The call was to go down to the river. The plan was to go the the library. But my guides were incredibly insistent so I relented, scraped my plans and pointed the truck towards the mountain.
I’ve long since given up on wearing a bathing suit when I swim alone in the mountains. What’s the point and naked is how the river is meant to be experienced.
Once I crammed myself down in the crevice between a rock and a hard place - the perfect natural bath tub - I said to who ever was directing and supposedly listening now, “Well, I’m here.”
“That thing you think you been doing?” Came the reply.
“Yea.” I said.
“That work you think you been doing?”
“Yea,” I said again, this time with a bit of a proud smirk, thinking back to when I went pro over ten years ago.
“That was all just your training (translation: you ain’t done shit yet), the real work begins now (stay humble).”
Message received.
More like message finally articulated because I gotta say there has been a type of clarity on the rise in my life in the past couple of years. Call it coming out of the fog of some many things but it is clear to me I have built the house, and now it is finally time to begin living in it.
My house is the network of relationships that I maintain thanks to the digital aids that surround me constantly. I am always in touch. Ever alone and always in touch. Being in touch allows me to have the support, lover, reminders, and deadlines that I need to do the real work, the work that starts now. That started months ago, years ago even, but that is finally ready to be unleashed to its full potential. Being alone allows me the time to make good on those nudges.
I’ve learned I’m a severe introvert - what I mean is my alone time is mandatory and my need for it runs deep. You can always count on a warm reception when I’m out in public because I assure you I have planned it that way so that there is plenty of Me time before I have to take that leap again that every empath must take every time they go out in public.
When you’re born poor to uneducated parents it doesn’t take much to feel like you’re “dreaming big”, so suffice it to say my dreams were astronomical by the standards I grew up with. I was preached to about poverty and the woes of money and then that was spoon fed to me with a side of how honorable it is to be poor and futile to wish for more and both are bullshit.
Right now a lot of vows I took knowingly and unknowingly earlier in life are coming to light. I’m experiencing the breaking or renewal of these vows, like the vow of poverty I was spoon fed as a child. Abundance is not a bank account, it’s a state of mind. The two are irrevocably linked though. I know a lot of people who are very financially “successful” and never feel satisfied. I call them clients. Desire is the root of all things. Hunger is the shadow side of desire. One without the other is hollow.
Asia. Check.
Emotional Sobriety. Check.
#MeToo. Check.
Turning 40. Check
Etc Check Check Check
Conclusion?
Zero fucks.
Zero fucks is not not caring. It is the opposite. Zero fucks is a radical act of self love.
I am no longer available prey to the emotional vampires that often occupy the front of lyft rides or appear across the counter when I didn’t ask for their help. By some magical grace of the divine I have finally learned how to flip that god damn switch. I can cut a bitch off now and it actually sticks. No more mansplaining. Or hideous flirting. When you’re being abused it’s easy to accept one sided behavior from strangers because you don’t even realize it’s wrong. You’ve been conditioned. But I’ve removed myself from that cycle juuust long enough now and have juuust the right kinds of all the kinds of love in my life right now that I feel strong enough to say no and expect to be heard and respected. Intent. It’s everything. I’m slinging a lot of self affirming, loving and creative intent right now.
I don’t feel fragile exactly. Just new. Full of Wonder. But it’s all so familiar. I’ve changed. They’ve stayed the same but my changing has changed the way I see them. See all of it.
It is not cruel to set up boundaries with strangers and then insist that they be respected but it’s challenging for an empath. It was challenging for me, until now. Each day I feel stronger and more present than I did the day before. Part of me feels like I’m waking up to a dream. And it’s real. In Bali they would call this an activation, the new found awareness and the paradigm shifts that I am experiencing right now. I would call it turning 40 and Venus retrograde through my sun and ascendant and taking a year off to travel and finally kicking my codependent habit and building the family by choice of my dreams for over ten years now and seeing that really, really come into focus in all it’s beauty.
Happy halloween you freaks.