Rebellious streaks and being unoriginal

So I think I like starting my confessionals like this… with “So”… anyway, that was a random observation; back to the matter at hand: rebellious streaks.

Sooooo… I recently put on a septum ring and loved it. I loved how I looked in it, how powerful it made me feel, and there was an edginess to my look that made me feel very sexy and alive. And you’re probably wondering how a simple little ring would make me feel this way, right?

Well, I have been thinking a lot about my life hurtling off into adulthood and the pressure I am feeling to act and be a certain way (again). I have written before about Proper Miss shenanigans and how repressed I feel (…because of professional work environments and other life choices I keep making mostly), et cetera. So it’s not a new feeling — this constant need to break out.

And now it has manifested in the need for me to demonstrate autonomy over my choice of body jewelry. It’s not just the septum ring. It’s also the body chains, gothic harnesses, and all other ordinarily yummy stuff, if you’re experimenting in high school or college. I wonder if me acting out this way is some subtle form of sabotage that dares the world to ask me why I am making these choices, but really I am setting myself up to lose.

Of course, I feel a deeply rooted, and mostly silent pleasure, from all this stuff. I chuckle at being so unoriginal — maybe this is my oh-so-textbook mid life crisis. And if it is, well let’s just say that it really is a feeble attempt.

But after all this thinking and musing, I am just going to keep doing it because it makes me happy and it’s part of what fuels all my other beautiful, guilty pleasures like writing and dancing. And it keeps me rooted to the core of me…

Love holds me.

Surrounds me.

On either sides of my soul.

Comforted, seen, and heard.

Love holds me.

Back to writing

I finally got back to writing. I took a break… an involuntary one… there was too much going on around me and I couldn’t focus on my writing discipline. It’s a shame how life’s difficulties can sip into the very things that keep us in balance. I think I have written this before — I am my best self when I have sufficient time to write. I feel grounded and reconciled. Still, I can’t say why the first thing to be chucked out the door when I am struggling is the writing.

It feels like moving my writing from the fickle land of my whims into more permanent territory will be a lifelong venture.

I do have to admit though that my current project doesn’t lend itself to big spurts of writing. I am re-visiting a painful place. It is not easy. I’ve had a few bouts of crying… and sat in my sadness… and even held several pity parties. I want to excuse it all as being quite necessary since my current project is about healing on a very personal level. I am realizing that as I re-tell myself the story of the hurt, I am also filing away things that have been holding me back. So I suppose it will be alright in the end.

When it is too much, I have to remind myself that I must write this book because all the others won’t get written if this one is still in the way. Besides, I am pre-occupied with maximizing my happiness potential. The very idea that I have this large expansive of satisfaction that I have yet to feel drives me to search fervently. If healing is necessary for me to access it, then I have to keep going.

Also, since I have a longing to experience relationships on a certain level of authenticity, I guess it means that I have to confront my hurts and deal with my domestication (… this is a veiled reference to Don Miguel Ruiz’s Mastery of Love — I should reflect on that one of these days…).

Needless to say, the writing project that I am trying to finish now requires a deeper level of reckoning and well, the result is that I am running from myself even as I am reluctantly trudging towards the healing that it brings.

There is one fringe benefit of having completed one book project though: the prospect of getting to the end of this road fills me with anticipatory joy. I know that I will get there eventually and that it will be worth every morsel of pain and struggle.