The other end

I've been wandering blind, stumbling into a downward spiral of confusion and negativity. I thought I was doing what I wanted, but in fact I couldn't hear my own voice. So deeply ingrained were the societal norms and social pressures that I didn't even realize they weren't coming from within me. I've released all control and fear. I don't want to force things to be a certain way, I don't even want to expend the energy to get angry about past wrongs. I don't want to choose suffering when there is pain. I want to allow it wash through me and over me and when its gone stand up and brush myself off. I've learned so much about myself and life in the past week it makes my head spin. And the lesson came in the most uncanny form. But the overall experience was that I was reduced to facing my deepest most painful fears and realizing that I was stronger than them.

I realized that love in any form is about nothing more than sharing peace together. Love is not conditional, love is not infected or toxic or scared. Love is not demanded or organized into neat orderly rows. Love is messy and muddy and still the most desirable experience in the world. Love will reduce you to your weakest self yet still lead you onto a path of strength. Love sometimes makes you fall flat on your face and the question is not how many scrapes you have or how many tears are shed. The question is how do you find the strength to get up, dust off and keep on going. "There is no such thing as regret, because at one time, that was exactly what you wanted". All you can do is learn from the choices that you made and the consequences that they brought. You can spend your life trying to understand someone else, trying to get inside their head and figure out exactly what they were thinking. Or you can step back, let go, and say, this is me. Here is my love. Please, handle it with care not because I'm making you but because you want to. Demands are an illusion. One cannot control anything else except themselves. When you are able to realize this and accept that the only way you can be happy is to be true to yourself, and stop allowing others to control you, you will feel the weight lifted from you.