I am a passionate person. Although, typically, I do not pour my soul and spirit into relationships. I hold back, I play games and I don’t get too involved. I hold friends, family and lovers at a comfortable distance. When these relationships become too intimate, I cut ties for a few months and back away. Until I either forget the person or I rekindle the relationship only to allow it to get to that point again and repeat the cycle. I don’t allow myself to feel relationships too deeply because when I do, it hurts. Dear God it hurts. I feel everything when I care. Every slight, every comment, every glance blinds me with intensity. I cannot continue the light and even humor with which I handle the rest of my day. I experience a mountain of emotions. One second I am hanging my prayer flags on the joyous summit of Everest the next I am gasping for breath with altitude sickness in the lowest valley of despair. It’s both horrifying and beautiful.
I believe that in life the times that are most difficult, most violent and devastating to the soul are the same times in which we grow the most. We come to know ourselves intimately and without guise or premise. We touch the very soil of our souls and till the earth from which our self grows. It is painful and physically exhausting because we are shaking the ground from which our roots, our branches, our memories and our very reality has grown. The truths that we have thought to be constant or unyielding can be completely shattered in a single afternoon. The challenges we thought were difficult in days gone by seem like speed bumps compared to the monstrous hurdles we must overcome in our current life. It is like the small failures and disappointments a child must experience in order to face the larger hurts that come in later life. Had I not learned the pain of falling, I would never have been able to run.
The exuberant joys of personal satisfaction, love returned and goals attained bring me to the momentous pinnacle of bliss. It is supreme and it is glorious. There is no true joy like the emotion coursing from my very roots in this freshly tilled garden to the highest leaves reaching up to the sun. This moment however is transitory it is not stable or lasting, the very joie-de-vivre that exhilarates and elates me runs through the same veins that will crush my spirit with messages of defeat or sadness. I feel everything and in this way I feel as though I am growing.
It is quick and brutal which is why there are growing pains. Not only metaphorically but in the forms of heart-ache, hunger for affection and understanding, sleep deprivation caused by worry or fear and the very tears that burn your eyes as you try to grasp all the changes that are taking place in the core of your being. But from this challenge comes new life. I begin see others for who they really are both to me and the world. I am no longer worried about what my true wants and needs are because I’m starting to understand myself more completely. I have learned what strengthens my being and what takes away from my joy. What nutrients, experiences and people bring out the best in me and which of those try to uproot my happiness. There are people who will shake you to the core, those that will shatter your dreams and tear away your beliefs. They may be your dearest friends because they are pruning you. They are making you better, more agile, streamlined and ready to take on new challenges. There may also be those people who eat at your insecurities and attempt to poison your life source. This self-renewal awakens my deeper instincts to defend and protect both myself and the life that I am carving out. Though these people may hurt or scar me emotionally, they have taught me something more. They have shown me what my weaknesses are. They have given me the gift of seeing where I am flawed and most easily seduced. This is an expensive gift for which I have certainly paid dearly. It is also invaluable because I will be aware and prepared to meet people like this again and I will not be so easily deceived in the future. I will remember my scars and remember old hurts but I will know how to avoid these traps.
I may not know myself completely but I will know more than I have in the past. Our self-knowledge is what prepares us to go on living and for the next transition in our lives where we will meet darker days and brighter magnificence. Letting people and emotions in is one of the most intimidating and terrifying experiences I have known. But I will do it, I will continue to let my heart bleed and feel the sickness that is love. I will soar to the top of the mountain and I will relish in the plummet back to the valley because in those moments when I have destroyed all that I have known before, I have seen a new light and a new future that is not tainted by today or the past. The next day is uninhibited and wild and in that day I will be too. Because I have cried tears for today. I have known the hurt that comes of truly loving. And I would rather live each day climbing, than to reach the plateau and never seek the mountaintop.
