Thursday, January 19, 2023
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
The Macho Paradigm: An Introduction to a System of Coercion and Repression.
The Macho Paradigm® is the system by which men are cultivated and raised and in the end everyone in a male-dominated society to believe that being emotional, vulnerable and showing fear are a sign of weakness. Behavioral systems follow to maintain control over one's emotions and frailties as well an attempt to control the emotions and frailties of others almost as if to reduce exposure to another's fear or vulnerability, as if it is contagious. Abuses & infractions against others for their perceived weaknesses, ie bullying, homophobia, machismo with young boys and even girls, manifest as a result of living in this system and being conditioned by it.
It is the cause behind the motivation of a lot of our problems and many can be traced to it.
It is NOT the same as masculinity. Machismo/a can be manifest in women as well and they too can perpetuate this system whereby others around them, especially children must succumb to this system else be ridiculed for not being strong or macho enough.
It is NOT the same as masculinity. Machismo/a can be manifest in women as well and they too can perpetuate this system whereby others around them, especially children must succumb to this system else be ridiculed for not being strong or macho enough.
Work in progress.
1/29/19©
Name originally coined 'Macho Paradigm' 2014©
Sunday, May 1, 2022
On Faith~
Having faith in yourself much less others can be most challenging at times. Rebuilding faith from scratch is not unlike conjuring water from dust. You have to keep rubbing your fingers to death & hope that when you put your hands out there, they are washed clean.
There is a moment when only dust exists, waiting until small bits of hope fall onto you, washing doubt away, reminding you it can be done. Slowly building up the foundation so you can stop wringing your hands and life away on worry.
There is a moment when only dust exists, waiting until small bits of hope fall onto you, washing doubt away, reminding you it can be done. Slowly building up the foundation so you can stop wringing your hands and life away on worry.
2014©DM.
Thursday, April 28, 2022
Moving on is hard.
Leaving behind the past is like trying to leave a limb behind. Whether it be old friends who have fallen like leaves by the wayside of time, old ways of being that no longer fit with a new soul, old wounds & sorrows that haunt you. Forgoing a huge part of yourself because it seemingly no longer has an obvious use yet you're still attached to it, is a huge mountain to crawl over. It's like leaving an entire leg behind and then trying to run, you can't. But you know you must let go of things long past alive so you can live now, in the present instead of carrying around the wounds, heartaches and even fond memories of the past. The memories cling to you like the smell of smoke after walking through fire.
You're forced to crawl away slowly, painfully leaving a bloody trail reminding you of what you left behind, a giant piece of yourself. All you've known. A huge part of who you were, is now gone.
You're left to recreate the next part of your life, figuring out who you are now without the familiar weight of the past guiding you. If anything, they moor you, locking you into a long forgotten way of being that may or may not serve your life as you are now. The truth about starting over is that it's terrifyingly blank if you don't already have an idea of who you are & where you want to go. If you do then count yourself lucky. If you really are starting over, then hang on for a bumpy ride.
At first you constantly feel the past haunting you like a sad, hungry ghost with a deep need to be seen, as if the past never left. Please remember me, please come back with me now, things were better then. Just like one might think they feel a lost leg that it's still there, but it's not. Neither is your past but in your own mind, boiling over & over as you process the losses, the pain & the remnants of lust, cooking your thoughts down to a mushy vague feeling so that you cannot think clearly. Dulled by the constant pangs of sadness or guilt, or the yearnings no longer being satisfied. You are consumed by what was and the fear that it may never be again.
Because truthfully, you miss it. It may have hurt then or felt better but it was familiar, it existed. It was real. Now you're lost without this framework helping you figure out what happens next. Will it, things, love, pain, experience happen again? There is great uncertainty & thus, loss. Real solitude as you begin again.
It's only after you've been crawling for awhile and get far enough away from your past that it starts to fade into the background. It becomes a thin phantom of a memory wisping about instead of an ever present ghost trying to relive things gone by. Reminding you of failures, fears & passion that you feel slipping sadly, longingly into the background of your soul, out of reach. But for a long while as you move through the present, you feel every bump in the road and that reminds you that you no longer have that leg, or the past. That it's gone and all you can do is remember it, miss it and then grieve it's departure from your life. And that is a truly heart-wrenching passage to go through, like carrying around the weight of your own sadness.
4/27/22©Dm.
Borrowed Image: Tareck Raffoul
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Love is a Solid thing~
A friend recently said something that hit me like a brilliant lighting bolt to my brain, waking it up underneath the mud and dirt caking it due to so many years of accumulated horseshit as a result of everything in my life and life in general. We were talking about the complex and retarded dynamics of trying to be close with family as well as lovers, even when their dysfunctional habits made loving them difficult and painful. She said, 'You can't connect to people who are slippery'.
Whoa. This stopped me right in my tracks. When she said this we looked right at each other, paused for a moment realizing how true this was while laughing and congratulating the utter hilarity and profundity of that expression in all it's honesty and precision. 'Yeah, duh...of course, because they're slippery...You can't ever hold onto them, because they're always slipping away...Totally makes sense!!' Like it should just be obvious when encountering people like that, that things are not going to go well and one should just turn around and walk away out of self-preservation.
"WARNING<DANGER AREA>SLIPPERY!!
Beyond sounding humorous and metaphorical it was downright true! When I think of the people in my life most challenging to connect with, including family, namely the men, they were slippery. Like a fish you think you've caught, repeatedly slipping from your hands every time you reach out for them again and again. Eventually you realize, at least with fish, you ought to just throw it back and keep fishing, right? But for some reason, as with me and some women, we have a blind spot when it comes to loving the wrong men and end up trying harder and ourselves fall down a slippery slope into foolishness and heartache. Like the scales on a fish's skin, they're flakey.
It's the perfect word to describe people who seem to be in your life, seem and pretend to care about you and seem like potential lovers and yet never pan out to anything solid that you can actually hold on to.
The funny thing is, the next day both of us reinterpreted it with different words through our own filters. I thought my friend had said, 'You can't LOVE someone who is slippery' and she thought she had said, ' You can't ATTACH to someone who is slippery'. Thankfully she had written it on a note for me. Hers was closer to her original sentence but still interesting how it went through our filters and came out different for each of us. Either way, a good way to look at unavailable people to connect, love or attach to all around.
Slippery: emotionally weak, avoidant, deceptive, evasive, mysterious in a way that does not engage with others well.
Good healthy people are not slippery. When people are in the right place and space in their lives for love and intimacy, they will not be evasive, deceptive and avoidant with their emotions while pretending to be interested. If one is not healthy or aware of their own state at the moment, they may fall prey to caring for someone who is slippery and will end up getting hurt. But it goes both ways.
Some people are sticky and cling to people because they are not in a strong or healthy place as well. Sticky people can make others feel smothered and oppressed, yet needed in a weird way that begets a co-dependent relationship.
Some are slippery and deceptively unavailable or hiding something that can make others feel avoided and yet constantly pulled in by deceitful behavior. Neither state is a good place to be in and will not produce a healthy relationship with anyone for very long. So before you get involved with someone, check yourself and see how you are. Are you slippery, sticky or balanced and ready for real intimacy?
Then you can ask yourself, your greater intuition if the person you want to connect with is slippery, sticky or flakey, then go forward from there.
