Struggling to Find Meaning, a Full Moon in the Dark Level of Darkness
This happens a lot to me. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. Its certainly not easy to do be doing that on the regular. Accordioning (I have a hard time typing according without typing accordion, my dear friend had the same problem and decided to just go with it so I'm following suit) to the locations of all the planets when I was born, this is a thing. My Saturn is in Virgo and since it's my ninth house, apparently that means that I have had difficulties with the creation of meaning for myself. Ya think?! (not really an astrology buff but I do find it quite fascinating from time to time)
Ya, so…I question my reality and what it all means and why on the regular. Like…I have these cycles where it is daily and then for maybe a month or two, I'll be all right and feel a sense of purpose and fulfillment in what I'm doing, almost regardless of what it is. And then for another month, none of it makes sense. None of it seems to matter. All of my efforts are fruitless. I am plowing sand with nothing to show but blisters on my hands. (not quite a direct quote from my song, The Dust Never Settles, but close enough).
I feel this way..a lot. A lot. I'm not talking in a suicidal way. I'm honestly pretty happy in my life. I have a wonderful home where I live with amazing people who get me, who see me, that I can be 100% real around in every single moment. I have a good job. I do things that I love. I use my body. I learn new shit. I have goals that I am continually working towards and achieving. I have friends outside my home. I have music and art. Bla bla bla. I do a bunch of meaningful shit with my life.
But sometimes some shit comes up and I question why the fuck I do any of it. I get sad and antsy and bored when I'm doing nothing for too long. I have an insatiable desire to keep learning more. To keep getting better. To keep doing. To keep meeting new people. To keep writing. To keep writing songs. To keep moving my body. But I still question the meaning of all of it. To the point sometimes where I actually cant find meaning in any of it. Even to keep going simply because I enjoy something. Cos my head is like "what is enjoying something really?" Do I enjoy it because it feels good? Is it fulfilling? It's fun? It never lasts. Which is really the beauty in everything…it never stays the same.
I get antsy and I come up with new tattoo ideas to help me process my shit. To remind me. To let it go. To remember to love. To remember that I'm actually a creative mastermind. That I'm a leader (and I’m learning to own that as uncomfortable as it is). To be prettier.
I get antsy and I go for a walk and I'm reminded at how lovely the world around me is. Regardless if I'm walking in a park, on the beach, through a neighborhood or city streets. Every step shows me some new thing. A new perspective. A new flower. A new branch. A new turn. A new person.
I get antsy and I write. I write songs, poetry, journal entries, blogs, words to go along with an instagram post.
I get antsy and I smoke or eat cookies or drink tea.
I get antsy and I dance with the music really fucking loud.
I get antsy and I cry.
And then I feel better. I'm not so antsy or sad. And I feel fresh. For a little while at least..
I noticed this thing my brain did this morning and also the morning after a day of profound depression. I have been meditating at least thirty minutes a day (usually in the morning), almost every single day for a year and a half. It's amazing really. Its not what you think. At least, its not what I thought. It does things for me well beyond just giving myself time to be still and be totally okay with it. It helped significantly with my anxiety. So this morning and the other morning, I noticed this very subtle thing that my brain did. I woke up feeling happy, excited to be alive, loving the sun shining into my room and making it hot, just..happy. And then this other part of my brain went, "uhm…remember..you're pissed right now that you're not traveling. You're upset about…this and that. You don’t get to be happy right now." I didn’t say all those words to myself but that is what my brain did. This LITERALLY happened within seconds of being awake and conscious. WITHIN SECONDS. And my outer brain (inner brain?)(? I don’t even know what to refer to it as…greater consciousness?) saw all that and noticed it. And in that moment, I realized that I had a choice in how my morning was going to go and my outlook on the day. I saw that I actually was joyous immediately upon waking and my brain was like "hold it right there bitch!" I didn’t do much with this information other than have an awareness of it. I also marveled once again at the amazing benefits of meditation. Like…fucking seriously! This shit is SO SUBTLE but HUGE!!!
(I went on a strange tangent there but I think it was a good one so it's going to stay.)
This feeling that none of it matters. Like, I really could end it all and nothing I've ever done would actually mean anything. I know some of you would be sad but, then you'd eventually die and it wouldn’t mean shit. (I mean…do you cry over your friend’s friend’s deaths when you didn’t know them and everyone is dead and you have no idea what they did with their lives?)
The thing that gets me the deepest into this place (cos I rarely go that far with it) is when I feel like I cant trust my gut, that my intuition is actually garbage and all the things that I just know, or feel, or understand or whatever without there ever being words for them, all these things, aren't actually true. That I am flat out wrong. Wrong about all of it. Every single bit. That I am a god damned fool to believe in my guts and to trust in the things I am "told". I talked to my mom and one of my closest and oldest friends about this and they both said that they trust my intuition. My friend said that she'd known me to basically be right about everything (not in an intellectual way but an “in my guts” sort of way.) This all helped. But I've had some time where I couldn’t even find that. I can do a deep check in with my heart. We chat you know. I tell it what I'm afraid of, what's bothering me and then I shut up and I listen. It doesn’t put a blanket on my fears, it tells me the truth. But when I've told it my difficulty with finding meaning this week (let’s be honest, it’s been at least a month..), it had no response. My gut had no response to that??!? It felt like a black pit of nothing. Not despair or sadness or even emptiness. It was just..nothing.
This was taken during one of the darkest winters of my life, in the marina bathroom, while I was living on a sailboat. it was cold. My friend Bryce kept me alive without even trying.
So that’s cool..Whatever. I'm fine. My life has absolutely no meaning after years of thinking and believing and really working at building trust in my guts and intuition annnnnnnnd none of it is true. Its all..nothing.
This is getting dark..
Today, I decided to walk to work It's two and a half miles and it's really quite a lovely walk. I normally listen to a personal development podcast of some variety but today I decided to not listen to anything. To do a walking meditation. My head is wandering all over the place as it does and I just let it fly. And without me even trying to go there, I felt a certain warmth. Warmth is the best word but it wasn’t like getting a hug or taking a shower. It wasn’t a temperature but it was a feeling. The kind of feeling I get when I'm "told" something. And in one instant, I easily and powerfully remembered every single time I intuited something and was right. The times I listened and the times I didn’t. And how everything worked out. How all of those moments deepened my relationship with my intuition. How every single time I have felt and understood and been "told" the things that I have experienced, I recognized that not only am I connected to a greater power but that I am part of that greater power. And I fucking know some shit!
So I guess this leaves me with a level of peace that I didn’t have when I woke up this morning. That even if I struggle to find meaning in the work that I do, at the very least, I know that I am always tapped into the main vein. But sometimes I need a fucking reminder of that.
Is that less dark enough? Perhaps a full moon in the dark sort of less dark.
Here is a picture of me, happy as hell, holding our kittens for a little relief from all the emotional darkness.