liveapathofheart.blog

Category: Uncategorized

  • Salt

    After the fall

    The light no longer beamed in my chest

    I found it harder to channel the light

    Sitting alone, I felt alone rather than full

    Missing the skin touching my own

    Even though it may have not been meant for me.

    In the face of the man I felt as if I was doing it wrong, too much sexuality, not enough sensitivity, not enough words, or at least the right words, came from my mouth.

    Round and round the words came from him making my head spin and it started to dawn on me that I’d done something wrong, blankness, seeing red, flooded by words I was, and this will not do!

    Reminders of times in my life when my big feeling body just could not compute, shut down would happen.

    My truth disappears.

    So now after the skin was here pressing near to mine, the breath was on my neck, fingers on nipples squeezing just right, making me shudder…

    I’ve had to ask it to leave…

    Because I want the light back.

    I’ll wait for the light and the skin to exist together in my house.

    A small sadness abides here now, parts that were weary of wandering alone curl up here on the couch in longing.

    I was almost ready I guess.

    Not quite I guess.

    When the man comes that is filled with light and can offer his darkness as a tool to more light, when he says honey let’s go biking, let’s go for a quick swim.

    When we don’t even have to discuss the fact that each day we must commune with the mountains.

    When there is a man that revels in my powerful sex, that can’t help but grasp my hand and hold me tight, when neither of us can resist feeding each other.

    When the salt of our skin continually mingles…

  • The Desert Smells Like Rain

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    The desert smells like rain

    As the mists rise up the mountain

    Dew seeps down the stalks.

    Leaves of sage and chamisa,

    the bushy artemisa fragrant and lush.

    Their roots are dry

    The earth has been waiting

    The plants have been mining deeper,

    Roots searching for sustenance.

    Just as the leaves and branches have risen higher

    Praying for light,

    Root to rise.

    And the desert smells like rain.

    Chaos building in the ether,

    Structure built in the plant reaching.

    Divine bridges the desire.

    In an instant opening occurs!

    Sweet deluge, red dirt wet,

    Musty, aromatic hallelujahs!

    The desert smells like rain.

  • Antlers on your brown

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    Spring on my skin

    Nights like these

    My breath should be passing between

    My teeth in a rush

    Throat open

    Head back

    The goddess spilling out.

  • Whats to be done with all these rings?

    To be read in a Tom Waits voice…

    Whats to be done with all these rings?

    After the dust settles

    When there is no longer ANY chance of reconciliation

    What is to be done with them?

    There’s the child to consider.

    Maybe she’d want them?

    But are they cursed now?

    Destined to give her the fits?!

    What now should be done with these rings?

    One bought in a street market in Argentina

    when we cared about nothing but us.

    It turned my finger green and ate away the skin.

    I should have listened I suppose.

    The second with a giant fake stone surrounded by tiny real ones.

    A metaphor for our love?

    But still, the question still remains.

    What the fuck do I do with all these rings?

  • Dave’s not here man

    I remember the day we went to the Durango, CO Humane Society to pick out a puppy; sure we would find our soul mate dog to complete our little family. This dog, I remember telling Dave my then fiancé, would be MY dog, the first dog I’d have in my adult life. MINE.

    When we got there we didn’t find “the one”, and slightly relieved and slightly disappointed we started to leave when the desk lady said that there was a puppy that had JUST left for foster care with a local family, look his picture!

    That was it, I knew. A little red healer/lab mix, mutt-ball of love, I said get him here!

    I remember him being carried into the room, being set down on the floor 5-6 feet away from me, and as I watched, he wobbled straight to me and got right in my lap, sweet little red and brown puppy. I inhaled him and knew he was mine.

    All the way home we argued over what to name him and finally settled on Boone. Since I wanted him to be called Dan and Dave loves all things western= Daniel Boone.

    Boone was an instant lap dog, and even as his size increased over the next few years into a good sized medium dog, he continued to think he was just little. I let him sleep with me, spooning the dog instead of my then husband. When I put him in his kennel he’d whine, cry and stare at me from the bedside, so it was just easier.

    Fast forward 13 years later, Dave and I have been divorced for about 10 years; there has been incredible pain and sadness between us. We made it through though, we’re still friends.

    I was a drunk, an addict and in the end, Dave and the dogs dropped me at a drug and alcohol rehab in Taos, NM with sadness, not knowing if I would return or if he wanted me to return and, I project, a little relief.

    Here I stayed. Taos, NM sheltered me from the wreckage I had made.

    At the time, fresh from a 30-day inpatient program and beginning a 3 month sober living stint, I believed getting a divorce from Dave and staying in Taos, leaving my former life, was the best way to save my life. Still do.

