running into love..

It’s the time I’ve much been awaiting, anticipating, anxiously ever since I left my home a little over a month ago. I’m back. After an intense two week camp, and two weeks of recuperating and sharing time with a brilliant person, growing more in two weeks and laughing more than I have in a long while. Feels so good.

For some reasons, expectations bother me a lot. And I tend to have quite irrational expectations of myself, and others too. At first I was afraid and bothered by the expectations my family might place on me to be a certain way, and to go a certain direction in my future—and then I realized, I am the one putting those expectations up. I’ve always had these stifling expectations about things that always leave me disappointed and depressed. One of my favorite professors on Semester at Sea told us to not have any expectations: that way, we’ll never be disappointed. This carries a lot of truth. When I build expectations of grandeur for myself, I leave little room for a learning opportunity. I break them, then I hate myself. There’s no lesson for me, all it is: you suck. When others screw up and it effects me, I’m usually too easily hurt. By giving myself more grace, I learn to give others more grace…it’s a lesson in beauty and compassion: two necessary ingredients for love.

I’ve felt a little bit like a mother bird today, making my nest, which is now a corner of my basement: pulling together speakers, a piece of wood…making a table, pulling out old tubes of glue, clothespins, paper, scissors, tape: a little spot for me to do my art—setting up speakers and and lighting a candle…to dance.

RUMi’s quote:
Dance when you’re broken open; Dance, when you’ve torn the bandage off
Dance in the middle of fighting
Dance in your blood
Dance when you’re perfectly free.
Struck, the dancer hears a tambourine inside her
Like a wave crests into foam at the very top begins.
Maybe you don’t hear that tambourine or the tree leaves clapping time
Close the ears on your head , listen mostly to lies and cynical jokes.;
There are other things to see, and hear: Music. A brilliant city inside your soul.

Today, and lately, I’ve been broken open, I’ve been dancing in blood, I’ve been dancing through my mind in attempt to clear it out and get rid of those old brown boxes marked : eating disorder, depression, failure, fear, the boxes with the tags: yeah, right—good luck with that dream, why try? …etc. When I dance, I take those boxes and set them on fire, I take those boxes, empty their contents and wade through them. I don’t run from the boxes or lock them in the attic. I am in the middle of them, surrounded, yet so, so safe. Because my dance arms me. It is my ammunition, it is my backup battalion of angels, it is my truth. And I really can’t go anywhere without it, especially not to the attic.

I decided to go through my old clothes in my closet in an attempt to get rid of things I no longer needed, and find the clothing that I could use that fit. There is nothing more terrible for a recovering anorexic to have to physically look at and touch old clothes from her “skinny” stage. I felt my chest close up and it was as if my breathe slowed and I felt all choked and tight and locked. Thankfully at that moment my mom called me upstairs to fill out some college financial aid forms. As much as I wanted to hold it in, I just took some really intense out breaths and told her in a simple sentence “ I hate going through my old clothes” which led me to me shyly crying. I filled the form out, and then went instantly to the piano to start playing and participate in something beautiful..after a minute, my sister came out and asked me to stop because she had been taking a nap. Frustrated and in need of some release, I let out a small cry and just started dancing chaos without music…right there, in front of the clothes, and I noticed my out breath very strong, with precise movements, and soon words formulating in my mouth to the beat of my feet “fuck you, fuck you fuck you…” I’ve never…rhythmically…said those two words before. But really. They needed to come out.

I’m not a puppet, I’m not an idiot, and in order to live a life of service, I really have to get over my devils and my demons. I know what they are, and I know I walk a fine line to be pulled and controlled by them. It felt so good to have that release, but its only miniature compared to lots of things that are still very difficult. Without a spiritual practice, I would be extremely lost.

I began to catalog my music into the five rhythms: flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical, and stillness. It’s actually quite fun to turn my iTunes onto shuffle and start putting each song in their respective place. That way I can make a wave easy when I’m in the heat of the moment and really need to dance, or even when I don’t feel like dancing—it makes it that much easier for me. I picked twelve random songs in order to dance to…and just began.

