{peace.love.free}

{listen to the song while reading, pretty please}

Allie Moss – Corner
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~~~

Hey you.

Yes, you.

You have been so brave. So strong.  So resolved. You have been standing your ground for months now and you are so very tired.

You give everything to others and you are depleted.  Your profound generosity is one of the truest things in the universe, but such things do not come without cost.

You have endured a loss so profound that your world has stopped spinning.  You ache from the weight of carrying around the giant hole in your heart.  So few people understand that emptiness can be so very heavy.

You have such an exquisitely beautiful heart.  You experience life so deeply that it becomes overwhelming. You ache because you cannot take it all in, and you ache because you cannot possibly make it all better.

You are under tremendous pressure. So much is riding on what you are doing every day.  You carry the weight of this on your shoulders and in your heart, and it is breaking your spirit.

You have witnessed things that no eyes should see.  You have heard words that nobody should have to hear.  Your soul is tender and wounded.  You struggle to maintain your faith in the basic goodness of humanity.

You are confused, in a state of turmoil.  You feel alone. There are a million paths in front of you and you have no idea which one to take.  All you want to do is run away.

You are a warrior woman.  Fierce.  Awe-inspiring.  Full of courage.  You are surrounded by many who look to you for inspiration.  But there are moments where you are brought to your knees by doubt, when you question how you can possibly go on, when the fight seems too vast for one person.

You have been attacked. Your security has been breached. The center of your existence has been threatened, and that which defines you is in jeopardy.   You pour your heart and soul into protection, but you know that in the end it is all beyond your control.

You are cracked and broken, brilliant and growing, flawed and humble, triumphant and bold, completely at peace and embroiled in struggle.

You are human.  I am too.

So come here.  Take my hand.   Sit with me in this safe corner.  We’ll make a cozy fort with blankets, just like we did when we were kids.   We’ll use these handmade quilts from my grandmother because they’ve already got love sewn right into them, and right now we need all the love we can get.  Well just pull these old patchwork quilts around us and snuggle into our cocoon. We’ll get through this together, you and I.

Hold my hand.  Lay your head on my shoulder and I’ll lean close and we’ll surround each other in waves of the purest love. We’ll tell each other our secrets, give voice to our fears, dive into the darkness and the light together. Take a deep breath now with me, and exhale everything you’ve been holding inside.  Let it all go now, every little bit of it.  It’s not just yours to hold anymore.  You are not alone now.  You never really were.

There are times to stand up and fight, to be strong and brave and mighty.  And you have done that so well.  Now is the time to lay it all down and surrender.   This is the time to take refuge, to rebuild your reserves, to feed your heart and mind and soul.  To remember how beautiful you are, how sacred, how precious in every possible way.

Have faith that others will pick up what you have put down, even if just for a little while.  Know that you must do this, that space and time and healing love are just as important as struggling forward and gaining ground.  Feel the tremendous love pouring toward you from all corners of the universe.  Accept that all will be revealed in time.  Know that you are the most perfect, most beautiful, most inspiring person I have ever known.

You are safe here. You are home now.  You can rest.

The room is too fucking cold.  It always is.  I forgot to bring my sweater and I’m shivering as the air conditioning blasts away.  The instructor is in front of the class,  droning on and on in words I don’t understand.  I struggle to be attentive but my mind wanders.  My fingers are itching to write on the yellow legal pad in front of me, to dive into the words swirling through my brain and make them into something real.

Why am I here?

I feel panic bubbling up inside.  I can’t breathe.  I don’t belong here; don’t want to learn about programming algorithms and logical coding structure.   I’m the only female in a room of guys who have been tinkering with computers for years.  They are all eager, excited to learn enough to finally unleash their inner Bill Gates on the world. I am terrified, searching everywhere for an escape route and finding none, so ridiculously out of place that I hear a refrain bubbling up from my subconscious, and I stifle a laugh.

“one of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong…”

I’m accustomed to feeling intelligent, but here I feel like everyone is fluent in a language I’ve never before encountered.  All the rest seem well versed in the dialect of DOWHILE and ENDIF and PSEUDOCODE.  I am missing the part of my brain necessary for making sense of all this.  I don’t WANT to make sense of all this.  My brain feels like the human equivalent of the blue screen of death that keeps appearing on my failing laptop.  I am caught in an infinite loop of confusion and self pity, about to freeze up and shut down.

i just want to make pretty things.

