pinksaltiness

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No! I won't live a lie, no matter how attractive you make it!!

- Bruce Wayne, perchance to dream

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A professional doesn't get mad, he gets even.

- time to create and murder, Lawrence block

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Living From The Heart

Our highest vibration, our Essence, who we really are, is Pure Love. The Divine Reality of Existence, the present, the “I am,” resides in the Spiritual Heart.

We might find temporary happiness by looking out in the world but true lasting love must first be discovered within.

In the words of the spiritual teacher Anandamayi Ma,

“When by the flood of your tears, the inner and outer have fused into One, you will find Her whom you sought with such anguish, nearer than the nearest, the very breath of life, the very core of every heart”.

- From https://chopra.com/blogs/meditation/awaken-your-spiritual-heart

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"You are Joseph Chandler and you'd better get used to it.

Nobody said that you had to be the greatest detective that ever lived, only the best detective that you can be.

And so sometimes you'll fail, that's okay, we all fail sometimes.

But it's not ok to give up."

-DS Miles to DI Chandler in Whitechapel season 2 episode 3

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Happy 40th Birthday to me

Prime seat at the cinema, ready for Guardians of the Galaxy III

Yeah that's a promo before the movie!

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"You can't patch a wounded soul with band-aid"

- Harry Bosch, The Black Echo, Michael Connelly

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I came home to Sydney from Melbourne a week after undergoing surgery. I feel an absolute sense of elation and excitement at being home. I am moved by my friend Anton’s care in picking me up and helping me get settled in at 10 pm. It’s not so difficult to find friends that have care and empathy. I can truly appreciate high quality people in my life and have no desire to keep those that aren’t.

After coming home and taking two pills of Endone, now my pain is kind of subsiding. So thankful to so many people in this experience. Most of all I feel so glad to have gotten to know myself and the stuff I’m made of. I’m so brave and so organised. I am such a mature and wise grown up. It is a privilege to observe and get to know the person that I am that I never had the chance to see honestly. What a gift.

♥️

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Black Dessert

"I hurt my back, I've been having spasms." she said. I felt a wave of compassion, comradeship, for someone struggling with health.

She went on to describe how it came about, "I joined a new gym. I'd been doing a lot of things such as climbing, boxing and all kinds of classes with my friend who is getting married soon. Then a week ago, my back just went into spasm during warm-up."

I felt the warmth come back into me and turn a bright red colour of fury. What privilege to be able to overexercise and then live to tell the tale.

Like a girl walking from the school gates to the class alongside someone who seemed to be like her, who seemed to understand. Then realising it was a dream and instead she's in the middle of a black desert, nobody and nothing to be seen except the endless landscape staring back at her.

There's no place to go, nothing to do. Except sit with her arms around her knees, tears dried in the hot winds.

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Unbreaking Chains

In my last sound healing session, my healer dug deeper into my emotions that surface when my mother continues to violate my boundary by imposing her expectations and need for contact, or when the guy I dated for three weeks continued to call, text and leave voicemails for me for more than two weeks after I ended it.

Together we identified this feeling as deep worthlessness. Like I was not a person. Like I was a slave. Like I had no agency or power over myself. Like I was there to be used, abused. Like I was a commodity, not even a living being, worse than an animal.

Turns out my soul was still carrying the trauma of being a slave in a past life more than 800 years ago in Mexico. Don't ask me how my healer can identify this so precisely. This is her gift, for which I'm grateful.

The imagery of slavery really resonated with me, as did my forever identification with Black people and their slave history. Something in my heart always told me I'm one of them even though I'm not.

So my healer cleared it and she said to not hate those that abused me. To let go of hate as it shows up in my life. It is through hate the worthlessness crept in. She said that over the next four weeks it should start to become better.

Two days later it's already a material and significant shift. I could find the courage and solid ground to tell of the guy who kept calling me. Not feeling like what I'd say won't stick. For the first time in forever, I felt in my body that my life is significant and I found motivation to focus on me, on being and from that doing. Rather than doing to avoid being.

My kitchen is organised and decluttered. I went for a morning walk. I did my 65 mins of chanting and I emailed and told my father to back off. I did my stretches and foam rolling.

And just like that, I find it within me to care for me.

Here's hoping I can keep the fire of self care burning within myself. ❤️

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Acceptance

"Your womb is disconnected from your mother's. That's what's causing all the pain and trauma." said my sound healer and therapist. "You need to cut the cords and at the very least accept. At the moment, your body is erecting defence mechanisms and rejecting what is and it's stuck in 'I don't want. I don't want. I don't want.'", she continued.

"But I'm not ready or able to accept.", I said.

"I understand but until you accept at the very least and are willing to accept, this isn't going to heal no matter what I do.", she said.

The quality of accepting this reality is akin to turning on my senses, only to find that there's a knife protruding out of my heart, blood everywhere. I guess accepting it is likely to be helpful. To extract the knife and undergo reparative surgery.

Now imagine having to do that alone. Perhaps it just feels easier to walk around with the knife lodged in me, it's been a familiar sensation all long.