I'm going to keep this in mind when I go out into my life, meeting with people. If they seem slippery, I'm not even going to reach out for them, whatsoever...
Just keep fishing.
2/8/17©DanyaMosgofian
Whoa. This stopped me right in my tracks. When she said this we looked right at each other, paused for a moment realizing how true this was while laughing and congratulating the utter hilarity and profundity of that expression in all it's honesty and precision. 'Yeah, duh...of course, because they're slippery...You can't ever hold onto them, because they're always slipping away...Totally makes sense!!' Like it should just be obvious when encountering people like that, that things are not going to go well and one should just turn around and walk away out of self-preservation.
"WARNING<DANGER AREA>SLIPPERY!!
Beyond sounding humorous and metaphorical it was downright true! When I think of the people in my life most challenging to connect with, including family, namely the men, they were slippery. Like a fish you think you've caught, repeatedly slipping from your hands every time you reach out for them again and again. Eventually you realize, at least with fish, you ought to just throw it back and keep fishing, right? But for some reason, as with me and some women, we have a blind spot when it comes to loving the wrong men and end up trying harder and ourselves fall down a slippery slope into foolishness and heartache. Like the scales on a fish's skin, they're flakey.
It's the perfect word to describe people who seem to be in your life, seem and pretend to care about you and seem like potential lovers and yet never pan out to anything solid that you can actually hold on to.
The funny thing is, the next day both of us reinterpreted it with different words through our own filters. I thought my friend had said, 'You can't LOVE someone who is slippery' and she thought she had said, ' You can't ATTACH to someone who is slippery'. Thankfully she had written it on a note for me. Hers was closer to her original sentence but still interesting how it went through our filters and came out different for each of us. Either way, a good way to look at unavailable people to connect, love or attach to all around.
Slippery: emotionally weak, avoidant, deceptive, evasive, mysterious in a way that does not engage with others well.
Good healthy people are not slippery. When people are in the right place and space in their lives for love and intimacy, they will not be evasive, deceptive and avoidant with their emotions while pretending to be interested. If one is not healthy or aware of their own state at the moment, they may fall prey to caring for someone who is slippery and will end up getting hurt. But it goes both ways.
Some people are sticky and cling to people because they are not in a strong or healthy place as well. Sticky people can make others feel smothered and oppressed, yet needed in a weird way that begets a co-dependent relationship.
Some are slippery and deceptively unavailable or hiding something that can make others feel avoided and yet constantly pulled in by deceitful behavior. Neither state is a good place to be in and will not produce a healthy relationship with anyone for very long. So before you get involved with someone, check yourself and see how you are. Are you slippery, sticky or balanced and ready for real intimacy?
Then you can ask yourself, your greater intuition if the person you want to connect with is slippery, sticky or flakey, then go forward from there.
I'm going to keep this in mind when I go out into my life, meeting with people. If they seem slippery, I'm not even going to reach out for them, whatsoever...
Just keep fishing.
2/8/17©DanyaMosgofian
Friday, November 25, 2016
Self-Care~
Self-Care is one of those new age healing expressions that's actually pretty damn useful that I forget to keep in mind on a regular basis and when I hear it, am reminded of it's simple importance: take care of yourself in a way you can sustain your life, your spirit or whatever, yourself, for real.
Self-Care is vitally important especially in times like these where it seems literally the world around us is going mad. Finding ways to pull back from the mayhem and gain ground is extremely vital for our suvival despite being in a culture, here in the U.S., where we feel like if we don't keep up with every flippin' moment of every event that we're going to miss out on something. We're not! This mentality which pervades our 'culture' can drive one to extreme normalized anxiety and keep us running at a pace that is unsustainable and driven to neurosis, filled with an almost addictive hunger that is never satisfied. We glue ourselves to electronic screens 'searching' for life beyond our grasp that always seems, almost there for our touch and yet never really is in a complete way; leaving us often feeling very isolated and dissatisfied. But we keep searching despite and because of this.
There are many things people can do besides the usual escapist tools like pop culture, media gorging, drugs, destructive sex or food binging. What are some ways that help you unplug or disconnect from society and help you reconnect to yourself?
I use my herbal remedies but sometimes my Relax or Nerve Ease formulas are not enough but since I don't do drugs or pop culture, I seek additional help. I am not sure beyond gorging on sugar and hot baths what else to do sometimes...so I go go back to my spiritual health tool bag to check in. I look for quiet ways to soothe my soul. Music is one of the main tools I use. Bands like Dead Can Dance and Indian Raga music(G.S. Sachdev/Zakir Hussain) often helps. Making art is something I love to do, any form but especially writing scripts, taking photos and long ago sculpting and making ceramics. Someday I will get back to those again. For now walking in the woods is one tool that really grounds me and reminds me of what's sane in the world, in particular being around trees. Trees are some of my favorite things (sing the tune). Dogs are nice too....(I like candy and cookies a LOT, but they don't like me back)
:P
Self-Care is vitally important especially in times like these where it seems literally the world around us is going mad. Finding ways to pull back from the mayhem and gain ground is extremely vital for our suvival despite being in a culture, here in the U.S., where we feel like if we don't keep up with every flippin' moment of every event that we're going to miss out on something. We're not! This mentality which pervades our 'culture' can drive one to extreme normalized anxiety and keep us running at a pace that is unsustainable and driven to neurosis, filled with an almost addictive hunger that is never satisfied. We glue ourselves to electronic screens 'searching' for life beyond our grasp that always seems, almost there for our touch and yet never really is in a complete way; leaving us often feeling very isolated and dissatisfied. But we keep searching despite and because of this.
There are many things people can do besides the usual escapist tools like pop culture, media gorging, drugs, destructive sex or food binging. What are some ways that help you unplug or disconnect from society and help you reconnect to yourself?
I use my herbal remedies but sometimes my Relax or Nerve Ease formulas are not enough but since I don't do drugs or pop culture, I seek additional help. I am not sure beyond gorging on sugar and hot baths what else to do sometimes...so I go go back to my spiritual health tool bag to check in. I look for quiet ways to soothe my soul. Music is one of the main tools I use. Bands like Dead Can Dance and Indian Raga music(G.S. Sachdev/Zakir Hussain) often helps. Making art is something I love to do, any form but especially writing scripts, taking photos and long ago sculpting and making ceramics. Someday I will get back to those again. For now walking in the woods is one tool that really grounds me and reminds me of what's sane in the world, in particular being around trees. Trees are some of my favorite things (sing the tune). Dogs are nice too....(I like candy and cookies a LOT, but they don't like me back)
:PWhat do you do? If you don't have something right off the top of your busy mind, make it a goal to find some healing tools for when times get tough and manic becomes the way.
Find a way back to yourself in the midst of the heated insanity boiling all around us. Unplug from our culture and sink into the safety of ourselves, the quietude of our soul by whatever peaceful, non-destructive path you can find. We'll return soon enough to the chaos and indulgence, for now Self-Care is where it's at. Peace.
11/18/16©DanyaMosgofian
Friday, November 4, 2016
We did a lot of leaving those years~
I look back on the years 2012-2014 and realize that many of the people around me, myself included, did a lot of leaving of each other during these years.
In essence, we bailed out on each other, when I'm not sure that was the best route to take.
But wait, let me start at the semi-mid way beginning of the middle end.
