Don’t Stop Writing

I was told recently.

“I like reading what you write.”

God.

I love that.

Validation.

Although it’s not why I write and I am struggling with that.

Let go, I whisper to myself.

But.

It’s hard to let go of something that I have been in relationship with for seven years.

I have to shut down my blog.

I haven’t written the last few days and I can feel it in my bones.

Actually, that’s not true.

I have been writing, a lot.

Just not my blog.

I have been busy.

And the not writing I can take with a great big grain of salt because I was busy doing wonderful things and having life altering experiences.

Life is happening.

My God, is it ever.

I started my internship.

I take my first client next week.

I have read my client file, contacted said client and set up our first session.

I am navigating all the paper work and all the insurance stuff, more stuff, all the stuff, the policy papers and the keys, oh my God, the keys, I have a lot of keys right now.

Which is fine.

I jangle when I walk, but whatever.

Today I had my first group supervision training.

It was great, I learned a lot, it’s rather like being in a small classroom and getting to ask the teacher all the things, and I took some notes and got the questions I needed answered.

Most of my questions had to do with administrative stuff as I haven’t met with a client yet.

All the others in the group have been seeing clients and thus they brought up what they needed to have addressed.

It was great learning for me to just sit and listen and I did have some input and that was nice, I was able to see a few things and offer some different perspective and I was thanked for my experience and my insight.

Which I appreciated as well.

I also asked about my blog.

This blog.

My baby.

My love child.

My little place in the universe to pour out my heart and talk about all the stuff on my heart and in my mind, or to get out all the stuff in my mind so that I can listen to my heart better.

I have known, probably since I started school, that one day the blog was going to end.

But.

The writing doesn’t have to end.

And that was what my supervision group gave me today.

I got very affirmative feedback from everyone to take down the blog off social media and make it completely anonymous.

I have already pulled it from my Instagram account and I privatized that account so random folks can’t join it, I have to approve the follow request.

I have also dropped a few folks off the friends list on Facecrack.

I could probably winnow that out a little more as well.

It was recommended that I change my name on Facecrack.

I’m not sure to what, but I know a few people in my cohort have already started doing that.

It’s a damn good idea.

The next suggestion was to not link my blog to Facecrack.

It would eliminate a lot of my readers.

I mean.

A lot.

But.

It would provide me with more anonymity and it would also give my client room to see me as a therapist, not as some poet girl, Burning Man aficionado, single lady in the Outer Sunset riding around the city on a scooter.

Then.

Sigh.

Ugh.

It was suggested and I knew the moment I heard it that it was the next action to take.

That I stop writing this blog.

Double ugh.

I knew it in my gut, but I teared up.

I am tearing up now.

Fuck.

I know that because I have such big feelings that I am going to be a great therapist because I can empathize, but shit, sometimes it’s just a bitch being sensitive.

Granted, I wouldn’t wear it any other way, that is, my heart on my sleeve.

 

Gerber daisies in a Mason jar.

Dark pink stars on slippery green stalks opening toward the light.

Petals kissing.

And blushing soft.

Mouths like hungry little beasts blossoming into the warm air.

My heart.

Threaded with light.

Opening and beating against the back of my ribcage.

Tender under the bruised spaces on my breastplate.

This then.

Each moment timeless and gone only to be longed for again.

And again.

And again.

 

I digress.

But you get the point?

I like to express.

I like poetry.

I lie.

I love poetry.

I am a whore for it, like cello music and Clair de Lune and Brahms and Mozart and Chopin, I prostrate myself to it and hope, really I do hope, to gracefully surrender to whatever beauty is taking me at that moment with a kind of asunder that only perhaps is heard inside my soul.

But hear it I do.

And to renounce this forum feels terrifying and sad.

So sad, the richness of sweet lipped tears on the tops of my cheeks and the sudden catch of my breath in my throat.

Oh.

All the feelings I don’t want to feel.

But.

OH.

All the feelings I get to feel, I am so grateful and graced and loved.

Beloved.

I am.

And I am aware of my great fortune.

But.

This then, begins the end of my blog.

I have to let you know I won’t stop writing.

Nope.

I just won’t be writing here any longer.

I will have an end date on Auntie Bubba.

She has been such a good girl to me and shown me my strengths, and oh yes, my defects, those in spades, all things intimate and good and intense and wounded and sad and well, just all the things.

Yes.

All the lovely things.

This bearing witness to my own journey.

I am forever grateful for it.

So.

As this chapter closes.

As the Book of Bubba comes to an end.

I will admit.

That I am not finished.

That I am not written out.

That there are more words and worlds of words and galaxies and yes, a universe to still discover and write about.

There is a theory about the Big Bang and how the universe was created and when the universe will end and that it all came from one spot and explodes out and then shrinks back in on itself.

This is called the Big Bounce.

This is all very general and not very theoretically informed, mind you.

However.

It speaks to me and what I endeavor now to share with you.

I will be starting a new blog.

I am not done.

This blog is, however, just about done.

I will only publish a few more blogs here.

I am not quite ready to say good-bye yet.

But it is only days away.

I will start a new blog and I will continue my writing, my growth, my learning, my pushing my edges and finding out more and more who I am through this medium that speaks so much to me.

Writing.

I will not be connecting it to my Twitter account, in fact I am damn close to doing a deactivation on my Twitter account, I don’t feel like I use it all the often any way.

I will not be posting my blog on Facecrack.

I will not be making it known who I am.

I will be writing anonymously.

I haven’t a name yet.

Just a taste on my lips, like the last kiss at the end of the night, the push of tongue into my mouth and the startled stillness in my heart that precursor to the shaking tremble that befalls me and  tells me, yes, here, go here.

