Wherever Belief Lays Its Head...

...that's where I want to be tonight: wherever belief lays its head down and calls home. Without belief, faith, the firm knowing and security of the Objective (capital "O") infinity of the world, we are nothing but listless, lolling creatures.

Belief in knowing that life won't change with or without us. That everything is and isn't simultaneously. Belief in knowing "this is it" and "this is it" -- in every moment. The cool, careful calm of being.

What my days need: less driving, less sitting, more movement, more poetry, more meditation. Where my heart longs to be: safely cradled in the truth of a created world.

Falling off the Saddle

I'd like to say, I'm back in the saddle -- playing the field and feeling powerful and great about it. Instead, after my first noteworthy date in 7 years, I think, "I must not be very good at this."

I mean, I think I bored the guy. Me -- all the intensity and passion and knowledge and heart. He didn't seem to be interested in me and I'm not sure how to process that.

Who am I if not the highly noticeable, voted most like to attract attention, vision of well-rounded female personalities? How can that man -- who, by the way, was so unbelievably handsome and kind and normal -- not be attracted to me?

One date and I already feel drained by the process. I think I've fallen off the saddle and I'm not sure if I have the knowledge or talent to get back up.

Searching for the Future Through a Veil of Pink Tulle

I picked up the bridesmaid dresses for my canceled wedding yesterday and was left to continue to wonder why I have to clean up someone else's mess. Why I have to reach down into me and come up the bigger person every time while others glide away effortlessly off into the sunset. And, in all my failed relationships, both friendship and romantic, it's been that way -- I've tidied up after the fact, made it easier and more pleasant, while the leaver has quickly left without a second thought, inconvenience, or parting glance.

Here's the crux of the problem: I don't set boundaries with any person in my life. I will drop everything at less than a moment's notice for anyone I care for at anytime.

Here's the part I can't get over: I don't think I would like me if I did set boundaries. I mean, what the hell do I have to offer if I enter into the world of those who don't give wholeheartedly? I wouldn't have any respect for that kind of me.

Here's the challenge: Set boundaries with me first, then with others. That's the only way I'll be comfortable with having them, by getting used to the idea of "no" internally first.

Here's what I have to say "no" to myself right now: Feeling sorry for myself. Buck up, pink tulle is for sissies anyway.

Groan.

Last Resort: Sing Until I'm Hoarse

"I'm singing now because my tear ducts are too tired
and my brain is disconnected but my heart is wired"

Driving home tonight there was nothing else I could do. I cried, I sang, I cried then sang until my throat was raw and I was so hoarse that I actually scared myself -- and it felt good.

Singing woke me up to the fact -- doesn't pop music always reveal the most interesting truths to us? -- that I can't even fathom my capacity for love.

Here's the truth: not that everything happens for a reason -- I really don't think so and I think we use that as a comfort and a crutch (it's a poser) -- but, rather, that people come into our lives very specifically, purposely, and they bring something to us that we need. I don't mean every dot with a pulse and human form we encounter from point A to point B, I mean the select people. The ones who are presented to us offering a gift and it's just up to us to recognize and learn.

I've collected people my whole life. Everywhere I go, like songs that I love and travel with on mixes, cds, and compilations, I find people who speak to me in a way that I don't understand, need to understand, can't understand, or intuitively understand and I bring them with me. I don't run from those connections and I don't try to explain them away -- I embrace them and throw every bit of myself in with no fear of that abyss. And that's where my capacity to love is the most amazing thing I know about myself.

The problem is, I resist the call to let go. I internalize each of the people and intend to carry them forever, even (or especially) at a loss to myself. Loyalty supersedes love for self.

Every almost-regret I've ever had (though I truly have none that stick with me) is in relation to a time that, for an instant, I held something back and didn't tumble over the edge of the rabbit hole of someone else's story to see where mine would go when I floated to the floor. When I was "disloyal" to the call from that person's soul to mine -- when I felt what was right, but rejected it and let reason intervene.

But I know I'm headed in the right direction, because at the lowest point of my entire existence, when I lost the one person who I intended to commit most wholly to, I thought: "This is worth it, I need this; I needed this person to come in, and now I need him to go." To experience loss at that level and know it's for good can't be explained: The moment everything in my life felt like it had imploded into the most unbearable, suffocating hell was the moment I felt the greatest calm. (Don't get me wrong, there have been days and months since then that are filled with such grief and pain that I cannot bear to dwell on the memory of them or stand to live through them when they hit me with the full weight of loss, but, in that first moment, it was okay.)

And, why? Because I collected that person for a reason (for him and for me) and regardless of whether he can never fully realize the potential of what I brought to his life, I can feel every bit of good that he did for mine. Even the negative goods -- the retroactive ways that he showed me so clearly how loyalty is not the same as surrendering my heart in order to save someone else. And with that, like I've felt one thousand times before in the past few months, I am free to honor that connection even though I'm the only one to profit from it.

Last year when my friend was adopting her daughter from China we all shared in the story of the Red Thread -- to me the legend extends beyond those immediate bonds of parent and child or lover and lover -- it means we are soul mates with all those we journey with. Each of us collects our soul mates and carries them with us for reasons we can rarely articulate, but that we truly do know and understand. And when those people go, it's okay.

"it was a brief brilliant miracle dive; that which i looked up to and i clung to for dear life had to burn itself up just to make itself alive"

Astrology, Polarity, and This Full Moon

Saturday is my first official Polarity Therapy. Sure, I've had energy work before, I mean it's 2007 for christ's sake, who hasn't? Okay, I know, most people haven't, but I have - and it has gone by many names with the guardianship of several extremely talented practicitioners and always been a wonderful experience.

None of these past experiences though, ever made mention outwardly of Polarity. Polarity? On Saturday I'm having actual, full-on, as it's "designed" to be practiced Polarity Therapy. Who knew? This is a whole new level of engagement I never thought I'd reach, but tonight during the first full moon of the new year - after a horrendously humbling yoga class during which my right foot paralyzed and crumbled and cramped and froze and gave out on me for nearly an hour and a half leaving me by the end exhausted, shaking, pained, and exhausted - on this full moon night, this beautifully sullen Cancer wondered out loud, "Can I make an appointment for some energy work." The reply was, "No, Polarity Therapy. How's Saturday?" And like that, I had an official Polarity Therapy appointment.

Oh, joyous Polarity Therapy, with its aura-cleansing, energy-unblocking, broken-heart-healing powers - Saturday won't come soon enough!

Of course, Saturday is his birthday. Figures. My crying beta male's energy will be written all over my unbalanced energy field. I'll stumble into the Polarity Therapy studio more like a flopping fish (a Piscses!) than a scuttling, self-assured crab. The practicioner will scoop me up in her net of powerful calming energy and, an hour later, pour me out on the floor still flopping and no where near balanced or unblocked. All the while I'll be breathing in ohm while breathing out him.

Sad. His polarity to me (Capricorn is to Cancer as Yin is to Yang) will invade my Polarity Therapy. All of this determined on the first full moon of this new year.

Breathing in I am ohm, breathing out I am fish. Flop.