For most of my life, in terms of friendships, I was the kind of person who put a lot of myself into a friendship. I gave all and expected the same else it didn't last or go very deep. Even my lighter-hearted friendships were still more authentic than some of my friendships today. I had had many long term friendships that went through the typical and sometimes not so typical ups and downs that most real solid friendships go through. But they were still solid. Some lasted 5, 10, 15 and 20 years but somehow they were healthy overall because of how we communicated with each other and generally, how we behaved. When there was a problem, we'd contact each other, meet or talk over the phone to work out the details of the scrap to right things again. Rarely did it cause us to bail out or break up with each other willy nilly unless it was something super messed up like cheating with the other's boyfriend…but that never happened, thank goodness because of differing tastes in men and mostly friends with ethics. But sticking around, working things out, was an automatic thing to do when something went awry. Nowadays, it's not so much anymore.
It seems now when something goes wrong, many people gossip about it to other friends, post something on some social media page to rack up sympathy points and then bail out…unfriend…and write that someone off as if the whole thing was fake to begin with EVEN though it may have seemed like a real friendship. Like some whirlwind of teenage stupidity, we work ourselves into a lather over nothing and poof, finito, mas rapido, fast, end it slick with no question or will to figure out what actually went wrong, whether or not something actually went wrong, instead of just a micro-miscommunication burp or an actual snfu in the friendship. Just move on to the= NEXT!…thing. (Think: SQuiRREL!!)
In a about three years of my life, I made about 50+ friends…mostly through facebook but I met most of them in real life. Honest! On top of that I got back in touch with another 50+ and was already in touch with 60+. So in total I was working myself into exhaustion trying to juggle over 200 people at a point and for awhile I was holding my own, maintaining what I thought were authentic interactions. Obviously I was not doing a very good job at keeping those relationships real and authentic because well, you can't with that many people and especially, remotely online. Friendships require more contact, I believe.
So naturally it all came to an end in some ways but the way it came to an end…still makes me smh, as the kids say, shake my head in confusion. In a few years over a series of truly banal stupid incidences, I lost about 6 or 7 friendships. The irony was, most of those friends had been my longer term friends I had known before Facebook and I'm still in touch with a few people from Fb afterall. Go figure!
Were we due for a break up or was it a by-product of the modern era taking it's toll? Or was I just such a bear to be around? I didn't know because for some of those 'friendships' nothing whatsoever bad happened and no one said anything, they just disappeared from my life. They just ended?
For quite awhile, I kept in touch & hung out with, talked on the phone, wrote letters to around 50 or more new and old rehashed new again people, mostly through facebook but most of it bled into real life. It was a flurry of activity where before fb my life was pretty small and had shrunk to a pea due to chronic illness that derailed most of my existence and spirit so I withdrew from the world feeling so out of whack and disinterested to be honest. So I figured going onto a social media page would help me break out of the isolation I had put myself in while going through literal and virtual hell. I thought, how bad could it be? Despite many years of avoiding it, I had no idea what I was getting into. :l
Before that, I had spent much of my life underground, so to speak. Part of the counter-cultural milieus of American sub-culture genres: world culture, punk, hippie, politics and even rap/hip hop before it blew up into all materialism and pimp & ho culture and destroyed young America including many young black people. Hey, sorry, but it's true. Fuck off if you can't handle the truth….(sorry it slips out here and there). Suffice it to say, I was plugged into the underground world of real culture and subversive living chock full of authentic interactions and a slew of various art forms driven by odd unique innovative and exciting people. Real people who could care less nor kept up with mainstream culture or trends. Then I walked away from my dream career, moved to suburbia, got sick and it all went down hill from there. When I finally looked up, plugged into the cultural milieu at the time, I found myself swimming in totally unfamiliar waters with many people I had known for decades who, previously to FB were NOT mainstream people likely to follow any trends, like social media.
For me to be participating in something SO mainstream as Fb and social media, 'liking' random idiocies that so many others 'liked' and responding to the endless fodder that streamed along the newsfeed was just not something I had done before in any form be it gossip groups, fashion circles (gag) or social media or even bars… I hate bars if one must be truthful. Cesspools of depressant indulgence masked by the fume of boozy interactions and sloppy sexual advances. Blehh!
I had managed to avoid this world for many years. So really I was out of my element for sure.
I like other stalwarts, had to learn the codespeak of the young and hip, the acronyms of the nincompoops of modern culture. There's nothing odder and more humbling than trying to figure out LMAO or STFU or SMH when you have NO reference but your own imagination and an actual education to go on. While pissing and bemoaning the woes of modern tech talk and hipster jargon, I slowly but surely and sadly, immersed myself in modern hip culture and become a facebook junkie and I slowly but surely and sadly, lost all touch with the real world. Ok that's a bit dramatic but it makes the point.
When I first got on to the page, my old school friends were like, 'Oh my god, it's about time you got on here'….to 'finally!'…'hey nice to see you cuz'….from family members who had no problem jumping in line to the latest fad trend yen blah…thing.
I however, felt childish…and silly. BUT I was trying to be open and needed to break out of the depressing stinky cave of my deep earth dwelling and wipe off the elitist solemn funk of a cape I had worn for so long to mix with the masses. So I walked into the shallow end, slowly, hoping that it was as cool as it looked on the surface and safe as water can look, on the surface.
Little did I know it would change the way I relate with people. But not being alone in this, I along with just about most others in this country were also affected by Fb in relating to each other and how we navigated friendship in the modern era. Little did I know those seemingly real friends I would make would become frenemies that I no longer speak with simply because of those banal misunderstandings and silly banter that were misinterpreted online because we can't actually read emotions through b/w lettering and 2 second comments, and not in real life.
In most of my life I had very few frenemies or friends I had severely broken up with. I can name one who I ended up getting beat up by because she was half-psycho and had the reputation of beating up a LOT of her friends during those years. Those were crazy years, period. It was how she coped with her fucked up life. I just went through the rotation of her friends till it was my turn, painfully.
Other than that, if I lost a friend it was usually just a quiet growing apart or moving away and didn't keep as much in touch. Not an actual detached 'unfriending' in this newfandangled fashion of living and loving the modern world was telling me. The very idea that you can 'UNFRIEND' a person with the click of a button and be done with them in such a dry, disconnected clinical manner is stunningly low and cheap. It boils friendships, partners, lovers and even remote acquaintances to mere images of ideas on a page to stare at and feel pretend love in a pretend community.
It can seem real at times too. People said, 'I'd never bail out on you for some silly reason….oh your opinions don't bother me…I didn't even notice was you said, what'd you say?'…revealing that the blips on the screen really meant very little but a momentary stimulation that gave us a temporary high that enabled us to feel a part of something for a global second so we could stop thinking about the fact that maybe our lives were in chaos or tedium, or our jobs sucked, or we were lonely, or our body hurt or our country was falling apart from the inside. For one second we felt 'loved'…kind of. Cared about, maybe. Important, not really but sorta simulating it that we were. Like sort of just temporarily for a second noticed by random people in our lives seeking the same desperate connection we all were: real life.
So for awhile it felt great, some superficial high that we could get without inhaling or snorting anything; it didn't cost much or cause us to gain weight much or destroy our livers but it gave us this buzz that we were part of something…that we mattered. That we had real friends.