I will consider sharing with some of my readers my new blog.

But you will have to message me privately.

Which you may do by posting a comment.

I approve all comments before they are linked to my blog.

I will message you my new blog when it goes live.

Otherwise, seven years later, I will bid this space adieu.

They say that after seven years all the cells in your body turn over.

I know not what will be next.

I just know that there is a next.

And I thank you.

My readers.

Who ever you are, where ever you are, for humoring me and my poetry and my words and my tears and my heart ever beating upon my bloody damn sleeve.

With so much gratitude.

I thank you.

 

Hello Daisy

I had this profound experience in yoga class today.

Yeah.

I know.

I’m gonna be that bitch.

Don’t even ask me how much money I dropped on yoga clothes today.

But damn, I was not wearing the right stuff and nothing says distracting like needing to breathe through a ridiculous hard pose, for me, and inhaling my shirt.

Yuck.

I figure I made an investment, I’m going to have the clothes for a while, I will be using them, and hey, I haven’t invested in sports or athletic gear in years.

Not since I did the Aids LifeCylcle and suddenly every other day I felt like I was dropping bills on kits, shoes, socks, saddles, not to mention saddle sores, but that’s another kind of expense, protein powder, water bottles, lights, portable air pump, tires, levers, inner tubes.

I could increase that list if I thought a little harder.

You get the gist.

I just bought three pairs of leggings, three sports bras, and three tops.

I’m committing to three days of yoga a week.

I secretly may do more if I can squeeze it in.

Tomorrow will be day four in a row.

After that I won’t have the opportunity for a class until Thursday.

I debated a moment before signing up for the class, but pretty much knew, as I floated, I mean FLOATED out of the studio, that I would be going tomorrow.

Partially as Mondays will be a day that I have time to get to a class before I head into work.

I want to set the intention of going on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

I will probably also do Sundays.

That, of course, will not happen on weeks that I have school, and that’s ok.

School is a priority.

Work is a priority.

My recovery the biggest priority of it all.

And yoga is going to be a priority.

First, because it was heavily, I mean heavily suggested by my person that I start exercising three times a week, a safety valve to let off the steam of stress caused by full time work and full time school.

I can see now how right she was.

Not that I ever doubted she was right, I knew she was the entire time, I was raging over being right versus being happy, I was the person balking.

My disease, the nature of the malady, is such that anything that it thinks may bring me some sort of joy or love or lightness.

Well.

Fuck that.

No.

So I often take opposite indicated actions.

And even knowing that, I still balked at doing the yoga.

However.

I can report that I am really feeling better.

Yes.

I am sore.

But.

Not as bad as yesterday and I let myself get unattached to how I looked or held or not held a pose, I let myself topple, I let myself fall out of certain poses, I sunk into child’s pose a bit more, but I also tried.

I tried every pose.

I found I was more flexible in regards to a couple of poses that flummoxed me the first time they were introduced to me.

I found myself able to do a few things that I wasn’t able to do yesterday.

And.

My hips feel loose.

Oh my God.

They get so tight from riding my bike.

My knees haven’t hurt, my hips are loosened up, I can feel in my body a general lengthening and releasing of old energy, old thoughts, old ideas.

I love it.

I am so happy that I am letting myself do this.

I am so grateful for tax returns!

And student loans.

I can afford to do this and in all actuality, this is going to save my life, I can feel it.

I have been much more relaxed, more in my body, more present, more accountable.

And happy.

Not always.

I’m not saying I’m all high on yoga, but I am a little.

I caught that delicious feeling more than once of realizing that I had forgotten completely the outside world, the clock on the mantle, the life on the other side of the wood floor, school, work, chores, it was all gone.

I was just there.

In the moment.

So divine.

So needed.

The instructor was the same teacher as yesterday and it was a deepening of the dharma talk she gave yesterday.

It syncs well with my own, personal, Carmen based, spiritual practice.

Meaning I could get behind what she was saying even if I didn’t understand the names or words that she was saying, I got the point.

Non-attachment.

Intention setting.

Yesterday I meditated about love.

Today I set the intention for joy.

I felt light and full of love and joy and I held a person in my heart and sent that person that light and then.

Ha.

I had the vision in my mind of a daisy sprouting from the top of my head.

It was divine.

And silly.

And so apropos.

My favorite flowers are daisies.

In fact, after I went shopping for yoga clothes, thank you Sports Basement for the 10% discount! I went to the grocery store and picked up supplies for cooking and meals for the week at work, and I promised myself I would get myself some flowers.

I got a sweet little mix of pink Gerber daisies, tuber rose, lilies, and purple poms.

I felt happy.

Very happy.

It’s a small thing.

Flowers.

But so much too.

I love getting flowers and I don’t have to wait to be given them.

Buy your own damn flowers.

It’s been a good six days off.

A lot of heart work, thank you Valentines Day for your lessons in service and love.

Which were extrapolated out into my world all week long.

I saw dear friends, I had tea dates and walks on the beach, I saw a movie, I started doing yoga, I rode my scooter a lot, I did lots of doing the deal, I even, yes, I know, did homework–finished my reading for Multi-Cultural Counseling and the Family and got started on my reading for The Therapeutic Relationship–I sat outside in the sun, I went to ModCloth and got fitted (and I got the clothes on Friday!) and dressed up in my crinoline three times this week.

I had me a lovely, sweet, darling, “staycation.”

It was awesome.

I am ready to dive back into the fray.

Knowing.

Especially that I have a new tool in my box to help me be a stronger, healthier, more connected person.

Amazing.

Luckiest girl in the world.

Let me tell ya.

I am.

I am.