Authoring Your Reality.
In the spiritual mindset we are programmed to believe what we think is our reality. So, our focus will naturally be on creating, manifesting, bringing forth our good! In deeper spirituality wisdom, we value reality and are driven by marking them ‘preferences’ (our current desires) while simultaneously surrendering them to the Universe. Poof! Magical things happen.
But what if that’s not important in this moment currently – the preferences? What if you know all that, but what you really prefer is not outside of you? What if your internal complaining is really important for you to listen to? This is spirituality too. It’s only written by your experience if you can accept IT ALL, even the ugly stuff.
Pain is pain, it really doesn’t matter how you experience it. It’s not more, nor less than another’s experience which might be totally different than yours. What has been happening recently is that I’ve been in so much agonizing mental, emotional, and physical pain, all I can hear is screaming at this point. I then feel burdened by my own negativity, believing that if I share my reality, people are going to cry, get depressed and why would I want to do that to another? I kept thinking, I just need an author! I need someone to hear my story neutrally as if they were writing about it. Then out of blue, I got called into the Chilkat Valley Newspaper by two people. The ‘therapy’ of just sharing my story, while Ceri took notes and Kyle listened on, was so moving I was questioned if this was ‘free of charge’.
For about a week, I was able to feel happier, refreshed and had an attitude of “I don’t give a fuck”. The sun is now setting at 9pm in April in Alaska, so that helped too. But soon, again, I find myself crashing into bed, feeling completely heartbroken of my temporary reality.
I’m about to share tidbits of it in hopes that you too find your own courage to author your trials and tribulations during this early 20’s decade. It might turn into sobbing empathy, but the witnessing of what you’ve gone through is the point. Let’s free ourselves. All I ask is don’t sugar coat it or spiritualize it. Just see it, so you can hug your warrior-self.
My current reality (April 28th 2021):
I sit in-between piles of dirty and clean clothes on the commercial carpeted floor of our temporary housing apartment in Haines, Alaska. It occupies the word ‘irony’. We now live in 500 sq ft with two wild children (6yrs & 2yrs old), with no attached outside space. I’m gifted tomato plants, pickling cucumbers, and growing our first avocado from a donator’s backyard in California (who gave us financial support during the landslide disaster while also shipping us fresh fruit – a delicacy here). I feel loved, happy, fruitful while also feeling everything else. I have no pots to transplant these growing miracles except making use of milk cartons, but I have 2 windows in the entire apartment, one in each bedroom with blinding light if only during sleep time. My plants thrive despite it all. “It’s not so bad”, I whisper to myself.
Pouting, inner temper tantrums give empathy to what my children must feel like – everyday no matter our living conditions. How terrible to feel this and not be able to do anything about it. All I wanted to do when I was little was grow up, so I could DO what I wanted to do. And here I am, with full permission but…. in stillness. Or stuck? Or still-stuck? Whatever it is, I can only ‘do’ so much. An invisible wall of Infinite Intelligence blocks my access through, as if all energy must align for the gates to open. I should just sprawl out on the floor screaming. But I’d give myself a headache, so I won’t.
I just want a balcony. Or perhaps just sit on my stoop. I just want to open a door and walk barefoot into the grass, in my underwear and shriek because the ground is wet and cold. I didn’t move to Alaska to live in urban quarters. This isn’t a complaint about where I am, but it is a complaint about where I am, FOR ME.
I want my brand new washing machine I just got a month prior to the landslide. Today I went to the bank to get $60 worth of quarters to do laundry, up the steep steps, cleaning the inside of the washing machine, removing other’s glued on fabric softener that hurts our skin. We’re lucky to have a community laundry center. I can hear my children screaming from the middle floor. I guess I won’t complain to others of their noises but instead write an apology note.
I get all giddy that folks are going to be selling flowers, trees and plants. We have no big box stores here (thank goodness) as we live remotely in a town of 2,000. I live here on purpose, but what breaks my heart is where do I hang my flower hanging basket? Where do I plant my fruit trees? I stab myself again in my heart. I cannot move forward and presence is overrated.
I want to be able to walk outside and wail. I moved here because of the saturation of senses. We’ve gotten so creative in trying to move forward, yet the supply is so grim it’s horrifying. There’s no movement, period. Stuck on an *island in picture paradise yet it seems those were only the advertisements.
I lost what seems like everything. Grief is astounding that way, beyond the loss of life, it’s the loss of our livelihood. We moved our entire life here over the course of four years. And last year was met with a 2020 monkey throwing kaka show. The grief, the emotional pain, the suffering, the guilt, the horror and PTSD is so real, it has a taste. Everyone one is suffering in some way, especially in this new decade but there is a little bit of solace because you know how I feel and I can know how you feel. And my hope in sharing this is that you too, lessen your burden by voicing your experience, not to get over it, but rather to FEEL what’s needed to be felt.
Let’s stop the spiritual reasoning, just for a moment, and listen as if you’re taking notes. And if no one said this to you yet, let me be the first.
“I’m so sorry.”
“So, truly sorry.”
Love,
Vanessa Wishstar
www.VanessaWishstar.com