Oh I know how it goes…yea we all 'knew' it wasn't that real. We all 'knew' that most of those people weren't our real friends and that when push came to shove we'd be alone during the real crises in our lives….like the memes say: 'Real friends are the ones who come in when the others are walking out…' Kind of thing. Right?
Yea so who were we fooling?
So when things started to fall apart because I couldn't keep up with the 50+ new people that I had met new ON top of the 125+ people I already knew and the 50+ people who were family, friends of family and professional associates…this was when things started to become very apparent about how things were really working in this brave new world I have ventured into reluctantly but temporarily, happily for meeting new people and finding old friends.
Things became very clear that when it came down to even clean cut nitty gritty real life, many of those people could care less about the real me and the real us.
And I was the fool running myself ragged trying to authentically keep up with all of them so as to grow real relationships because, that's what you do in relationships, right?
Pant pant...
The next thing I knew over the course of a year+ between me pulling back and others pulling trips…I lost about 7 or 8 or 10 or whatever 'friends'. Some I had known for many years and gotten back in touch with. Some I had just met.
Either way, it was baffling. I even found myself participating in this new wave of teenage write-off's in terms of having an issue with a friend because I was tired of feeling taken for granted. I was tired of being one of those people who wanted to be friends with everyone so I put up with, overlooked, ignored and psychoanalyzed all the things that came to mind WHY I shouldn't be friends with them but was because I just didn't want to be judgmental. Goddamn trickle down affect of American New Age Buddhism and west coast hippie!@ Argh!
Sigh…was I acting just like these flakey flighty people, or did I have a legitimate reason for confronting the few I did and bailing out??? What the hell has happened to all of us, to me?
When I think of some of the reasons and behavior I witnessed, there was literally no legit reason but that et voila…it just didn't suit them at the moment to stay friends despite prophetic declarations previously made.
And this is what I am talking about with this newfandanagled bailing out behavior that social media has taught us all how to do, with the flick of a button.
My reasons were that I was tired of being called boring or selfish because I didn't respond to someone's demands fast enough when offering to do something nice for them for free, simply because I had a skill to be valued (photography). Or when I temporarily got off fb once because I was spending too much time on it and my eyes were going bad and I was getting daily migraines (as I sit here now with glasses) and yet I wrote a post on my wall for WEEKS telling everyone that I was getting off to save my eyes and prevent migraines and work on my new small business that was JUST being born and consuming all of me. She didn't bother to read it and instead, her and her husband simply unfriended and ignored me because she thought I blocked her. After 30 years of friendship instead of calling and asking me, she just unfriended me and didn't say anything, staying quiet on her end until I asked her about it.…huh?
There were others that didn't make sense to me, there were others where I reacted fed up because I was. I was fed up at how I was being treated after many years of friendship, the language with which we now spoke was laden with a crass uncaring tone that had come out as a result of modern pop culture and nothing that existed before it did, in our friendships. I didn't relate to all the shit chat that so many people who kept up, were doing. I felt old, like a dinosaur come back to life. I referenced things that people in their 50's and older did: the 60's movement and all it's effects, the political situation and the reduction in values of today's generations, how fast things have gotten in today's technology. We kvetched together with a greater understanding of the overall detriment to society and when I was around younger people, even people in my 40's age group, the main focus was on, ok survival of course but shallow pursuits of sex, materialism, the latest fad on fb, superficial relationships but also, what kind of phones they had, the latest concert they'd seen, the size of a man's dick (wait what?) and who said what on which social media site. My head spun with confusion at the overall lack of depth that people around me were exhibiting. It still does.
And yet, I had grown boring too…so it wasn't just them. Remember my life had shrunk to a shell of my former self so I was no longer cultivated and interesting. I was not who I'd want to hang out with. And yet, I wanted to be. I wanted to change and morph into an entirely different self that was truer to me and away from this shallow life around me. But I was SOo out of touch with how to do that, like I had been sucked into some vortex of stupid and didn't have the strength to pull myself out. Or got distracted by the pretty bells and whistles blinding me while it sucked my brain out through my ears.
Part of me is glad to have moved on from people who may not have been the best for me. Maybe I wouldn't have done it due to the whole trying to be friends with everyone syndrome still lurking inside of me. I needed to move on and start over, finding better healthier people and be more discerning with the choices I made so I could have the life I wanted and NOT stay in a life that was killing me. I wanted to be healthier, to be a better person and things around me had grown stagnant and irritating. But I didn't want to be bailed out on like this?!
So I was planning on doing this…anyways; slowly but surely yet actually doing it once and for all, was scaring me on a deeper level; to be alone, to start over and move away from all you know. Even if it was toxic and staid. It's still a scary thing with no road map but your own shiny newly reformed instinct of self-preservation. What was I thinking?
Am I a masochist? To actually start over completely, from scratch and rebuild my life in the way I really truly deep down needed, was utterly terrifying and meant possibly saying goodbye to most of what I had known, most of my life. Because it just wasn't working for me anymore. But I hadn't planned on suddenly losing multiple friends over the course of a few years like this!
I thought I would do it nicely, slowly disappearing from people's lives while building a life elsewhere. No drama, no hostility or teenage fugue states but just gently move on knowing that if I ever saw them we'd hug, catch up and part ways in a kind manner. Why not? There's enough crapola going on in the world for us not to create more. I think that's kind in some ways, you don't have to insult someone on the way out just because you don't like where you ended up.
You can just leave politely.
Perhaps they did me a favor because I was being too patient, too willing to tolerate. Damn watered down, fool-hearty delusional Buddhism from my childhood.
Either way…I have ended up here, starting over. It feels good, cleaner but still a little scary at times. There is no road picked out and paved or worn down for ease. I am still wearing in new soles. But I like it. I like having pulled my gaze from the burning sun to look instead into the depth of the night sky and all the stars it contains. The magic of unchartered territory awaits me and I'm embracing it with confidence caution.
I think really what happened, is that many of us said goodbye for no other reason other than something to do that added drama to our lives and gave us the illusion we were doing something exciting, rather than actually living.
9/14©DanyaMosgofian
In essence, we bailed out on each other, when I'm not sure that was the best route to take.
But wait, let me start at the semi-mid way beginning of the middle end.
For most of my life, in terms of friendships, I was the kind of person who put a lot of myself into a friendship. I gave all and expected the same else it didn't last or go very deep. Even my lighter-hearted friendships were still more authentic than some of my friendships today. I had had many long term friendships that went through the typical and sometimes not so typical ups and downs that most real solid friendships go through. But they were still solid. Some lasted 5, 10, 15 and 20 years but somehow they were healthy overall because of how we communicated with each other and generally, how we behaved. When there was a problem, we'd contact each other, meet or talk over the phone to work out the details of the scrap to right things again. Rarely did it cause us to bail out or break up with each other willy nilly unless it was something super messed up like cheating with the other's boyfriend…but that never happened, thank goodness because of differing tastes in men and mostly friends with ethics. But sticking around, working things out, was an automatic thing to do when something went awry. Nowadays, it's not so much anymore.
It seems now when something goes wrong, many people gossip about it to other friends, post something on some social media page to rack up sympathy points and then bail out…unfriend…and write that someone off as if the whole thing was fake to begin with EVEN though it may have seemed like a real friendship. Like some whirlwind of teenage stupidity, we work ourselves into a lather over nothing and poof, finito, mas rapido, fast, end it slick with no question or will to figure out what actually went wrong, whether or not something actually went wrong, instead of just a micro-miscommunication burp or an actual snfu in the friendship. Just move on to the= NEXT!…thing. (Think: SQuiRREL!!)