    I grieved; I remember crying for the better part of year. I grieved the idea of our marriage, the dream of our marriage. Missing our fur babies, which we mutually decided would stay with him as I was just learning how to be a human and barely able to take care of myself.

    Recently Dave called to tell me Boone, now 13 years old, has nasal cancer. That his muzzle is swollen and that for a month or so he has been blowing blood all over Dave’s house, occasionally blowing pieces of what we think may be tumor out and all over everything.

    With heavy sadness and practicality we decide Dave will see how the next vet appointment goes and possibly move to have him put down that following week.

    A week goes by and Dave calls to report. Boone was put on some antibiotics that took all the swelling down and Dave felt for a moment like maybe he was going to be ok. They had a great week, Boone was his sweet totally lap obsessed narcissistic self, but towards the end of the week he started to decline again.

    We’ve both been through end of life situations with animals and it never goes well when you wait. There is almost never a time when it’s clear that you should put an animal down. At least for me, I always wonder if I just killed my animal and I shouldn’t have.

    Knowing all this and having had the same experiences, Dave went ahead and made the appointment.

    Booney went peacefully, it was a sullen relief for Dave. He had been in process around his passing for months.

    Over this period Dave and I had nice conversations about Boone and our other animals now dead and gone.

    He told me stories about our life and Boone, which I do not remember much of honestly. I was either high on weed or drunk or hung over our entire relationship.

    We met in his garden and had a conversation over his tomato patch one night when I ended up at his house after partying with him and his friends at a local bar.

    After our first date I went to jail for a month for my second DUI because I was still on probation for my 1st DUI… Yep.

    We went on our second date after I got out of the slammer, (he’s told me this story, I didn’t remember it clearly), I guess I told him I had just gotten out of jail, I didn’t have a license, and could he please stop by the drug testing place so that I could do a BAC and a urine drug screen before we headed out on our date?

    I really wonder at that now, what kind of person chooses to go ahead with loving someone like that and deciding to spend the rest of his life with them?

    Whatever, I’m not going to take his inventory.

    Boones passing, our conversations around it and Dave telling me stories about who I was and who WE were, triggered a whole cascade of grief for me in a way I had not previously been available to myself for processing.

    I had some massive ah-has.

    I am so fucking grateful he decided to love me anyway. Even though I was a wreck. Even though I wrecked or tried to wreck everything I touched, including him.

    It’s my belief now, and maybe I’m wrong about this who knows; that I’d be dead if Dave hadn’t decided to love me. I would fucking be dead.

    I was out there literally dancing on bars, being an escort, snorting coke off the back of toilet tanks in bars on weeks nights, dressed like a hooker, in heels in the middle of winter, getting fucked in alley ways, getting raped.

    Trying to annihilate, trying to obliterate myself from the face of the earth.

    Being here in Taos in my insular bubble of recovery and organic foods, mediation and therapy, I had blocked out what I couldn’t handle, maybe until right now.

    I think when I got sober I grieved what I could, but just recently when Dave started telling me all the stories, I grieved again and in a new way.

    I remembered myself as I was then, and acknowledged the parts of myself that have been coming back to me from that time. I’ve recently in the last few years seen the reemergence of the free spirited girl that got me into a ton of trouble in my teen years; but she sure is fun!

    I let her back in and I forgave myself.

    Man, I had not done that before at all, or very little.

    I feel from that forgiveness, the most amazing lightness and decreasing of burden than I’ve ever felt before and a newfound ability to be closer to my heart.

    Such a relief.

    Greif from grief from grief came tumbling out and I processed stuff as far back as being a baby.

    It was a hard month or so.

    It has culminated in a recent visit from Dave. We planned a fun visit, as he has a boy who is the same age as my daughter. We had a nice time, but as everything is for me it was a great learning.

    Something I’ve been trying to practice is to see the Other as right sized; to see reality, to ask what is actually true.

    I’ve had a habit in my life of always seeing Others as having the upper hand, as being better than me, as having more power, more right to life than me.

    Unworthiness has been the original sin wound for me, and it is slowly dissipating.

    I notice that I no longer automatically think attractive men have more power than me. I know, silly right? But that’s what I always thought and that’s how I always ACTED too.

    In the stories I had created about my previous life, I had made myself the wreck, the one who slayed our marriage and I always, in these fantasies, made Dave the kind, compassionate man who saved me.

    The visit showed me the progress I’ve made and also showed me more of reality of the situation.

    Mainly I saw that there is no going back. Only forward, it’s behind me for a reason.

  • The In, Is Out

    I didn’t listen to music

    I didn’t remember my name, or the swing of my hips.

