off his face, he didn't even hear what the clown said, but his bright suit made him laugh.

The clown and the obese ballerina disappeared from Jack Dandy's shortly after the clowns last joke. The ballerina was very exited to get the clown out of his big shoes, and the clown was all high on life, because he believed he was destined to bring laughter to the world...and he was glad that this story would end with a happy ending...nudge...nudge...wink...wink.

"Well I guess it all depends on how you look at things" said the barman who had been quietly watching everything. "A night at Jack Dandy's changes lives" he grinned and took a swig of whiskey straight out of the bottle.

THE END