Commitment

This may be a bit of a rant. Bear with me. Or don't, whichever.

We all have our causes. We all have things that matter to us, things we're ready to stand up and be counted for, things we'll fight for. Sometimes the cause lasts a day, or a month. Sometimes it's a lifetime. Often, it's one little battle at a time seeking a long term goal.

I've seen lots of things that come up, and dozens, hundreds, even millions of people turn up to support their side of the argument.

The Pensacola city counsel proposed a domestic partnership registry and a solid hundred or so representatives of the LGBT community spoke to them at the meeting, not to mention those who attended in silent support.

Certain corporate interests lobbied for bills to suppress internet freedom, and half the country stood up to say no.

Just as a couple of examples.

But time and again, I see the droves of people turn out to show their support... once. A week after the first city counsel meeting in Pensacola regarding domestic partnership, the city counsel met to actually vote on it, and fewer than half of the first group showed up the second time. It passed anyway, but no one was there to see it.

"Net Neutrality" just went away, and no one noticed. No one stood up the second time.

You have such short attention spans. Yes, you. See? You're already not paying attention, are you?

It's not enough to stand up for what you believe in once. You have to stand up every time. If you support LGBT rights, then every time someone says the phrase "LGBT rights" you should be there.

If someone speaks against what you feel is right, and you're not there to answer, you deserve to lose. It's that simple. If you care, prove it. Every time. Do you stand for what's right, or don't you?

Of The Artist

True art is made of the artist, not by the artist. Art comes from FEELING something. Good or bad, it all comes from the ability to experience life more deeply than most people can.

No matter how you cut it, that means artistic people feel more pain than normal people. 

I have to include myself in that category. We're all broken, it's the cracks that let the light out.The more you feel, the greater the art, and the harder it is to live with. The closer you fly to the sun, the easier it is to get burned.

That's why the greatest artists have such tragic stories. Edgar Allen Poe outlived true love, Van Gogh never found it. Just for a start.

On the other hand, that means you can always turn your pain into something worth having. Life is painful, but if the scars can be beautiful, it's worth it.

Beauty Inside

I can't say who or what of course, but tonight I met someone for the first time and she finished a story she told me with "I've never told anyone that story before."

I suppose I'm a good listener, and people pick up on the fact that I am good at keeping secrets, and I don't judge.

I think that's my greatest joy in life. It makes everything else okay, when people confide in me that way. That's why I so enjoy doing readings. I get to see into people. I get to hear their fears and tell them how to face them. I get to shine a little light on their darkest parts. I get to see the parts of them they think are ugly, hold up a mirror, and show them they're beautiful.

Everyone is beautiful, if you look deeply enough.

Never Not Broken

So at this point it's known that I've been dealing with some mental and emotional issues. I hesitate to call it "struggling with" because I don't want to look at it that way.

I've been this way all my life, but most of that time it was a little thing. I was ten years old before I stopped sleeping with the light on, not because I knew the monster in my closet was real (which it was) but because when the lights were off things started moving that I knew weren't supposed to move. I'd lose track of time, wound up in the wrong classrooms in school because I forgot where I was going. It didn't happen often, but it happened.

Now I'm that way more than I'm not. Some months ago, a very close friend, who is one of the most perceptive people and best psychic readers I've ever met picked up on what I've been going through and told me I was going to fall apart, that it would get worse before it got better, but that I would be stronger for it.

Since then, I've been trying to figure myself out. Trying to understand how to overcome the fact that my own brain is my biggest obstacle. I feel like my mind is a puzzle and someone keeps taking the pieces out and putting them back together in different configurations.

I'm learning to ride the currents, to swim with the tide rather than against it. There's a lot I can't do anymore, and there are bad days. In fact, some of the symptoms are still getting worse, but I'm learning to cope. I think I can do more than cope, I can make this work for me.

I found an article which really spoke to me. The Hindu goddess Akhilandeshvari, the goddess never not broken. She is the patron goddess of trauma, catharsis, of growth through emotional pain. She refuses to give in to pain and fear, she embraces it and becomes stronger.

Akhilandeshvari promises that you are strongest when you break, that it is the breaking which allows you to become something new. That without pain, we have stagnation. Not only does she embrace the pain, she chooses never to cast it aside. Never not broken, she does not settle into a whole which has limitations, she remains in flux, constantly changing, becoming new every moment. The beautiful prism of color in a diamond comes from the fractures deep within.

That must be my aspiration, to become like Akhilandeshvari.