I live my life through the words I write
Grow comfortable in uncertainty
where change infiltrates the air
the future holds infinite possibilities
and you’re standing in the middle.
You don’t need to have it all figured out.
You don’t always need to be moving towards something.
Stillness and silence are beautiful
and necessary.
Get to know them,
so you can understand
you don’t have to be afraid of them.
Narratives cycling over and over in my head
like records on repeat
continue playing in the background
despite attempts to press stop,
pull the power cord from the wall,
destroy the battery.
The songs keep playing.
My attempts to play a new song, or songs,
of a different genre
are acknowledged, briefly,
but cast aside in preference of the old and familiar.
Why do I do this? How?
I devote my being to this cause,
to make it through one, two, even four songs at a time,
slowly rewiring,
building comfort with new genres,
new artists.
It will take a long time
to sever and rebuild,
but I can see a light shining
on the new music, waiting to be wired into me,
and it’s beautiful.
Time and time again
I’m knocked down to my knees
by an event of immense magnitude
because all the smaller signs along the way,
I’ve missed.
Tragedy, sickness, death,
these are what it takes for me to stop,
re-evaluate my priorities,
make space to enjoy this gift of a life
I’ve been blessed to receive.
Maybe this time will be different.
Maybe this time I will carry forward
the gratitude, the presence,
the love I have found again.
I need this time to be different,
and will make it so.
The voice in my head
barely recognizable as my own
reminds me of my flaws,
paints my shortcomings,
whispering, “you can’t do this.”
Today I refuse to listen,
turn the volume down to a 1.
Forging ahead with ambitious purpose,
the only voice I hear today asks only one question:
“what’s next?”
This, then that, then that.
If I commit to believing in myself
my inner voice will follow suit.
Please, oh please,
stop being so hard on yourself
day after day.
Who sets the bars, the standards
you race to meet?
The person who sets them
maintains the power to change them.
Is it you?
When you start shifting your attention
to water the flowers you want to bloom,
things change
within you, and around you.
Shifts bring change.
They allow us to see, envision,
a world different from what we lived before.
Change can feel uncomfortable
and in discomfort
we seek to find comfort,
maybe back in the place we came from.
Running backwards is not the answer
we need,
or actually want.
What if
the new world you see before you
is where you’re meant to be?
Listen,
as it releases a deep exhale,
rustling a gentle breeze across your skin,
extending its arms to welcome you
here.
This world, this new world,
has been waiting for you.
There’s no point in trying to gain control
over anything.
Once you have it, it disappears,
or morphs,
or ropes you into submission
with the tables turned.
Start each day clean, fresh.
What you knew yesterday,
what you thought you had all figured out,
no longer exists.
And then, just like that,
I don’t want to think of you.
The past is the past.
Resuming a sense of normalcy
from before, before the world changed.
But, isn’t the world always changing
and we just hardly notice?
The familiar offers comfort and routine
back into the voids structure has vacated.
Remember when this was all we knew
and expected?
My perspective has changed
and maybe, so have I in this process.
I feel little familiarity, scarce comfort;
unease and inquisition sit with me instead,
surrounded by those basking in normalcy’s return.
Must it all return to how it was before?
It’s so easy to think
if in one situation,
any one situation,
I had said one different sentence,
my life would be completely different.
Dawning Words 