Have we gained altitude?

Wayfarer’s Journal: Day 15

Writing 2 days in a row. Impressive. The force must be strong with us

I’m using analogy to explain my point today, analogy that goes beyond the realm of geek and ventures far deeper into the ridiculous:

I’ve done something I’ve never done before. I went on a Star Wars marathon. Completed all 6 movies. In more or less the right order.

I’ve had strange notions about the movies for years, deriving my own sardonic opinion that deferred from the general consensus. It goes a little something like this: Apparently the dark side of the force is bad, or so says the Jedi order. An order that bans human attachment and does a Spartan taking of younglings from their mothers’ before bonds can be formed in order to train them to be a part of the priest-like brotherhood of Jedi, who are Galactic Keepers of Peace, because they are born with the ability to understand and manipulate the energy that binds the universe together. Seems pretty dark, if you ask me. How then can the dark side be worse than this? But it wasn’t about the good or bad of the force, it was about an interpretation by those who proclaimed themselves guardians of its knowledge.

A prophecy was made of one who would bring balance to the force. First assumed to be young Anakin Skywalker, a slave boy on the far reaches of Tatooine, the Jedi thought they were mistaken when he turned the Dark side of the force, joining the Sith. They assumed bringing balance meant destroying the dark side – but where is the balance without a dark side? Neither light nor dark can survive without the other’s existence. They took a boy who was already attached to his mother and trained him to forget her. Love is light, not a path to the dark side.

And then you grow up and go through life realizing just the opposite. Maybe there was a reason the Jedi forbade the bonds of love and attachment. They lead to fear of loss. Which leads to anger. And anger, without a doubt is the path to the dark side.

My inability to control my anger has come from a very similar place. When I love, my attachment to that person becomes infinite. When you love that much, the fear of loss is inevitable. I love you so much, how can I live without you? I can’t bear the thought of losing you. And so I forget myself and lose myself so completely in you that I go to pieces when I am left. That’s when the anger takes over. You get angry, you go into a dark place, and you are motivated to become someone you are not, because it is a far more comforting place than having to deal with the pain of loss.

So maybe the lesson is to love less and if you don’t have that ability in you, don’t love at all. Find peace in solitude and forge a wall of light around you, which only contains peace.

Breaking the Silence

Wayfarer’s Journal, Day 14

The self-made promise to write regularly has not been maintained. I’ve debated its reasons; maybe the inability to write has overcome the will to. I’ve prided myself in being a writer and I can’t seem to string a decent sentence together; one that would flow as easy as an honest lyric, be read like music. My expressions have ceased to be vocal ones, but the conversations are aplenty in my head, like the echoes of a long lost debate, never finding resolution. But no more of my inability to write well, for now the need to write at all has taken over:

Some heads just contain more voices in them than others do. I have heard a thousand voices screaming me at me, all with shades of the same face. Are they related? Or maybe they are all faceless forms, merely stealing the face of comfort from within the deeper reaches of me, with the hope that I would listen to someone I know. They make no sense most of the time, just an overwhelming buzz at the back of my head. All of a sudden, one stands out, crisp, clear, sharp – making perfect sense for all of ten seconds. And I seem to forget these realizations, cease to hold on to them for longer than a few minutes. My madness is attempting to return my sanity and I fear I cannot give in. I seek out the lone voices, the strong ones, and listen and then forget. Sometimes the answers bring peace, sometimes a return to pain. But they are always honest. I used to think that was the key to my own outward personality, but not maybe it should be limited to just these voices, at least for a while. Just so that it would cultivate itself into habit, one that would be hard to break easily.

In order to do this, I will return to comforting ritual. One that clings to solitude until I feel I am safe to be let out into the world again. The monster needs a few more lullaby’s before she can stay in hibernation and regular programming can resume. When I am ready to let her go, it will be when I am strong enough to confront her and bring us both peace. But for now, I know solitude will contain her.

Baby Steps

Wayfarer’s Journal – day 2

Baby Steps by murphyz

What are people actually implying  when they tell you, you must love yourself first? We take care of how we look, we find pride in our work, how can that not be loving yourself? Surely it must be some other reason than the lack of self love that has kept your nose firmly rooted below the earth. You try so hard to turn your head around and look up again. You really do. But that invisible hand, half chokes you, keeping you down.

It hits you. You love selflessly.

Maybe that actually makes no sense. The Bible asks you to love thy neighbour as thy self. I’m no devout Christian, but you’ve got to admit the statement makes perfectly logical sense: love yourself before you go loving someone else.

You love so selflessly that when the very people you love hurt you, you don’t think about the damage it does to you. You stay. Don’t walk away.

And then, before you’ve realized what’s happening you become a monster. Your insides slowly begin to churn. You are quiet, almost calm on the outside, but your head is a washing machine, over stuffed and still whirling. Finally the explosion comes you become the very things you despise:

You lash out at the people who hurt you instead of walking out the door when you were supposed to. The chances are that most of the time, the people who you lash out at tend to love themselves more than they love you.  They don’t stand for the hell you put them through – they simply turn around and walk away. Strength borne out of self love.

Point taken. Point understood.

How to go about doing it is a whole other ball game. For today I have acceptance. For now I am standing still and not declining any further.  Maybe tomorrow the paralysis will begin to thaw.

35,000 ft. below sea level

Oct 1, 2011.

Wayfarer’s journal – day 1

Welcome to the abyss.

The darkness can be comforting, and if you stay here long enough, you might just start to like it.

No one is here to see you at your weakest other than the people who love you enough to crawl into your hole with you and stay there hoping you’ll be ready to walk back into the light again.

But they can’t stay with you forever, because this place you’ve allowed yourself to descend to isn’t comfort, its merely an unhealthy comfort zone which doesn’t even allow you to see yourself and how much there is still left to be loved. The longer you wallow in the darkness and keep the people who willingly walked in hostage, even their ability to see you for who you are can diminish. Its hard to breathe here and unless you’re here to die, no one can stay for too long.

You stay, because its easier than climbing back out again. They can’t, because this place has begun to erase the very love that brought them to you in the first place.

They grope around in an unfamiliar darkness trying to keep their own footing while still trying to hold on to you and not leave you here alone. In turn, you drive them to the brink of madness until they can’t even see the love the had for you anymore.

It sucks you dry, this cold, dark, pseudo-comforting place. She wraps her cold hands around you, implies that she is the comfort you have so long sought and then starts to kill you, slowly, like a snake bite, paralyzing each of your faculties one after the other. And she’s beautiful, just as deepest portion of your pain can always be. But try to look around you when the occassional, rare beam of sunlight grazes across your half-closed eyelids for a moment – even mermaids don’t roam this far down. No life can survive here and unless you are willing to make one tiny step back up, every last functioning faculty within you will cease to exist and you will never see the light of day again.

But which way is up? Sometimes what seems like a genuine effort to pick yourself up tends to lead you further down. You’re on a slope and they they tend to be slippery. Just when you think you can’t go any lower, you find yourself at an all new depth and wonder how it is that you got here. You’re in an abyss, a black hole that knows nothing of space or time. Normal rules don’t apply here, and climbing up out of this place is probably going to be harder than the reasons that got you here in the first place.

Here’s some hope for the journey that’s about to be embarked on – those rare few of us who fearlessly walk through out of this well of darkness will be very ones blessed enough to see more than merely the light of day. The mundane aren’t sent into the abyss, my darling, the divine are.

Abyss by Edin Chavez