In a about three years of my life, I made about 50+ friends…mostly through facebook but I met most of them in real life. Honest! On top of that I got back in touch with another 50+ and was already in touch with 60+. So in total I was working myself into exhaustion trying to juggle over 200 people at a point and for awhile I was holding my own, maintaining what I thought were authentic interactions. Obviously I was not doing a very good job at keeping those relationships real and authentic because well, you can't with that many people and especially, remotely online. Friendships require more contact, I believe.
So naturally it all came to an end in some ways but the way it came to an end…still makes me smh, as the kids say, shake my head in confusion. In a few years over a series of truly banal stupid incidences, I lost about 6 or 7 friendships. The irony was, most of those friends had been my longer term friends I had known before Facebook and I'm still in touch with a few people from Fb afterall. Go figure!
Were we due for a break up or was it a by-product of the modern era taking it's toll? Or was I just such a bear to be around? I didn't know because for some of those 'friendships' nothing whatsoever bad happened and no one said anything, they just disappeared from my life. They just ended?
For quite awhile, I kept in touch & hung out with, talked on the phone, wrote letters to around 50 or more new and old rehashed new again people, mostly through facebook but most of it bled into real life. It was a flurry of activity where before fb my life was pretty small and had shrunk to a pea due to chronic illness that derailed most of my existence and spirit so I withdrew from the world feeling so out of whack and disinterested to be honest. So I figured going onto a social media page would help me break out of the isolation I had put myself in while going through literal and virtual hell. I thought, how bad could it be? Despite many years of avoiding it, I had no idea what I was getting into. :l
Before that, I had spent much of my life underground, so to speak. Part of the counter-cultural milieus of American sub-culture genres: world culture, punk, hippie, politics and even rap/hip hop before it blew up into all materialism and pimp & ho culture and destroyed young America including many young black people. Hey, sorry, but it's true. Fuck off if you can't handle the truth….(sorry it slips out here and there). Suffice it to say, I was plugged into the underground world of real culture and subversive living chock full of authentic interactions and a slew of various art forms driven by odd unique innovative and exciting people. Real people who could care less nor kept up with mainstream culture or trends. Then I walked away from my dream career, moved to suburbia, got sick and it all went down hill from there. When I finally looked up, plugged into the cultural milieu at the time, I found myself swimming in totally unfamiliar waters with many people I had known for decades who, previously to FB were NOT mainstream people likely to follow any trends, like social media.
For me to be participating in something SO mainstream as Fb and social media, 'liking' random idiocies that so many others 'liked' and responding to the endless fodder that streamed along the newsfeed was just not something I had done before in any form be it gossip groups, fashion circles (gag) or social media or even bars… I hate bars if one must be truthful. Cesspools of depressant indulgence masked by the fume of boozy interactions and sloppy sexual advances. Blehh!
I had managed to avoid this world for many years. So really I was out of my element for sure.
I like other stalwarts, had to learn the codespeak of the young and hip, the acronyms of the nincompoops of modern culture. There's nothing odder and more humbling than trying to figure out LMAO or STFU or SMH when you have NO reference but your own imagination and an actual education to go on. While pissing and bemoaning the woes of modern tech talk and hipster jargon, I slowly but surely and sadly, immersed myself in modern hip culture and become a facebook junkie and I slowly but surely and sadly, lost all touch with the real world. Ok that's a bit dramatic but it makes the point.
When I first got on to the page, my old school friends were like, 'Oh my god, it's about time you got on here'….to 'finally!'…'hey nice to see you cuz'….from family members who had no problem jumping in line to the latest fad trend yen blah…thing.
I however, felt childish…and silly. BUT I was trying to be open and needed to break out of the depressing stinky cave of my deep earth dwelling and wipe off the elitist solemn funk of a cape I had worn for so long to mix with the masses. So I walked into the shallow end, slowly, hoping that it was as cool as it looked on the surface and safe as water can look, on the surface.
Little did I know it would change the way I relate with people. But not being alone in this, I along with just about most others in this country were also affected by Fb in relating to each other and how we navigated friendship in the modern era. Little did I know those seemingly real friends I would make would become frenemies that I no longer speak with simply because of those banal misunderstandings and silly banter that were misinterpreted online because we can't actually read emotions through b/w lettering and 2 second comments, and not in real life.
In most of my life I had very few frenemies or friends I had severely broken up with. I can name one who I ended up getting beat up by because she was half-psycho and had the reputation of beating up a LOT of her friends during those years. Those were crazy years, period. It was how she coped with her fucked up life. I just went through the rotation of her friends till it was my turn, painfully.
Other than that, if I lost a friend it was usually just a quiet growing apart or moving away and didn't keep as much in touch. Not an actual detached 'unfriending' in this newfandangled fashion of living and loving the modern world was telling me. The very idea that you can 'UNFRIEND' a person with the click of a button and be done with them in such a dry, disconnected clinical manner is stunningly low and cheap. It boils friendships, partners, lovers and even remote acquaintances to mere images of ideas on a page to stare at and feel pretend love in a pretend community.
It can seem real at times too. People said, 'I'd never bail out on you for some silly reason….oh your opinions don't bother me…I didn't even notice was you said, what'd you say?'…revealing that the blips on the screen really meant very little but a momentary stimulation that gave us a temporary high that enabled us to feel a part of something for a global second so we could stop thinking about the fact that maybe our lives were in chaos or tedium, or our jobs sucked, or we were lonely, or our body hurt or our country was falling apart from the inside. For one second we felt 'loved'…kind of. Cared about, maybe. Important, not really but sorta simulating it that we were. Like sort of just temporarily for a second noticed by random people in our lives seeking the same desperate connection we all were: real life.
So for awhile it felt great, some superficial high that we could get without inhaling or snorting anything; it didn't cost much or cause us to gain weight much or destroy our livers but it gave us this buzz that we were part of something…that we mattered. That we had real friends.
Oh I know how it goes…yea we all 'knew' it wasn't that real. We all 'knew' that most of those people weren't our real friends and that when push came to shove we'd be alone during the real crises in our lives….like the memes say: 'Real friends are the ones who come in when the others are walking out…' Kind of thing. Right?
Yea so who were we fooling?
So when things started to fall apart because I couldn't keep up with the 50+ new people that I had met new ON top of the 125+ people I already knew and the 50+ people who were family, friends of family and professional associates…this was when things started to become very apparent about how things were really working in this brave new world I have ventured into reluctantly but temporarily, happily for meeting new people and finding old friends.
Things became very clear that when it came down to even clean cut nitty gritty real life, many of those people could care less about the real me and the real us.
And I was the fool running myself ragged trying to authentically keep up with all of them so as to grow real relationships because, that's what you do in relationships, right?
Pant pant...
The next thing I knew over the course of a year+ between me pulling back and others pulling trips…I lost about 7 or 8 or 10 or whatever 'friends'. Some I had known for many years and gotten back in touch with. Some I had just met.