Isn't it another nail in the coffin of acceptance. He left me because he couldn't bear to be with me. And she didn't love me because she was too busy pleasing the world. He left me because we didn't fit well together.

Accepting that I'll never be seen as a person, have acceptance and empathy from where I originated.

Well I guess it comes with solitude, insomnia, tears and writing. Or else a step towards it.

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Contained

Migrating from one closed coffee shop to another, in the rain, across the puddles... we leave the last one as it gets closed. Searching for a quiet corner to snuggle in and have a warm cuppa, the city cold as ever, disappoints again.

At 10 pm, we make our way back to the car, parked by the street. An ambitious 90 mins remaining on the meter, rather optimistic considering the graveyard of the city we searched in.

The car it is, all the windows fogged and frosted. 

“You know how the cops here avoid those snogging in a car?”, he said, “They stay away from those with windows fogged up.”

“You mean they are too busy catching real criminals to shame a couple making out in the car?”, I asked rhetorically.

“Exactly!”, he said. 

A few futile attempts to cuddle later, I find myself on his lap, our arms around each other. Fogged windows and kisses and cuddles and his hands curiously gliding on my skin and spinning my glittery belt on his favourite dress, observing me keenly.

For a few mins, it is just him and me and me and him, locked in a container, contained in an embrace or three. I feel myself come into my soul, body, spirit, energy and breath. A feeling of presence of my soul embodied in my mind and being, like the iron that magnetises in the presence of another, completely, consistently and in its perfection.

The setting of the pitter patter of rain, faint lighting through the fog, near darkness, cool temperature, the contained confinement of a small car and a very willing embrace.

And just like that on the stage of sensory theatre, my light found its way back into me.

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Light

"Why the sudden hug?", he asked me as I put my arms around him in another embrace, this time without any word appeals.

It was like walking into a patch of sunlight and standing for a minute on a freezing winter day in a dark, dreary wind tunnel. I can't explain what brought me to it, except the light and the warmth.

And then I keep walking, carrying the warmth in my being, a heartening reprieve, until I run into sunshine again.

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Porcupine

"I feel criticised. I can't be myself. I retreat in my many shells, it's going to take me some time to be myself again.", he said.

"I understand," I said, "thanks for telling me."

Almost like seeing a tiny drop of blood from an imperceptible wound on someone's feet. The someone who saw a fluffy animal, picked it up and felt drawn to make it his own. Not realising the fluffy animal turns into a porcupine in danger. And danger sits by the corner of her eye.

The danger of not being good enough, warm enough, clear enough, open enough, tough enough, vulnerable enough, protected enough, safe enough, heard enough.

That day when he inadvertently got stabbed, you had received and ignored warnings, wishing for what he wished for, the gentle fluffy. Not seeing the sensitive porcupine, that stabs itself while spiking him.

For you can't unspike a porcupine but tend to the thorns on a rose, with utmost care, grace and embrace.

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And just like that

Life has taken a different turn. I talked to him, met him, seeking connection with another. I found connection to myself required me to connect to another.

It surprises me how simply, his listening with his heart and laughing with me, his seeking connection normalises everything I feel, want and desire.

The challenge now is how to stay present within me and my life while I'm present with him.

Sunrise, literally and figuratively. Who knew the possibilities of 2021.

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Recovery and Healing

"How much do you think you've recovered?", he asked me.

"Somewhere between 30-40%", I said.

"Recovering from what?", I asked myself silently.

Trauma, abuse, covid, isolation, exclusion, bullying, harassment, heartbreak, abandonment, and most of all, of being different to others.

Who knows how far along I am in the recovery. And where I started and what will be the culmination thereof.

Like the orphaned young prince, heir to the kingdom, fleeing to save his life from the extended family trying to get rid of the obstacles between them and the throne. If someone were to ask him, where he's going, how further along he is and when or if he will be king again.

All of it doesn't matter. At the moment, it's survival.

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Holding Boundaries

They say "fences make good neighbours".

Imagine having a neighbour that insists on having you around. Who tells you that they will plant your yard whenever you worry about its barrenness. You look at their beautiful yard and continue to hang out there. You let them put the rubbish in your yard because hey, it's worthwhile to keep this yard pleasant.

The corner of the yard you were assigned to keeps getting smaller and smaller and pushed further and further away.

One day you stand up and walk into your yard. Every now and then your neighbour gives you a tip or a hand to clean some of the crap they threw on your side while you were stuck on their side. Whenever you're not looking, they still throw rubbish over on your side.

One day you see them throwing the rubbish and install a really really tall fence. The inflow of rubbish stops except when you sometimes leave the door open. You set about the job of cleaning and it's laborious, exhausting and, well, stinky.

You don't see their faces across the fence anymore. The togetherness of yore, left behind with it's yearning.

You stare at the rubbish and stand in the yearning. Looking at your yard and wonder how the hell you're going to clean up this mess.

When you step outside your home, you see, "Beware! Unstable person. Keep out!" sprayed on your front fence.

You keep walking as you see the eyes that used to ask "R U OK?" evade eye contact until they are looking for a spot to store their rubbish for a little while (not!).

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आग का दरिया है, डूब के जाना है।

Only way to get to the other side is through.