I was woken up at 7am by the band upstairs playing. Luckily they’re two floors up and my ear plugs did the trick, mostly. I got up and went for a run, hoping to clear out some more and it seems that it only brought up more. As I peel away the layers, to use that cheesy cliche, like an onion, there is more and more. I came back to the piano and went outside to eat and sit in the hot tub. An hour in the hot tub peeled more and more away… One of my biggest problems in life has been feeling able to express myself to release the things that bother me, make me angry, sad, whatever… I’ve always felt that whenever I do that, it makes things worse as it feels like it gets pushed back and then I re-absorb it and then it builds inside and eventually, like a pressure cooker, the steam has to go somewhere… That’s when my ugliness comes out, my stupid, egoic humanness. That’s not an excuse by any means; in fact, it makes it worse because instead of just expressing myself, I put it upon myself to release it internally and it’s never worked and it never will. It’s my own damn issue. I know that. It is me that creates the barrier and imagines a problem before it even exists. So, like all good self-fulfilling prophecies, a problem sometimes arises. I need to learn to just express what I am feeling, but sometimes I don’t know what exactly it is… Just sensations that have no connection to anything, at least right then. I process slowly and as I slowly sort through things, clarity slowly shows itself through the fog of my slowness. So, sometimes I talk in stream of thoughts and that usually drives everyone crazy. People look at me like I am crackers asking me what the hell am I talking about?! It’s like how I write. I jump around from one thought to another. They may not seem to fit, but somewhere within me, they do. That’s how I work. I sit here twisting within not wanting to write. I know how I would sometimes react when confronted with someone telling me what they think and feel about something. That’s the other ironic angle… I do the same fucking thing… Someone will tell me what they are feeling and immediately, I will try to rebut it or defend it or explain it or whatever… There have been times when I have been able to just listen and that works so much better… Just listen… Why is that so hard? Why do I internalize so much? I know part is that it mirrors my own shit. And believe me. I have a lot of shit. I really am a fucked up individual, with moments of lucidity and light. I see myself as this divine, bright, light of a being, shrouded in this scared, scarred, impetuous, stupid, ego-driven humanness. I keep trying to push that humanness aside, to just be that being because that being sees the beauty and joy and love and expresses it and shares it so effortlessly. Beneath this self-contempt is so much more; anger, hurt, frustration and even betrayal. I feel like no matter what I do I can’t show enough love – in so many places in my world. I feel like I have to try to force love, when it feels so often love only want to run away from me. There are so many emotions going through my humanness. I don’t know how to heal. How to get back to the whole person I used to be. I feel alone, with moments of that magic connecting and easing all of me. There is no one to talk with, to share with, to lean on, to look with. Except this computer screen… The thought of going on without that connection; spiritually and physically is numbing and sorrowfying (that’s my new word for today)… and within it all is this love that shines brighter than anything I can describe, this love that makes it all okay, that makes me want to go on, to not give up. That makes me believe in infinite possibility… Believe… Hope… Love…