    My voice lay dormant in my throat, choking, contesting my being.

    I lay next to him dulled.

    My heart afraid of loss, starved of sun, but relegated to darkness.

    To get too big was a sin.

    To dance too much, to sing too much, to grow until I hit the ceiling and busted out the

    windows was not allowed.

    The outside called.
    The outside begged.

    And I saw suddenly my own reflection harbored the truth.

    Embracing my belly, embracing my shattered mind, closing eyes that searched for

    judgment and turning my gaze inward.

    In, in, in.
    In is out. In is out.

  • Heart Warrior

    Lay down your weapons.

    The luminous sun is shining on your young face of promise.

    Heart beating; drum beating, wings beating, cry!

    She will open wide

    She will contain the beast

    Love will pour forth from her smile, from her gratification

    Her body shining, full and embraced

    Are you finished with the pain young woman?

    Let go, come away, and dance

    She weighs her own heart in her two hands

    It is you who has come to save your soul.

    Heart beating; drum beating, wings beating, cry!

    Stop now and turn your eyes inward, look in and see

    You will never need another

    The battle is over

  • This Man

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    So much, so much to write about this man.

    Like an ocean wave, I attempted to wear him down, what I did was distill myself.

    All the while demanding of him what I now know he cannot provide, and thinking it was I that was not worthy.

    So long and so much learning I’m not sure I could document all that I’ve caused myself to learn by throwing myself against the rocks of this man, these men, myself.

    When you look for love outside of yourself, and you choose those to demand it from that do not have the right wiring to give it, or even the responsibility, you’re gonna have a bad time, man.

    He was coolly destined to teach me this.

    The way he looks, the way his energy feels to me, what he is, were destined to lure me in and make me think he was the answer.

    I wanted to acquire him. This is a learning I got.

    All his gifts, I wanted to own. When I finally realized this after years of prostrating at his feet, I thought I had found the answer. I don’t need to acquire him, I can become him! Right?

    When we are attracted to others it is because we want to be them. They have qualities we would like to emulate.

    I was an incomplete being still forming, still healing, newly sober, an infant. It makes sense to me that I thought he was the Sun. It could have been anyone I suppose.

    This went on for years…

    I built a habit of loving him, of infatuation, using him, escaping from my life as a partner and a new mother into fantasy from which no amount of trying to deconstruct the truth around the reality of my fascination for him could save me.

    Therapy, seeing him, not seeing him, cutting energetic cords, not cutting cords and trying to lure him in, building energetic brick walls around me, getting angry with him, accepting and just loving him for the wonderful being he is, nothing has seemed to quench this fire, this construct, this belief I have about this person.

    I set about becoming the things in him I love in an attempt to stop the need to acquire. This helped, it was self-actuating and in the meantime over the years I have gotten to see him more and more of just a man with normal faults than someone on a pedestal. Rather than looking up I’m mostly looking dead on as an equal these days.

    I’ve worked on arch type themes around him, daddy issues, the pattern of continually choosing men to be fascinated with who are unavailable, making me long and feel wanting and maybe not good enough. This is a pattern that I notice in myself often.

    Unworthiness, when imbalance strikes in me that’s where I go.

    I’m an alcoholic/addict so actually I do very black/white, up/down thinking sometimes. I am either the greatest angel to myself or most disgusting gutter tramp in my mind.

    I realized I’ve been behaving towards these men as if I am a little girl; from my child like parts that learned to feel not good enough/unworthy by many different mechanisms in my family of origin.

    When I do this behavior, this needy, unwomanly behavior, when I act as of I am less than them, when I energetically am trying to force from them the antidote to my unworthiness, it repels them.

    Also if I’m being fair, I choose men that I can play out this behavior with, so I choose men who are intrinsically unavailable, distant, aloof; I want to MAKE them love me. I want them to SAVE me. Make me feel worthy; unconsciously obviously, I’m not THAT crazy.

    I’ve succeeded in this behavior on a couple of occasions, but the underlying energetic dysfunction once I acquire them is so exhausting and is always there in the relationship and I realize that my grown ass woman parts are repelled by a man who is aloof, and distant, and unavailable. Because that sucks, yo.

    Just like they are repelled by my less than savory behaviors’! Well, look at that!

    Putting the big girl pants on…

    I want someone to meet me. Partner with me.

    I really do not in the end ever want to be with someone I have to talk into loving me, that I have to come get out of their shell, that I have to continually make the first move with. That part wasn’t even the real revelation for me, the revelation is that I have that choice.

    Love should be a practice of meeting each other by choice. On the daily.

    I want a heart centered grown up warrior that wants to play with me in these beautiful human forms while we have them! Am I right?!

