Sunday, March 27th, 2011
I was getting ready for a party…the way I usually do. I drag my behind up the stairs when I am down to the wire on having time to do something between sprucing up and completely glamming out (depending on the event.) It doesn’t matter how potentially tired or anti-social I am beforehand. I don’t miss chances to party…not only because they don’t come every night in the small but very special place I live, but because the parties here are usually so unique and fabulous it makes them unmissable.) I lug our big boombox into the upstairs bathroom with me and the rougher I feel beforehand, the louder I play the music while I glitter myself up. I come out not just with the right clothes on, but with my heart pounding and my mind totally made over. I am ready to go out into the night and find out what it holds for me. I am ready to dance.
A month or two ago it was one of those nights. It was a 70s party and I had on the psychedelic turquoise and red dress on, a sequin hat I had a fun hell of a time trying to get my curls to stay inside, and huge glitter sunglasses on. I even got to buy the screaming red lipstick I had just bought (for a “towel-dry my hair, put on tinted lipstick and fly out of the house” kind of girl this is a lot of dressing up and quite exciting…) And suddenly in the midst of my mix of new music, a new Adele song started playing, and before too long I was singing along…and then the lines of life were blurring. I was looking into my own eyes in the mirror, as I sang with my full heart and whole soul, and I was seeing myself. I saw all of my passion and beauty, and it was a landslide…an avalanche…it was dams breaking open. It was knowing that even the smallest doubts that had cropped up in my garden, in the places I’d not been looking, had no sway in this wildfire. They were all consumed. And all in a moment…
Because I sang a song, a song I had to put on repeat to learn as I went because I’d never heard it before. A song about heartache that I didn’t even have, but that we all have known. We all knew it before we were born, we remembered it even in the land of pure love, because we knew it wasn’t over…not just yet. All because I sang a song, to myself, with all that I had, in my 7os costume on an otherwise-slow Sunday night, trying to rally myself to go out and shake everything I’ve got.
I knew that if anyone had a problem with me…looked down on me in any way…they just didn’t know me. Their loss, too. Because I was so damn beautiful…all the way through. There just wasn’t any other way to see it. And I know…you’d think I didn’t even need this. I was, after all, as I often speak and write of, born loving myself…it is my greatest gift. But I also say that knowing yourself, and loving yourself, is a moment to moment practice and friends…this is how I do it. This is what I am always talking about…bringing yourself back to yourself by doing things that remind you of who you really are. Over and over again until you are just so good at it that it happens on its own, like it did to me that night.
That’s why I go outside every with chance I can steal…why I stare at the blue sky, and the ocean, and the moon. It’s why I rally to go to every party. It’s why I love hard no matter how much I have been hurt. It’s why I open again and again to try to make friends. It’s why I dance…why I sing…why I teach…why I write…why I went up into my art room the other day, closed the door, played my guitar, took photos, painted, drew, and banged out soft poems on my old typewriter. It’s why I wore overalls all weekend. It’s why I am going to the sauna tonight to sweat until I can’t remember what it felt like to be sort-of sick all week, and to find out what it feels like when I am hot enough to melt and my skin is wet and soft like the seal I am somewhere inside. Selkie, I return to the sea…to the wild tempest inside of me, and the wildfire that burns me, again and again, but which shows me the stars. Living as a lover is hard, but there is no finer gold, no sweeter honey…no more beautiful thing than that life. I won’t ever give it up. Some might think I will eventually get broken, but they just don’t know how broken I have already been…and how it opened me up to the sunburst waiting underneath.
If only we all knew that falling apart is okay…if you can just endure it, in any way that gets you through, it will always take you somewhere better. And if you are not there yet it is because you aren’t done falling apart. Just find something…anything that brings you back to yourself…and then keep visiting it. Don’t leave it alone. Make it your temple. But not the temple of should…never the temple of should. Only the temple of what your soul and soft body longs for in any moment. Find that, and you will never be empty. Your mirror will never be too clouded to let you see yourself. Remember what I always say…”It isn’t that I never forget. It’s that I never forget how to remember.”
You have to find what makes you real again. What makes you come to life again. It is you loving yourself that will make you real like the Velveteen Rabbit. It is you kissing yourself that will make you wake from the thousand years sleep…and don’t worry. There will still be princes. (Princesses too of course for those who would prefer one. : )
Here is the thing. I was watching the most beautiful animated movie about magical Owls and, of course, there was the dark and the light…there were the good guys and the bad. And the old warrior-priestess rose up in my blood and I felt myself ready for battle as I once did. I know that story, I thought. I know that story so well. Don’t you just remember it in your bones? The battle between the light and the dark? Only it isn’t a question of spears and swords, no. It isn’t a battle of a lost ancientness or of the future. It is the hidden battle that rages on right now. Not between disembodied dark forces soaring through hyperspace in Harry Potter’s nightmares (well…maybe a little like that…) It is the battle inside of you over whether you will decide that you are okay…that you are good…that you are worthy and beautiful and exquisite and brilliant…or whether you will succumb to what others around you have told you, in words or silently, about who you are that is in any way negative or less than the sparkling stunning-ness that you are. And the battle is won when you decide that nobody has the right to make you feel bad about yourself. And that you still have the right to feel bad if you need to…you can bless all of your feelings and embrace them all and trust that they have a purpose and a meaning and a value. But you can just decide that you are damn-well worth every beauty in this life. That you are not what anyone who has thought less of you has said you are, or insinuated you are, or tried to show you that you are.
You can grab the psychic glass-cleaner (self-love and self-empowerment) and wipe clean the mirror inside of you…so you can finally see yourself, for yourself. If you aren’t sure go to the ocean and ask her how you are looking today. Ask the stars if they think you have anything beautiful to say. Ask your loving pet or that one friend who is always your cheerleader and celebrator (through the good and the bad…with honesty and integrity.) Ask your freckles, ask the flowers in your garden. Ask your paintbrush, your pen, your hands. Then shut out the leaky places where the drafts are getting in, and bask in your warmth. And then, sweet firefly friend of mine, you will light the world up, even more and ever more, with your glow…
Love, Jennifer