Either way, it was baffling. I even found myself participating in this new wave of teenage write-off's in terms of having an issue with a friend because I was tired of feeling taken for granted. I was tired of being one of those people who wanted to be friends with everyone so I put up with, overlooked, ignored and psychoanalyzed all the things that came to mind WHY I shouldn't be friends with them but was because I just didn't want to be judgmental. Goddamn trickle down affect of American New Age Buddhism and west coast hippie!@ Argh!
Sigh…was I acting just like these flakey flighty people, or did I have a legitimate reason for confronting the few I did and bailing out??? What the hell has happened to all of us, to me?
When I think of some of the reasons and behavior I witnessed, there was literally no legit reason but that et voila…it just didn't suit them at the moment to stay friends despite prophetic declarations previously made.
And this is what I am talking about with this newfandanagled bailing out behavior that social media has taught us all how to do, with the flick of a button.
My reasons were that I was tired of being called boring or selfish because I didn't respond to someone's demands fast enough when offering to do something nice for them for free, simply because I had a skill to be valued (photography). Or when I temporarily got off fb once because I was spending too much time on it and my eyes were going bad and I was getting daily migraines (as I sit here now with glasses) and yet I wrote a post on my wall for WEEKS telling everyone that I was getting off to save my eyes and prevent migraines and work on my new small business that was JUST being born and consuming all of me. She didn't bother to read it and instead, her and her husband simply unfriended and ignored me because she thought I blocked her. After 30 years of friendship instead of calling and asking me, she just unfriended me and didn't say anything, staying quiet on her end until I asked her about it.…huh?
There were others that didn't make sense to me, there were others where I reacted fed up because I was. I was fed up at how I was being treated after many years of friendship, the language with which we now spoke was laden with a crass uncaring tone that had come out as a result of modern pop culture and nothing that existed before it did, in our friendships. I didn't relate to all the shit chat that so many people who kept up, were doing. I felt old, like a dinosaur come back to life. I referenced things that people in their 50's and older did: the 60's movement and all it's effects, the political situation and the reduction in values of today's generations, how fast things have gotten in today's technology. We kvetched together with a greater understanding of the overall detriment to society and when I was around younger people, even people in my 40's age group, the main focus was on, ok survival of course but shallow pursuits of sex, materialism, the latest fad on fb, superficial relationships but also, what kind of phones they had, the latest concert they'd seen, the size of a man's dick (wait what?) and who said what on which social media site. My head spun with confusion at the overall lack of depth that people around me were exhibiting. It still does.
And yet, I had grown boring too…so it wasn't just them. Remember my life had shrunk to a shell of my former self so I was no longer cultivated and interesting. I was not who I'd want to hang out with. And yet, I wanted to be. I wanted to change and morph into an entirely different self that was truer to me and away from this shallow life around me. But I was SOo out of touch with how to do that, like I had been sucked into some vortex of stupid and didn't have the strength to pull myself out. Or got distracted by the pretty bells and whistles blinding me while it sucked my brain out through my ears.
Part of me is glad to have moved on from people who may not have been the best for me. Maybe I wouldn't have done it due to the whole trying to be friends with everyone syndrome still lurking inside of me. I needed to move on and start over, finding better healthier people and be more discerning with the choices I made so I could have the life I wanted and NOT stay in a life that was killing me. I wanted to be healthier, to be a better person and things around me had grown stagnant and irritating. But I didn't want to be bailed out on like this?!
So I was planning on doing this…anyways; slowly but surely yet actually doing it once and for all, was scaring me on a deeper level; to be alone, to start over and move away from all you know. Even if it was toxic and staid. It's still a scary thing with no road map but your own shiny newly reformed instinct of self-preservation. What was I thinking?
Am I a masochist? To actually start over completely, from scratch and rebuild my life in the way I really truly deep down needed, was utterly terrifying and meant possibly saying goodbye to most of what I had known, most of my life. Because it just wasn't working for me anymore. But I hadn't planned on suddenly losing multiple friends over the course of a few years like this!
I thought I would do it nicely, slowly disappearing from people's lives while building a life elsewhere. No drama, no hostility or teenage fugue states but just gently move on knowing that if I ever saw them we'd hug, catch up and part ways in a kind manner. Why not? There's enough crapola going on in the world for us not to create more. I think that's kind in some ways, you don't have to insult someone on the way out just because you don't like where you ended up.
You can just leave politely.
Perhaps they did me a favor because I was being too patient, too willing to tolerate. Damn watered down, fool-hearty delusional Buddhism from my childhood.
Either way…I have ended up here, starting over. It feels good, cleaner but still a little scary at times. There is no road picked out and paved or worn down for ease. I am still wearing in new soles. But I like it. I like having pulled my gaze from the burning sun to look instead into the depth of the night sky and all the stars it contains. The magic of unchartered territory awaits me and I'm embracing it with confidence caution.
I think really what happened, is that many of us said goodbye for no other reason other than something to do that added drama to our lives and gave us the illusion we were doing something exciting, rather than actually living.
9/14©DanyaMosgofian
Friday, July 17, 2015
Soul Work~
Finding the bottom of your heart, the barest essential you, beneath blood and bones, beyond pain and past, building upwards into who you truly are, is a profound journey that can take you to the greatest depths of hell. But if you keep going, it can take you into the beautiful spaces that lay between the pain, instead, into a place of joy and self-knowing... Ultimately opening your heart to an all encompassing love that fulfills your needs so you no longer have space for heartache.
©3/13/10 including photo by Danya Mosgofian
Friday, July 3, 2015
Healing. Is. A. Slow. Process.
We're called patients: the people waiting to be well again. It's obvious after you deal with the medical establishment and spend a lot of time sick and waiting to be well why we're called that. I'm sure there is some other historical reason for calling Px, patients…but having to be the most patient you've even been for anything is what we end up being.
True to our namesake.
It's a game of faith being sick or healing. A challenge to test your faith in the world and in your own body to make it through these repeated physical let-downs that make us feel so utterly mortal and weak. A constant feeling of defeat upon the heart.
Being deeply broken and damaged requires even more patience and faith, knowing that you can heal again while simultaneously knowing it is one of the most difficult passages to ever journey through. On your day to day trials, sitting with your loss or grief, your hopelessness and pain, pulls at your soul, weakening the tiny fibers that keep you upright.
Knowing you can make it through that requires building faith out of nothing, from dust in fact. But how do we do that when we already feel so low and dark?
Sometimes making it through very dark moments require negotiating with your brain, conversing with your mind's chatter to give you one more minute, one more day of hope rather than fall down the slippery slope of cynicism and despair that is so easily remembered when things are not going well. It's easy to slip once we've been in the pits of despair, so you have to make sure you don't go there because that can literally eat up several days to get out of it again.
But whatever the length of the healing process, we must remember we are patients for a reason. To be patient, especially with ourselves and the healing process, for true deep healing takes time, as I was told during my darkest nights. I didn't understand why it had to take so long but now I do. Because you're rewriting code in your soul, your redesigning yourself from what didn't work to what you really want. And that is some deep shit to take on!
True to our namesake.
It's a game of faith being sick or healing. A challenge to test your faith in the world and in your own body to make it through these repeated physical let-downs that make us feel so utterly mortal and weak. A constant feeling of defeat upon the heart.
Being deeply broken and damaged requires even more patience and faith, knowing that you can heal again while simultaneously knowing it is one of the most difficult passages to ever journey through. On your day to day trials, sitting with your loss or grief, your hopelessness and pain, pulls at your soul, weakening the tiny fibers that keep you upright.