It becomes part mantra, part plea – a desperate cycling through my brain in hopes the universe hears.  Please, not this. I just want to make pretty things.

~~~

It took me a long time to call myself an artist.  It takes audacity to hold up a word like that and claim it for myself.  It is a big, bold, brilliant, terrifying thing.   I am an artist. I play with light, bend words to suit, gather inspiration and beauty and scatter it in circles that are ever widening as I learn to step into myself.

I make pretty things. It is what I am here to do.  It is what makes me feel alive. It’s not about the  medium or the money, it’s about letting the universe flow through me, accepting what I’m given and letting it become what it will. I am so solid and sure of myself, of my path. This is who I am.  I  create – words or images or communities of people – and it’s as necessary as breathing. I must  do this.

This future I’m now staring down –  long days in a cubical somewhere, staring at a characters on a computer screen and trying to force them to do my bidding  - this feels like a direct betrayal of the work I have been put here to do, a slow death of spirit and purpose.  I know what my work is, with a clarity that people yearn for their whole life.  I know it, and I cannot embrace it.  I turn quickly from desperation into a petulant, foot stomping child.

I don’t wanna do it! I don’t wanna do it! I don’t wanna do it!

So my rebellious teenage self steps in, all cocky attitude and larger than life bravado – chain smoking and punked out – way too cool to be owned by anyone’s expectations.

Fuck it.  Don’t get worked up.  Just don’t do it.  They can’t make you.  Go underground.  Be an illegal alien.  Don’t waste your time with this messed up system. This is stupid.  Nana-nanana…They can’t catch you!  Just sit  there and put your hands over your ears, ignore the bullshit and make your stuff.

But I’m full of self-pity, an egocentric puddle of woe and the worst part is that I did this.  Nobody set this in motion but me, and what is there to do but follow it through?  The sense of resistance I have is incredible.  I’m digging in my heels hard but being dragged along in spite of myself.   The logistics of this situation leave me with few options.  I am stuck in a trap of my own making. I’m gearing up for ginormous temper tantrum followed by limb flailing meltdown of epic proportions.  I’m almost daring the universe to send me to my room for an indefinite time out.

Out of nowhere another voice fills my head, and she’s irritated.  She hauls me up off the floor and drops me roughly on my chair for as stern talking to (with a healthy dose of ridicule thrown in for good measure).

So, you’ve got to go to school to learn to do something you don’t want to do?  Oh, poor, poor little baby.  You know what, lots of people go to work every single day to do jobs they hate and they make the best of it.  That’s life.  There are bills to pay and kids to feed and this is just reality so SUCK. IT. UP. SISTAH.  Oh, for gods sake quit that sniveling – it’s pathetic.

And I know she’s right, damn it, but I don’t want to hear it.  I want someone to understand why this feels so fucking terrible. I want someone to hold my hand and stroke my hair and tell me that it will all be okay.

please, just tell me it will all be okay…

I’ve fallen off my imaginary time out chair and I’m curled in a ball on the floor now, an oozing, snotty, crying mess – wondering how to pull it together before people notice.

My gently pragmatic self steps in, sits down next to me on the floor and lifts my chin.  She’s all Mary Poppins with her spoon full of sugar and spit-spot snap of her fingers making everything tidy again.

You’ll make the best of it dearie.  You’ll do what you have to do and it won’t be forever.  You never know, you might even like it.  Come on, pick yourself up.  You’re a strong one, remember.  You can do this.  You have to do this, so there is no sense in crying about it.  Chin up love, chin up.

And I know all those voices are a part of me, and they all have a point.  But the only one who speaks in first person is the artist, the one whose soul burns with the fire of creativity.

The one who makes pretty things.

~~~

Class is ending and I’m gathering my things together to walk out.  For three hours I’ve sat here so deep in my head that I have no idea what was said.  No matter that I’ve turned this around in my head a million times already, I’m still searching for a way out.  I get into the car and turn on my iPod, looking for answers the music.  I take a deep breath  put the car in drive and head home, because sometimes, there’s nothing to do but keep moving forward, taking the next logical step, and having faith that it will all work out in the end.

I am exactly where I need to be.  I need to be exactly where I am. I am a blessing manifest.

~~~

I”m gonna go home and make some pretty things.

__________________________________________________

Teasing apart those messages in my head, giving them separate voice and personality and working to understand the role each plays came as a result of an exercise with life coach extraordinaire Jenn Lee of Artizen Coaching.  One of my fall goals is to manifest the ability to afford further sessions – I can’t say enough about how powerful the little bit I got to experience really was.