I was having a very hard time focusing, and was way in my head at the beginning of the dance, not really wanting to pay attention how or where my body wanted to move. In Chaos I started to have this bit of release and clarity when I realized my mind is the only source of my suffering. I am a healthy twenty year old girl with everything I could ask for and more. I am so fortunate. I have a healthy family, I have beautiful friends, an opportunity for education, food, clothing, shelter…what could be causing me so much suffering? Only my mind, only the places I really allow it to go. Surely the heart is not a source of suffering, because love is available to us, truly, at any moment if we choose to open up our heart to God or Big Love or whatever we want to call it. The mind builds up walls, builds up boundaries, and tells us to run and run hard when we can’t find love inside of ourselves. I know it tells me to run like hell, and the first place it wants to run is the mirror. It’s really been that way since the time I was a little girl. It’s just always been a comfort to me, which grew into an addiction, and distraction, and now a method of destruction. But when we choose, in turn to run into love, we can become fully held.

For some reason in Chaos, second song, I imagined myself being picked up by the wind of love and blown around and shook out and being emptied and rid of negative things and I felt surrender in my body…symbolically with the wind..

In Lyrical…the perfect song came on, that I haven’t actually heard before, but it was one of those instances where the divine aligns and the right moment happens and from then on we run with it and this whole new life force is calculated…

“Wait Til You See My Smile” - Alicia Keys

When the wind is blowing in your face
Sometimes in life you don’t see straight
Wait for him
He will show

When your head is in a certain place
Nobody around to make you say
Stand strong and you will go

Wait till you see my smile
Wait till you see your smile

Don’t they love to see you down
Kick you while you are in the ground
Don’t let any emotions show

People always make you late
Don’t let them get in your way
See they say things they don’t know
Wait till you see my smile
Wait till you see your smile

Hey
So don’t you look better now
Everybody comes around
Cause you don’t really need much
Just don’t go in and your better ready for whatever
Saying

Wait till you see my smile
Wait till you see your smile

Wait till you see my smile
Wait till you see your smile
Wait Til You See My Smile (Alicia Keys)

Basically these lyrics do a great job of how I feel right now, trying to cut through what others think of me, what I think of myself…and just caring what the divine thinks, what really matters…

Anyway. Last night, I ran into the love.

After being awake for 36 hours straight, having traveling for 13 of those hours…I couldn’t sleep last night, maybe it was the accidental drink I made with too much rum (my sister called me out, ironically, on my inability to measure correctly) I explained to her, as I drank out of the two foot straw she gave me, that I wasn’t used to these kinds of things, and all I knew was to just “eyeball it”. Anyway, I was up at four am, sweating, not able to sleep, so I went upstairs to try and type something. I was distracted by the amazing thunderstorm outside…and then by my own impulse to strip my clothes off right next to the door and run into it. i…kind of ran into love, if you want to think of it that way. It felt AMAZING. I was smiling and laughing and dancing and leaping around and feeling the rain and probably looked like a God damn fool but if my life were a movie…which it should be…that is one scene the directors would not delete, this is a sure thing.

I want to live more scenes like that. More worthy of the cut. More my director would be proud of…and more that highlight Him. How often do we watch a movie and come away disappointed? America makes a fortune on cheap laughs, highlighting and glamorizing stupidity. I’m not talking about any comedy, because some comedy is absolutely brilliant and is meant to be a gift to people…laughter is a gift God wants us to breathe in and celebrate. But how about your soul—when it comes away from a movie that has these scenes where the Spirit is really alive. The spirit is fighting. The spirit is showing up for work, the spirit is moving….through… flesh. These things light us up and make us come alive. It could be as simple as a conversation. Or the way the old lady is using her paints. Or the boy running home to his grandpa with the golden ticket. Or a real kiss. Or a sunrise. Just pure evidence of … what’s “up”, and in and all around us.

In short, gratitude, and prayer—not for material things. But for states of mind. Praying for states of mind, praying for new eyes, for creativity, and an attitude of questioning. Not accepting things for face value. Not letting old assumptions or ingrown truths hold me by their chains. Sawing through. Letting go. Holding a new hand. And dancing.