    I fully value relationships as teachers. I ultimately believe that relationship is my tool for growing.

    I’m looking now to practice relationship rather than to jump right into enmeshment with the first willing and compelling stranger, (I love men more and more as grow older, so there are quite a few compelling specimens out there), but I digress.

    I want to practice taking care of myself in relation to another human being and gosh it would nice to find someone who would let me do that and wanted to support each other through this experiment of being curious towards one another.

    For example: Man and woman would have conversations about where we are coming from in the present moment, like how our wounding has gotten us here and where we are at now.

    We would try to get to know each other and build safety and trust.

    Which by the way I have realized is a MUST for the next go-rounds. What?! You might think this is a no brainer, but it’s taken me this long to get it.

    I so often let myself fall into relationship too fast because I can feel and envision the intrinsic goodness and higher self of a man, (have I mentioned I’m an empath?), without building any foundation with which to trust this other human that I’ve never met before. I just let the passion and the attraction carry me away; I’m sure you have too, but I’m trying not to project all over you.

    With trust and communication, I want to be able to take space when I need it.

    I need a lot of space, at least I always have. I’m open to a love that doesn’t drain me causing me to need to withdraw and recharge. But we’ll see.

    I’d like that space taking to be ok, that’s the experiment part for me. I’d like to be able to notice when I’m getting too enmeshed, overwhelmed and be able to safely ask for space and be able to take it. And maybe if I’m doing really well, allow the other person have that too

    So much adulting going on here, eh?

    I used to be fond of pointing out my previous experience of myself, in that I used to think I loved being alone, that I didn’t need anyone. I’m thinking this must have had something to do with being an addict plagued by a sense of self that required me to be separate and special and different, aloft or in the gutter.

    Some years back after getting sober and working on my recovery that changed, suddenly I was experiencing visceral aloneness and separation; I needed people, liked them even, which is an experience I’m not sure I’d had probably since I was a child.

    I thought I had grown to know myself better and I said things like “I’m not here to be alone this time around! I am here to be in relationship! Relationship is where I learn to evolve”. Hands on hips.

    This may have all been true but I don’t’ think I was being entirely honest with myself, really am I ever? I think self-centeredness; attachment to desire and a terror of being alone was driving it.

    At least somehow after the last 10 years I feel more like myself. There is a growing density of self-love that I operate from more and more that has to be a safer more sane way to operate.

    I know I must be changing/growing, as I am developing a gratitude that the Men/this Man let me go, or I caused chaos that forced them to let me go, especially this man.

    I may never have garnered all these tools I’ve learned and delved this deep if I hadn’t been suffering; if I hadn’t been, at least in the beginning harshly judging myself as not good enough for this man and forcing myself to grow up to feel like I was.

    Thank God he didn’t love me the way I wanted him to, thank god he couldn’t let me in so I could acquire him as another notch on my belt. The growing that happened as a result has been more than any actual relationship I’ve ever had.

    I put myself through hell at times in relation to this man. I realized it is not about him, it’s about all the men and it’s all about me and the beliefs I hold about myself in relation to, well, relationships with other humans!

    Thankfully another layer of the onion has fallen away, and I didn’t have to destroy another man to get it.

    Some months ago I began praying for this man and this pattern/belief about him and myself, not to come with me into the next phase of my life. Let be so, harming none and helping all for our highest good.

    Think I’m almost there.

  • Skin

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    Someday, if you’d like.

    I’ll write poems to you

    about the deliciousness of your body

    and the way your scent makes me

    grateful to be alive.

  • Blog. Go!

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    I am being reorganized. Themes of darkness breeding light. I find solace in the chaos because I’ve had the experience of death by fire before. Many times.
    Of trekking through the darkness in faith that light follows soon after.
    There is great potential in chaos. The lesson I keep getting is to have faith, be gentle with myself and with others if I can. And the biggest is to have the greatest compassion and care for my heart. From my heart. Which can be the hardest in the face of the darkness.
    In this time of my own personal darkness and chaos, I am being shown that I’ve learned some things.
    It was not all for naught. These tools of love, compassion, faith, presence. They’re not just words I speak to others ALL the time until I’m blue in the face. They are life lines. And they work. Hold to them. PRACTICE them.
    Hold your heart as if in an anjali mudra, firm but gentle with space.
    There may be upheaval in the air. But this too shall pass and become something else and there is light and then darkness and light and then darkness… and the only way we have one is have the other.
    So I find I cannot judge one as better than the other.
    I am as grateful for the darkness and chaos as I am for the light. Off I go the mountains where I find my luminous body again. -Jennifer