Grounds for Sculpture

Grounds for Sculpture
MY HAPPY PLACE

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Time to Change

There’s a beautiful poem by Pablo Neruda which I love.  “I Like For You to Be Still.”  The next line is “and my voice does not touch you.”  It’s about trying to reach inside of the person you love.
I’m trying to reach inside of myself right now because I am far away and because I am worth loving.  

I realize that you have to reach out in order to be “reached.”  And lately, I haven’t been doing much reaching out.  Or if I have, it has been with some ambivalence.  You have to really WANT to reach out... believe in the process.  Because even when I do, those whom I reach out to (my primary relationship being the main exception), are not people who are readily available.  It’s the nature of it.  Busy lives.  And when they are, they don’t quite understand the extent of my gratitude.  They find me to be far too grateful and for my gratitude to be unnecessary and I notice that as I try to extend it, the conversation I wish to open begins to close down.  Just as I am opening my heart.  
My heart is tender right now.
We magnetize the beliefs towards us which we hold inside.  I believe that.
As much as I want support in my life, I truly believe I fight against it.  It is far easier for me to not rely on other people as much as I want to.  As much as I would love to.  As much as I really need to.  Especially now.
The refuge and harbor of trust and safety was broken very early on in my life.  First chakra.  (When you investigate the chakras, you can become beyond deeply humbled and you begin to recognize that it might not be a bad idea to send some healing to each one of the energy centers of the body.)  
Back to the first chakra.  The break of trust, a pattern of mistrust was set so deep that MISTRUST became a belief system deeply embedded within my heart.  One that I would set out to prove over and over to myself throughout my life through the vehicle of my relationships.
Until the wound is truly and sufficiently healed, a new belief cannot be completely embraced.  
So although I want support, and I do.  I do not lean into it.  And although support shows up, and it does, it doesn’t matter how much support is offered to you when your belief system overrides it with isolation, withdrawal, rejection or whomever the Saboteur is of the day.  
It is the core belief which needs to change.  And be healed.
I recognize that there was sufficient first and second chakra violations which set into motion a deep lack of trust within my spirit which created in me, a belief that repeatedly told me, “I cannot be supported in a sustained way.”  And so why not test it?  And keep testing it? 
I ask myself what it’s going to take.  Three hip surgeries?  Not being able to rely on my own body for support?  
How debilitated by pain and suffering am I going to need to be in order to lean in and ultimately let go of this belief and lay this burden down?
I am proud of myself for the “moments” I’ve afforded myself of leaning in which I have already allowed myself to experience.  I am.  They have been transformative to my heart and have sent me to the deepest places of opening and gratitude I have ever known.  But it is the deeper level of healing and change I am speaking of that need attention, courage, forward motion.  And the stakes are high.  They are.  
I have been through truly difficult times.  Surgeries are tough, no question.  But clinical depression is something that takes you to a place that is both isolating and alarming.  And I know the signs.  I know the tell-tale signs of a spirit that begins to check out.  That isn’t reaching any longer for joy or lust nor ravenous for life.  I have been in those dark waters.  And I have also been the one to pull myself out.  I have been the one.  Because that was my path.  I walked that path alone.  
I don’t want to do that again.
I don’t.
That’s the part I want to change the most.
Of course, I don’t want to be depressed again, but if I am, I trust I have the strength and the skill-set to face what will come at me.
I’m sad.  I’ve been through hell.
I’ve been through debilitating pain that has been a weighty and significant checkpoint.  Seducing me to stay in bed.  And truth be told, it’s taken a lot of “fight” to get up each day and do my rehab for my hips.  
But I don’t want to have to fight so hard.
I want to save my “fight” for when it really counts.  
“I like for you to be still; and you seem far away.
It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove.
And you hear me from far away,  and my voice does not reach you:
Let me come to be still in your silence.
And let me talk to you with your silence...”
I know when to send out the alarm because I am FAR AWAY.  And I no longer want to be.  I don’t even want to have to send out an alarm.  But I want to know that I am capable of it.  And I am.  I know I am.
It is so much easier for me to just fend for myself, yet, the truth is, I want to change my belief system.  I want change.  I want to change.  I want to know that I have a team of support and love around me no matter what is happening.  I don’t want to have to be in a crisis to have to see it or know it.  That’s not growth.  That’s regression.
I want to laugh with my “team.”  I want to shine with them.  I want them around me.  I want to be the silliest one in the room!!!  I want to stop the pattern of putting my arms up to keep everyone “safe enough” away if I am sad or simply wanting to protect them from the pain I feel inside.  
It’s time.  
I’m good at love.  I great at knowing how to love.  How to give it.  Offer it.  Show it.  All of it.  But truth be told, with the exception of my “main squeeze,” I have a lot of work to do with myself.  I’ve worked really hard on my beliefs about love and how to give love and be loved in a primary relationship.  Exquisitely hard.  And I am proud of the work I’ve done there.  I know my triggers.  I know my shadow places.  I know how to speak about them and I know how to pull myself out of them.  And I also know where I soar.  It’s time to start learning how to change my beliefs about longevity and trust in the rest of my relationships.  It’s time.
It’s a new year.
First one foot.  Then the other.  
A healthy new year to all of us.  May this be a time when we can all figure out precisely what we need.  And may god point us in the direction of showing us that we can offer each other ALL of these beautiful and simple blessings.
12.31.11
Jill Bacharach

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