Christmas Thoughts

The last couple months have been filled with a lot of adversity, tension, change, and a ton of emotions. Life has certainly thrown a lot of curve balls and as the dust settles, I have felt that letting go of some of the feelings is important ahead of the holiday. Will writing about it help? I am honestly not sure. What has helped is putting one foot in front of the other but today I will try to process my thoughts in writing. Sometimes being able to see what I am feeling is enough to jump me ahead.

I have been thinking a lot about abundance, and scarcity lately. I have spent most of my life in an abundance of things, meaningless doodads that essentially create temporary happiness, like drugs and once the dust settles, I am brought back into reality and that feeling in the pit of stomach returns and reality sets in and poof back to feeling unsteady. Unsteady is what I feel in the pit of my stomach even when things seem good. With all that being said scarcity is my greatest affliction. Complete and utter emotional scarcity. I never really understood what this was until I experienced emotional connection, emotional awareness, emotional intelligence. Right now, I don't have it and that leaves me feeling depleted.

Even in the chaos, there was emotional connection. When there is deep rooted pain, anger, sadness, there is an emotional connection. Whether it is within yourself or connected to another human being. To have gone from something to nothing, is so deeply unnerving. Being alone has taught me a lot. I have learned what being alone truly means, and I am so comfortable there. At times I wonder, if too comfortable. I wonder if being comfortable alone will keep me stuck in things that don't suit me or bring me fulfillment. I truly have embraced what I need to heal day to day and what I need to grow myself in order to show up for my people in the healthiest ways possible. It's an everyday process and I never relent. I can feel disingenuous behavior. I can feel manipulation, and I can feel emotionally unavailable people. So, I don’t engage. My healing is far too important to me.

My world has been uprooted drastically in the last five months. There’s been sickness, turmoil, snakes in the grass, and the exposure of people’s truest colors. I shared with my therapist a few weeks ago that the people who I see clearer now have always been this way, it is me who has changed and with that change has come adjustment. So much adjustment. Realizing that has been hard and created a lot of discomfort. I can't eliminate everyone. I have to ensure my boundaries are firm. My boundaries are air tight.

Today, I have a heavy heart. Today is a reminder of the significant life change that happened a little over a year ago. To even acknowledge the length of time that has gone by is astounding to me at times. Time really does just keep moving on its continuum.

A couple of weeks ago, I read the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. I started reading it one Sunday morning and in the wee hours of Monday, I finished it. It felt like a breath of fresh air. It felt like hope. It had me wondering so much about love, loss, reconnection, and I felt a sense of relief. I for a moment remembered what feeling love felt like. It had me channel Iyanla and a quote that has stuck out for me- “Sooner or later, we must all accept the fact that in a relationship, the only person you are dealing with is yourself. Your partner does nothing more than reveal your stuff to you. Your fear! Your anger! Your pattern! Your craziness! As long as you insist on pointing the finger out there, at them, you will continue to miss out on the divine opportunity to clear your stuff.” What a powerful line. If only we all were willing to look at ourselves first before jumping towards blame or worse.

I cleared so much of my toxic stuff and I feel so much of the changes daily. I wonder sometimes if even in those changes, my rigidity shines through because I will never again not protect my energy, I will never allow myself to travel down paths where I am not being the healthiest version of myself. It has created scarcity for me. And I am missing emotional connection. I am missing passion and I am missing love. I can't compromise on the thing that I worked so hard on to achieve. The price is too high.

Evelyn was ruthless, self-serving, and yet the root of all of it was love. Her love for another human was essentially at the root of each decision she made. She had one true love and even though her love didn’t always understand or even agree with her choices, in the end she saw it for what it was versus what it felt like when it was unfolding before her. Yet, somehow, their love never died. It remained even when the pain was excruciating. That was the part of the story that brought me a sense of tremendous relief. I will likely revisit this story again soon. I feel like I need it in order to understand so much of my own story. And if I am being honest, it is not my story all alone. It never was.

There is a sense of relief going into this holiday season. And yet, the holidays don’t quite feel the same anymore and I wonder if they ever will. I can’t unknow what I know.