Monday, October 18, 2010

there will always be passions.

I'm a passionate person. More often than not, I am feeding one of my passions, as they're often hungry. Painting. Writing. The outdoors. Running. Connecting with someone. Nurturing my dog. Eating an entire quart of ice cream. Most of these passions fulfill me somehow and prove to be inherently good. However, I have caught myself, on more than ten occasions, feeling great zest and direction towards something, when maybe I should have laid down and taken a nap. Examples of these instances include shopping trips that should have been avoided, bones that did not need to be picked and crusades in the name of the betterment of all when really they were just egotistical power trips to have my voice be heard. I am human and can laugh off most of my manic mishaps.

But lately, just lately, I'm wondering where my passion to change the dynamic of my family and my mother fits in to all this. The poetry I posted a few weeks back was written on the heels of therapy sessions that I've begun to partake in. This therapy has been unlike any other that I've experienced in the way that there's no pretense. I'm going to be gut honest here. And in thinking about the words I'm about to write my eyes are beginning to well up. It has dawned on me lately that I am alive. And I've never thought about it like this: there's gotta be a purpose to this mysterious thing we call life. And I don't want to waste one more day dragging around the heavy bags that I've settled for carrying. I want to be the best version of myself someday.

This therapy has begun to help me chip away at the junk that helps my serenity hide from me. And it hurts but its good.

It also provokes unresolved feelings of whackness from my childhood. So I wrote a poem. And then it dawned on me that in 26 years of existence, not much has changed since the days I described. And that pissed me off.

I want change for her. And us. And for everyone I love to chip away at their junk together so we can have joint serenity. That's a tall order. I'm well aware. But don't knock me for trying.

I think about the times my roommate from college would say to me, "You have a drinking problem. You also have so much potential. If you would stop drinking, you could reach it." My response was at first warm. She was right! What was I doing? But that warmth was quickly engulfed by cold and darkness. The fast life had much too strong of a hold on me then.

But not one week goes by where she doesn't cross my mind. She somehow reached the depths of my -soul- that were crying out for help to change. She spoke the truth to them. And one day her words reached me, along with the words of many others and words of my innermost self that brought me to the place I needed the most.

So, perhaps my passion and dramatic obsession with helping my family falls on ears that pretend to be deaf. But I know deep down they hear me. And I'll die trying to inspire change. Because I am so thankful for those who were unafraid to tell me that I had so much more to me than what I was settling for.

2 comments:

  1. I feel so similarly about my own family. I have decided that by being a good role model and the best version of myself I am helping to inspire change in them. It's interesting how minor things people say stay with us. I have so many words of wisdom that I keep with me and I am sure the people who originally said them have no idea they were so important to me.
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