Just another day at the office...

Today, as I parked my car, paid my dollar into the church parking honesty box and began to walk to work, I began to think to myself: "What is it going to take?"
The past week has been profound in so many ways. My beautiful Godfather passed away and I saw in him sadness, peace and love that I have never before seen in a man. I wept and wept and wept, despite people watching me, despite the fact that his family who were standing next to me, kept it together. I was devastated. At his memorial, I sobbed some more, then it seems as soon as that was over, something let him go to freedom. I was holding on too tightly and he didn't like it.

I took with me two things from this experience.

One was how much this man loved what he did. He was at work till the very last day. he had fought for years to be in his profession and it took him at least twice as long as anybody else to get to where he wanted to be. But he never gave up. And that is the one thing we had in common: persistance. I wanted to be like that, to love what I did to the very last second of my existance. To bask in every single beautiful thing this world had to offer me. I wondered how many times I looked past an opportunity because I was so determined that I had another plan for myself...
The second was his memory. He never lived to the beat of anyone's drum, only his own, and yet he was remembered as the intelligent, hardworking, humorous man that loved many, taught many, and cared much. There were tears every second of his service. This man lived happily, even when the cancer ate him from the inside out. R.I.P Angel....

So what is it going to take to find happiness? what is it going to take for me to finally break free and decide that it is time to do what I want? When will I stop waiting? Quit my Jobs, style my hair, run a marathon, climb a mountain, travel anywhere and everywhere...When will I decide it is time? I am so tired of waiting. Despite the little dictator in my head, urging me to just stay put, because this is comfortable, because being miserable does not make me feel as guilty as being happy, because if i keep self sabotaging, i will always have an excuse to never 'do'.....

I long for freedom. I pine for it.

I saw my 'raw' friend again today. I found another thing that I want to learn from him. His genuine interest in people. He actually really, truly wants to know, he asks many questions and then some and gets a truthful answer everytime, because with him, there are no lies, no mysteries, only clarity and truth....

Split

                         A colleague of mine recently started conducting his exposure therapy experiment in the room next door to me. Soon, he became my friend. The first thing that made me really determined to befriend this boy was how raw he was. I found it hard to put a label to what it was that I saw in him. It was the transparency, clarity of mind and pure truth that just radiated from his pores. He was real. He was human, wore his flaws on his sleeve and said exactly what he thought. None of it was hurtful, it was simply the truth.We had many lengthy conversations and sure enough, he is probably one of the handful of people who really know who I am. And while that would usually make me crouch away and block the person off, I celebrated it instead. Though after every conversation we had, I felt exposed and like I was losing my sense of control over how he saw me, it felt great to finally let someone else make the decision as to whether or not they like me, rather than I play the part so perfectly that they have no choice but to be mesmerised by this unique, experienced, sensitive, hurt and healed persona that I have rigorously mastered. I would not describe meeting him as one of those moments that almost instantly change everything, rather an ongoing process. I have so much to learn from him. I want to learn to be so honest, and so raw, and I want the peace that comes from the heart because of telling the truth always. I want to learn how to live not lying to myself,and to expose myself to my fears in order to overcome them. Like my new friend, I want to be at one with myself.
                 One of our most recent conversations, I told my friend a lot of truths about me. I told him about my abusive upbringing, my journeys back and forth from the dark place to the light then the dark place again, and how I can't seem to escape the dark place anymore. I told him about my addictive behaviours, the personal elements in my life that I have perfectly under control. And as he began to conceptualize what I was saying, he said one word 'split'. When he said that word, it seemed like everything in my life that I was baffled by made sense. I love healthy eating but I binge obsessively on junk, I love exercise but I hate it, I love my partner but I choose to keep all our business seperate, i think it is okay to smack your kids but I am not okay with hitting children, so what exactly is my stance here? I can love and I can hate at the same time, I can change my mind at the drop of a hat, my emotions are not black or white, they are black AND white and that is why the inside of my mind is a living hell. I am a divided kingdom. I am chaos. The more I though about it, the sicker I felt. I am happy as long as I appear to have a good work ethic, but do I have a good work ethic? Am I happy to bum around when I should be working as long as I don't get caught? Yep! plain as day, I am. But I am also committed to providing my employer with the best standard of work! How can that be? And such is the truth with every aspect of my existence. I advocate food education, and 'let food by thy medicine', and that is where that fear comes from when I know I am about to binge, the fear that someone will be my shopping basket as I rush to the self-checkout in tears. Someone might expose that hipocrasya nd I cannot stand the thought of that. I am a vegetarian, but I have kicked a dog once because it licked my hands as I has typing an assignment. So really, who the fuck am I?
When my friend saw what the wrod 'split' did to me face, the blow to my heart that manifested itself in my stunned appearnce, he proveeded to say 'and who else has been split in your life?'. I didn't have an answer, but he did. And he was right. My dad. My family. My entire upbringing has been split. My dad bashed me to a pulp, but loved me so dearly, he told me all the time. I was trained to wear one face to him and his society to protect him from the shame of who I truy was, and another face to the rest of the world. The family was trained to appear happy, when everything was breaking down. I was trained in my mind to disconnect, to transport myself to a safe place while my physical self recieved pain and punches and kicks and verbal abuse. That's why in my mind, I am able to travel, to live, to go to the beach in a swimsuit, to be happy..without actually doing any of it. I have already lived my perfect life. So I no longer do-I just think. My family were trianed to lie to me so that I could disclose my secrets to them so that they could later be used against me, I was constantly in survival mode, constantly split between the truth and lies that now they have become one, I no longer know the truth and I no longer know the lies, they have fused into an utter grey mess, morphed into my very soul...

