I am raw, a bit edgy, unfiltered, and decisive.
At least that is how I present myself to the world, and how I write, most of the time.
However, I am also sweet, vulnerable, and a bit timid.
And I like this paradox within myself.
My timidity tends to show itself in the face of intimacy. For as bold as I may be in public, I am still desperately afraid of being hurt, personally.
You see, some of the fierce is not quite who I am. It is simply what I do when I or loved ones are threatened. Yes, fire rises in me in the face of injustice. As a child my most used phrase was, "That's not fair." Well, fair or not, shit happens.
Shit happens to all of us. Some of it is self-created, like baring ourselves to people who are not quite available. Some of it is inevitable, like losing an aging pet, something that I experienced fairly recently and I am still fucking mourning.
Yea, I am a little annoyed at that one. Part of me is like: get over it already. And part of me knows damn well that this will hurt a while longer yet, and then longer still.
For grief is the cost of love.
To love...and to love anyone or anything—a plant, a pet, a person—means we are subjecting our hearts to the rules of the mortal world and the number one rule in 3D land is: everything dies.
So this gentle part of me yearns to sail down the river Denial because, for her, life is too painful in its inevitability of loss in the face of great love. But it is also this gentle part of me that is currently surfacing through my grief and, occasionally, I catch her like a small child—like the small child I remember being—playing in the cattails by the river's edge.
I am in this process of claiming my gentleness.
I have written about wanting to be claimed—by a man. It was one of my wildly successful articles, published on Elephant Journal.
"The only thing I yearn for, more than to have my heart broken open, is to have my heart met."
This is as true for me now as it was when I typed it two years ago. It is this process that I am currently devoting myself: to meeting my heart.
Of lately I have been a bit more mealancholy than is my standard constitution. One might even say depressed.
Eee gad!
And it's true.
I'm depressed as in I am descending—psychologically.
It's okay, I have the cat for a companions as I write in my most recent article,
"Cat Cuddles, Compassion & Collapse: How I am Journeying through Depression."
"Down is the key word if we want another way of looking at depression—as a form of psychological descent.
Descent is the root of the Persephone myth, the Spring goddess who journeys to the Underworld to meet the darker aspects of her own psyche. Now in the modernized versions, she is dragged against her will, but in older stories—she goes willingly.
And though I may have not descended willingly, this is where I find myself, me and the cat. Hours spent dreaming, moving more slowly than I can ever remember. Even now, as I’m trying to type, the cat nestled securely on my legs for the time being, I feel the magnetic pull of sleep and taste the dreams toying with me.
I cannot remember a time when I felt so heavy.
I let myself sink.
It is dark down here—dark, but not scary. It is thick, slow, and red—like being back in the womb.
And, as I feel myself drifting, I cannot help but wonder, “Who will be born from this place?”
Who indeed?
Well, I know one thing that I will have resurrected and that is my devotion to writing.
So I will invite you to join me for the next 30 days for a daily blog. I cannot promise you my mood or subsequent content, but I know I must begin somewhere and it seems justice that it should be with my first, second, and third love—writing.
Lotsa love,
~Justice
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