A Need to Be Held

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Atlas wasn't forced to hold up the world.
He was convinced that if he didn't,
the world would fall.

Though some of us were trained to carry the sadness and pain of others, the fiber of the one heart we were given is strong and light enough by itself to bring us to the wind that is whispering, Let down, let go, the world will carry you.

This is probably not the day to be doing this one, or perhaps it is entirely the right day.

Today I woke up feeling at best fragile. There's no rhyme or reason to it. It's no one's 'fault' I just woke up feeling this way. Several hours later, after my oversensitive 'overreaction' to a couple of things said and done, I've ended up feeling very down... just not good enough.

I'll shake it by retreating into 'doing' I expect, because for all the wisdom in the core reading today, I can't help but feeling that 'hold me' translates to the need to be coddled. I know, intellectually, that it doesn't... but after years of emotional abuse - and I can't name it as anything else now that I've started examining it - where basically I was told by him that being an emotional being was a bad thing (it's more complicated than that, but that's kind of it in a nutshell), it's hard to shake that belief... even when I'm in such a blessed place now that if I could ask, I know it would happen...

I can clearly remember the moment that negative belief was burned into the heart of me as a lasting wound. I was terribly terribly sad and afraid, and lying beside this person who had promised to nurture and protect me, to care for me, I reached out, wanting to be held... needing to be. His arms came around me, but with the absence of feeling, habit rather than connection. I said, "I can't deal with this." I didn't want him to carry the burden of my sadness and pain, I didn't want anything other than to be held, properly, and maybe after I'd calmed down a little we could have talked it through. Instead he answered, "You're going to have to." and let go, then turned over to lie with his back to me.

Some time after that moment, hindsight tells me, was when I stopped asking to be held, and the negative spiral of dealing in a totally different way became well and truly ingrained.

I need to dare that the strength of love I now share will be my 'sander' that can take away the stain by sanding it away.

I feel sad today. Please hold me.

Greed is Good?

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

The greedy one gathered all the cherries,
while the simple one tasted
all the cherries in one.

The truth is that one experience taken to heart will satisfy our hunger to be loved by everyone.

This one is hard.

I'm sitting here staring at a blank page, and trying to shuffle though the jumble of thoughts and emotions and make some kind of sense of them all.

Yes, I want to be a good wife, a good friend, good teacher, a good writer, compassionate, kind and loving... I want to be recognised for those things and for who I am... So yes, often I seek attention - and not always in the best of ways, I'll admit, and I can be a read child about it if I don't get the attention, or get my 'own way.' But it's kind of backward from all of this, in a way... because all of the many things I'm seeking, the many experiences I'm pursuing, have at their core the 'single cherry;' the one thing that I truly need, truly want: To be with, in every sense of the the word (physically, emotionally, etc) with the woman I love. The rest doesn't matter.

So I try to be a good teacher, because that might help to get me here faster. A good wife and friend to be appreciated, compassionate and loving because really, that's who I am at the core, when all the pressures and everything are stripped away and I'm not weighed down by the struggle to simply be. The writing is a selfish thing - a thing for which I seek approval... not needed, but wanted, (and often lacking). If people notice me, particularly as a teacher, perhaps, just perhaps this time I'll be able to move here, to live with Mir and work here - and be together...

So if it's greedy to want to be with the one you love; to want to share love with them, know they approve of you, validate you as a person, then yes... I'm greedy.

I'm gladly greedy.