Knowing you can make it through that requires building faith out of nothing, from dust in fact. But how do we do that when we already feel so low and dark?
Sometimes making it through very dark moments require negotiating with your brain, conversing with your mind's chatter to give you one more minute, one more day of hope rather than fall down the slippery slope of cynicism and despair that is so easily remembered when things are not going well. It's easy to slip once we've been in the pits of despair, so you have to make sure you don't go there because that can literally eat up several days to get out of it again.
But whatever the length of the healing process, we must remember we are patients for a reason. To be patient, especially with ourselves and the healing process, for true deep healing takes time, as I was told during my darkest nights. I didn't understand why it had to take so long but now I do. Because you're rewriting code in your soul, your redesigning yourself from what didn't work to what you really want. And that is some deep shit to take on!
Believe in the notion that healing IS possible and it CAN be done. Believe in what you need to heal as a legitimate pathway to recovery and feel unduly entitled to seek that which your soul needs most of all, hope.
Healing. Takes. Time.
Just know that it is GOING to require patience, perseverance and time on your part despite any efforts to speed up the process or push it past any point you happen to be at. Understand and remember this fact and you will be able to keep going, with hope and faith that you can recover from whatever ails you.
Keep doing the soul work. It will take you there.
Originally written in 2011
Photo also by Danya Mosgofian©2011
Monday, April 7, 2014
The Machinations of Green
Yup, jealously. That thing we refer to so easily in a breathe of exacerbation that resides in the darkest places of our souls. That idea that lives in our petty private thoughts that we dare only reveal to anyone but those we know aren't going anywhere, only to breathe out that putrid green smoke from our bodies like some cathartic confession in hopes that will be rid of it. Jealousy: that horrible feeling that consumes one in a moment of insanity and complete lack of clarity reminding us how feeble and small we can be sometimes, reminding us that we are human, really...That we are not done working. And I had to address it anyway I could.
I've said it many times, I'm jealous of this, I'm jealous of that...but I wasn't really. Not truly jealous but simply desirous of something I didn't have. Believe me, there is a difference because before when I said that, I hadn't really truly felt it nor did I feel the anger towards the thing I wanted. Now I have and I had to purge it any way I could because it is that sickening.
Being jealous was never part of my character, my make up and I was proud of this. I realize this more so because in the last few years, I've begun to experience real jealousy now a few times and it kills me each time. Seeing and feeling this way causes a shock to my system because it is unfamiliar ground that I walk on. I just end up tripping the entire time. However, I fight hard not to let myself go to those truly ugly places and hang out, but catch it as it's making my way up my spine draining me of self-love and hope.
Now when I say jealousy, I mean the real deal: Bitter, resentful, sour, dark, sad, ugly and well, jealous. The word alone is enough to describe what the feeling connotes and should not be used casually I believe. It's too strong a word to throw around, kind of like love and hate. Moreover, jealousy is heartbreakingly honest and reveals a side of ourselves that is unable to speak freely in the light of day so it has to morph itself into some disfigured form to get attention.
Real jealousy is like an enteric coated pill that takes it's time to seep into your system as it erodes at your insides. THAT kind of jealous. True jealously.
Despite this strange occurrence going on in me I know better than to let it run me down or drive me into walls of stupidity and despair. So I talk with it, so to speak. I listen, as there is something more to it, something deeper that begs attention.
And I have no clue what to do about it other than to look at it with soft eyes.
Somewhere between loathing myself for having it, recognizing that it's just not something I want to live with and the bitter feeling in my stomach when it rears it's horrid head, I see something else: A vulnerability. A desire unfulfilled. Something resembling frailty that is living underneath all the armour, intellectual discourse and rhetoric is a body in need of something and an uncertainty of how to get it. So when I'm confronted by someone or something that picks at this wanting, it strikes a violent chord of resentment in me that finally on the surface, manifests into jealously.
So even though I want to gouge my mind out with a cocktail fork when it pangs, I can't help but look at it more graphically, broadly to try and understand it a little better so that it doesn't have such a hold on me and I can move on to greener pastures. (I couldn't resist ;)
Fortunately, this is something that is very new to me that has rarely happened and I have been truly grateful for this. It wasn't that I didn't want things or people, or suffer from the ravages of insecurity, I did, but I wasn't truly jealous. Not bitter at the object of desire and not angry or sad about it. Now that I have experienced real jealousy a couple of times, I understand it a little better and all it's complexities enmeshed in the psyche.
When it does happen, I am overwrought with confusion and humility knowing that I feel that way about something or someone because I am not there and am forced to ask myself pertinent questions, like, "why aren't you there, where you want to be, or who you want to be???!!".
Ugh....When I do, I feel so human. But I guess that's par for the course in being human, that you will feel the entire myriad of emotions that we are equipped to feel. If you don't, there are personality disorders you can get diagnosed with. Eventually if we live long enough, we feel everything.
As I age, perhaps it's the changing of form and function that evokes such a dark and sour feeling in me; Perhaps it's being smack dab in the middle of my own personal remodel, and knowing that I am in this 'remodel' mode, everything takes more patience and time. Neither of which I feel I have enough of as the acrid irony of aging sets in: wisdom meets inability. Either way, it is here and coming to life. But I am not content to sit quietly with it while it grows into a behemoth of disproportion.
Since it takes me to such sad hollow places where I see myself in a shadowy reflection, it demands I view it with honesty. So I am. Painfully, bravely I am looking at this scaly monster poking through my ribs trying to get my attention and I'm giving it to her, but not without an explanation and an exit plan!
All I can do is own it and see it and work my tail off to clean it out of my system so that I am no longer held captive by it. I wonder if others go through this when they experience jealousy or other sickening emotions. Or do they just feel them and live with it?
I am cognisant of this form growing in me and driving me to this ill feeling in my gut but also aware that I won't stand for it. It's not me. Moreover it's bad for my soul. But it reminds me of the dark empty spaces that still live in me that may need attending to which is obviously why this feeling of jealously, have cropped up at all.
Worst of all it's makes me sick with jealousy. And that's enough to want to try something else.
8/24/11©DanyaMosgofian
I've said it many times, I'm jealous of this, I'm jealous of that...but I wasn't really. Not truly jealous but simply desirous of something I didn't have. Believe me, there is a difference because before when I said that, I hadn't really truly felt it nor did I feel the anger towards the thing I wanted. Now I have and I had to purge it any way I could because it is that sickening.
Being jealous was never part of my character, my make up and I was proud of this. I realize this more so because in the last few years, I've begun to experience real jealousy now a few times and it kills me each time. Seeing and feeling this way causes a shock to my system because it is unfamiliar ground that I walk on. I just end up tripping the entire time. However, I fight hard not to let myself go to those truly ugly places and hang out, but catch it as it's making my way up my spine draining me of self-love and hope.
Now when I say jealousy, I mean the real deal: Bitter, resentful, sour, dark, sad, ugly and well, jealous. The word alone is enough to describe what the feeling connotes and should not be used casually I believe. It's too strong a word to throw around, kind of like love and hate. Moreover, jealousy is heartbreakingly honest and reveals a side of ourselves that is unable to speak freely in the light of day so it has to morph itself into some disfigured form to get attention.
Real jealousy is like an enteric coated pill that takes it's time to seep into your system as it erodes at your insides. THAT kind of jealous. True jealously.