                         The second I realized this, the weight of the world that i carried on my shoulders felt as though it had quadrupled. I am the only problem in my life. I am so far fucked, I have stopped myself from being my best every time.I want to be a psychologist because I want to help people and because I want the money and the status.....How can one person be so many people? And where do you start when you know you have to win the war within yourself...who'c going to win? The athiest, the believer, the lover, the hater, the virgin, the whore, the martyr, the victim, the good, the evil, the truth, the lies...

Definately My Favourite quote ever....

It is unbelievable how much this resounds within me...

Do I have to crumble for you to see that I am not okay?
I have peeled my nails to the flesh and my makeup can only conceal so much. I loathe myself. I loathe waking up in my body. I loathe the sight of my face. I loathe my life. I want to be asleep for as long as I can. And it all goes against my true nature.

I have managed my pain so well, it is invisible to others. I wish I could see the day that those people look at me with their heart. I wish I could see the day that someone looks into my hollow eyes, my story, look straight into my gaunt worthless empty soul ansd see the darkness, and see the abyss.....and ask if I was ever truly okay...That smile painted on my face will fall apart, the mask will melt, the costume will eat itself and the tears will blast like a hot water faucet down my face and I will cry out all that I have built up over the years.

No more strength, no more battles, no more hiding, The voice will go away..and there will only be Truth...and the truth willl set me free..

Miriam

Today I feel like staring the cold hard facts straight in the face..

Being at the gym today was like the opening scene of a movie. It would start with pitch black darkeness, and the whirring of the hair dryers and the shake shake shake of the protein shakes that have invaded and infected the ladies changeroom (me included). Once I thought of that, I felt like the main character. There I was blow drying my hair, chatting to the girls...my facade has been so perfectly mastered, it was second nature now. I was the unsuspecting victim of the day...I didn't have time to think of what happens next in the movie before it was time to do the real world again.
I've mentioned this before but you probably don't realize the precision of it all. The detail of my rigidity. Not a single move is unplanned. Every single second, my next second is planned. As much as it tires me, and I am constantly bitter about it, I do usually enjoy not having a single spare second in my day.Because every single move is planned the night before, the week before even. I am so rigid- everything is done in the same order everytime.
I walk from the mirror to my locker and think about the most efficient way of packing my things. Sweat towel in the 2nd sack of my backpack, Gym card in the front zipper. Runners in the plastic bag with my work shoes, bottle of water in my hand, jacket on first then backpack then plastic bag, then water then walk out-get to the car-back pack in the boot, everything else infront. Eat my boiled egg, eat my wrap happily knowing that's my only high energy carbohydrate source for the day, then take supplememnt #1 fish oil, supplement #2 primrose oil x2 and supplement #3 magnesium chelate x2-then seat belt on, start the car.....You get the picture, it's disturbing but it's true.

My wonderful friends say I go with the flow- it's because I am exhausted of making decisions.