Despite this strange occurrence going on in me I know better than to let it run me down or drive me into walls of stupidity and despair. So I talk with it, so to speak. I listen, as there is something more to it, something deeper that begs attention.
And I have no clue what to do about it other than to look at it with soft eyes.
Somewhere between loathing myself for having it, recognizing that it's just not something I want to live with and the bitter feeling in my stomach when it rears it's horrid head, I see something else: A vulnerability. A desire unfulfilled. Something resembling frailty that is living underneath all the armour, intellectual discourse and rhetoric is a body in need of something and an uncertainty of how to get it. So when I'm confronted by someone or something that picks at this wanting, it strikes a violent chord of resentment in me that finally on the surface, manifests into jealously.
So even though I want to gouge my mind out with a cocktail fork when it pangs, I can't help but look at it more graphically, broadly to try and understand it a little better so that it doesn't have such a hold on me and I can move on to greener pastures. (I couldn't resist ;)
Fortunately, this is something that is very new to me that has rarely happened and I have been truly grateful for this. It wasn't that I didn't want things or people, or suffer from the ravages of insecurity, I did, but I wasn't truly jealous. Not bitter at the object of desire and not angry or sad about it. Now that I have experienced real jealousy a couple of times, I understand it a little better and all it's complexities enmeshed in the psyche.
When it does happen, I am overwrought with confusion and humility knowing that I feel that way about something or someone because I am not there and am forced to ask myself pertinent questions, like, "why aren't you there, where you want to be, or who you want to be???!!".
Ugh....When I do, I feel so human. But I guess that's par for the course in being human, that you will feel the entire myriad of emotions that we are equipped to feel. If you don't, there are personality disorders you can get diagnosed with. Eventually if we live long enough, we feel everything.
As I age, perhaps it's the changing of form and function that evokes such a dark and sour feeling in me; Perhaps it's being smack dab in the middle of my own personal remodel, and knowing that I am in this 'remodel' mode, everything takes more patience and time. Neither of which I feel I have enough of as the acrid irony of aging sets in: wisdom meets inability. Either way, it is here and coming to life. But I am not content to sit quietly with it while it grows into a behemoth of disproportion.
Since it takes me to such sad hollow places where I see myself in a shadowy reflection, it demands I view it with honesty. So I am. Painfully, bravely I am looking at this scaly monster poking through my ribs trying to get my attention and I'm giving it to her, but not without an explanation and an exit plan!
All I can do is own it and see it and work my tail off to clean it out of my system so that I am no longer held captive by it. I wonder if others go through this when they experience jealousy or other sickening emotions. Or do they just feel them and live with it?
I am cognisant of this form growing in me and driving me to this ill feeling in my gut but also aware that I won't stand for it. It's not me. Moreover it's bad for my soul. But it reminds me of the dark empty spaces that still live in me that may need attending to which is obviously why this feeling of jealously, have cropped up at all.
Worst of all it's makes me sick with jealousy. And that's enough to want to try something else.
8/24/11©DanyaMosgofian
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Humble As...
There is something quite magical that happens when you are suddenly given an answer to a problem in your life when you weren't even seeking it. And even if you are seeking it, the feeling of relief you get when it arrives with a grand thud into your life out of nowhere smacking you on the head, and if feels really good!
We can stumble over and over a particular issue or problem in our lives despite the number of times we think we've addressed it, repaired it and moved on. Somehow, like some parasite stuck to the side of your ass the wrong way, it's still there and can rear it's head without warning at the most inappropriate times.
Hopefully if we're lucky and paying attention, when a lesson that fits your problem perfectly appears out of nowhere, it's like the sky suddenly opening up and warm rain washing down everything else you were thinking about, and you are clear.
Shazam! Yes.
Humility is one of those hidden lessons. One might be thinking, how does humility feel good? As when a moment of humility happens, it's well...humbling, even painful. BUT it is also quite gratifying as humility has the ability to lift off the veil of self-delusions and defensive armor to show us how we really feel underneath all the mechanisms that we've created to protect ourselves from pain. It allows us to really see ourselves, how we walk in this world and the footsteps or gaping holes we are leaving behind.
This where the magic can occur, for this is where change can unfold. This is where the real work can be done on healing old wounds, breaking old habits and rebuilding your life the way YOU want to see it instead of recycling the same dirty programming over and over until you can't see straight. This is a moment of clarity. So be grateful.
If you're like me in any way, stumbling over and over the same roadblocks or warning signs or running into the same thorny bushes I've been running into much of my life, until I no longer walk upright but in caveman like crawl because I may as well not get up as I'm just going to stumble anyways fashion. Then sometimes you need that sudden smack of a metaphorical 2x4 in the form of a life lesson thrust upon you out of the blue. And for this, I'm grateful.
This is humility. These are the moments when the sky of our minds cracks open and we realize who we've become, for better or worse and as a result we can then see ourselves clearly. We can see what is working and what is not working and go from there with an open heart and mind to form a better way of living that doesn't hurt so much.
Be open, be ready for this. If you're in need of some clarity, pray for a really thick piece of wood to come swooping out of the air to land dead center on your brick forehead and lay you out. After you wake up, your eyes will see a bit brighter and you'll be able to walk a bit straighter in a better direction.
Peace. :)
We can stumble over and over a particular issue or problem in our lives despite the number of times we think we've addressed it, repaired it and moved on. Somehow, like some parasite stuck to the side of your ass the wrong way, it's still there and can rear it's head without warning at the most inappropriate times.
Hopefully if we're lucky and paying attention, when a lesson that fits your problem perfectly appears out of nowhere, it's like the sky suddenly opening up and warm rain washing down everything else you were thinking about, and you are clear.
Shazam! Yes.
Humility is one of those hidden lessons. One might be thinking, how does humility feel good? As when a moment of humility happens, it's well...humbling, even painful. BUT it is also quite gratifying as humility has the ability to lift off the veil of self-delusions and defensive armor to show us how we really feel underneath all the mechanisms that we've created to protect ourselves from pain. It allows us to really see ourselves, how we walk in this world and the footsteps or gaping holes we are leaving behind.
This where the magic can occur, for this is where change can unfold. This is where the real work can be done on healing old wounds, breaking old habits and rebuilding your life the way YOU want to see it instead of recycling the same dirty programming over and over until you can't see straight. This is a moment of clarity. So be grateful.
If you're like me in any way, stumbling over and over the same roadblocks or warning signs or running into the same thorny bushes I've been running into much of my life, until I no longer walk upright but in caveman like crawl because I may as well not get up as I'm just going to stumble anyways fashion. Then sometimes you need that sudden smack of a metaphorical 2x4 in the form of a life lesson thrust upon you out of the blue. And for this, I'm grateful.
This is humility. These are the moments when the sky of our minds cracks open and we realize who we've become, for better or worse and as a result we can then see ourselves clearly. We can see what is working and what is not working and go from there with an open heart and mind to form a better way of living that doesn't hurt so much.
Be open, be ready for this. If you're in need of some clarity, pray for a really thick piece of wood to come swooping out of the air to land dead center on your brick forehead and lay you out. After you wake up, your eyes will see a bit brighter and you'll be able to walk a bit straighter in a better direction.
Peace. :)
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Welcome to Feel Good Again!~
Thank you.
Peace, Danya.
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