2011

I was looking through the photos of some friends who are now out in the rural outback on dental placement for 3 weeks. It was a long trip and the album entailed many photos of them snoozing off in the bus. I have to say, all the photos looked amazing.

However, the one of my friend asleep on the bus, with his head against the window was, for some reson, my ultimate favorite. There was so much serenity and peace about it. The sky was blue and in the distance they had passed a stretch of trees that now looked like a mirage. And there he was, asleep in the centre of his photo, a travellor confident he was going to arrive...I loved it!

And instantly, as if awakening my dormant instinct, I had grabbed my sketch pad and began to draw. I wanted to draw something to capture that serenity on paper and as I listened to music and sketched away the image in my mind (which my hands could barely resemble) I couldn't help but realize that I let growing up take so much away from me. When I think back to it, drawing/painting and writing was about all I wanted to do with my time....and reading, and dreaming of all the things I wanted to do. I had the imagination of a two year old for as long as I can remember. Like peter Pan, growing up is exactly what I was hoping to avoid all my life...

Don't get me wrong.. I don't mean responsibilities and trying to make something out of myself. I applaud that, I would never change that. I mean the imagination, that worry-free liberty to explore whatever you liked in your mind, the books that encouraged it, the crazy art that streamed out of a burning fire inside of me, the pen that seemed to possess my hand...The passion..I mean, the fire for life?

I understand that there comes a point where things do get a bit stagnant. For instance, I am working two jobs at the moment, trying to save up for post grad studies at uni (an 8 month thesis) and after that I will be looking at 2 years of masters. All in order to fuel my passion for psychology.. I barely have time to stretch...not forgetting the friends, the boyfriend, food, exercise,studying....so understandably, in order to reach the top and capture the view, I gotta climb the mountain. But I refuse to believe that climbing the mountain means dimming the light.
The greatest test of my rigidity came this morning. I train monday-Friday at 5:30am without fail, I have for 3 years. This year, after my training, I go to job#1 at 8am-4pm then job#2 at 4:30
to 7:30 pm. I get home, organize all of tommorow's meals, clothes and whatever else, spend 30 minutes with my boyfriend over dinner and crash to do it all again the next day.
This monday morning, I turned over at 4 45 am to press snooze when my alarm went off. The winter cold urged me to stay under my duvet and I thought I would give in to it for 'just another 5 minutes'.
Lo and behold, it is 5 30 when I wake up...getting to the gym takes me 25 minutes meaning it will be 6 am before I even start my workout so my whole day is running about 30 minutes late. I was about to go into a stress coma. I paced back and forth, and went back to bed, lying with my eyes wide awake thinking I was about to have a panic attack. I couldn't make a decision about what to do. Monday is lower body training, Tuesday is RPM, Wednsday is Body Attack, Thursday is upper body, Friday is Boxing and Saturday is my 6 to 8 km run. What the hell was I going to do now that my routine has been so inconveniently messed up? By half an hour!
I fought my mind until I jumped out of bed and went for a 6km run, the whole while thinking of how I was going to make up for today's resistance training that I missed. I got home at quarter past 7, had a shower, hair and makeup, left late to get to work but made it in time bacause today-out of all the days-I got the incredibly rare car spot, so work was just a 5 minute stroll rather than a fifteen minute sprint...
Then I still couldn't stop thinking about it even when i told myself to shutup. My head was spinning out of control and my mind was so angry at my 'laziness'...
Then a detailed plan of how I was going to eat this week (involving portioning food before hand and measuring/weighing it..just in case)...Then bitterness, just plain bitterness...at myself, at this beautiful life that I chose...I still cannot fathom why I feel that way???
When did I become so rigid? and so inflexible? even my art (when i do draw or paint these days) reflects this. It just doesn't flow like it used to...
Or maybe it never flowed...maybe I just have higher expectations of myself as I got older...
I don't know...
But what I know for sure is that I am not going to live the rest of my life like this...because I promised myself a beautiful life, and I fought too hard for it to spend it like this...I fought for it, tooth and nail, and grabbed hold of it even when they tried to pry it out of my fingers...so how could I treat it like this now?
The world doesn't owe me anything, but I owe it to myself to make the best of this amazing grace that is staring me in the face everyday, and it doesn't deserve to be wasted...ever...

I cannot believe how time passes. We are halfway through the year already....

Xx