Hot Pink Journal Entry #2 (Pondering, not to be confused with pandering)
Pondering the notion of my own inward reparations, every day I spent alone since my marriage ended proved to be a mysterious series of walks, taking photos, analyzing these photos and trusting it must all have its purpose because to consider the alternative? It is unthinkable. I cannot dwell in a place if despair–I know too much about the power of hope.
I hoped in myself (believed) and put great faith in all that I am, all I have seen, felt, experienced and endured. I remember all the pain and sadness, but as I mentioned in my previous entry (not shown), I feel it has all burned away and I have now become something else, a different person entirely, no longer standing at the helm of a vessel, so chalk-full of torment, loneliness, sadness and grief. I feel a renewal of something close to innocence but in my wildest imaginings, I am well aware of the fact that I am never going to be innocent.
So maybe that's not the exact word I need here. Let me describe what I feel; I remember walking down the aisle when I was 23, not knowing I have a proliferation of spiritual gifts whereby I am able to tap into the spirit realm, but on my wedding day, as my mother walked me down the aisle (because my father was dead) I heard my father screaming at me to stop. To turn back. It was not right. I heard this as clear as a bell, but I also had a six month old son, adored by his father, I had a Christian mother to appease, I had two sisters who had already moved on in their own lives and as they stood at the front of the courthouse, which was a stunning Victorian-era building and it had maintained all its charms, I saw my sisters at the front (bridesmaids) and I felt everyone's sense of hope that day. I sensed their hope in me and my new family, to help bring us to some new plateau whereby we could (hopefully) forget our sorrows for a while. I didn't want to let anyone down, without considering the prospect of giving myself a proper vote. I was caught up in all these currents and tangled in every reed.
I tallied the numbers and a rough estimate suggested I've gone on approximately 2000 walks since my marriage ended, since my family fractured, since I experienced what I can only describe as a shattered heart. Numerous events and circumstances called all that I love into question. Nevertheless, it is in those times when I did not know what the hell I was doing that an inner guidance showed me the way out of my grief, my personal misery and I'll be the first to admit how miserable I truly was. I am not surprised that people kept their distance from me, as they do not have any experience with this new version of me. My sharpness has cut, cut, cut so many times. But as all that is within me softens and becomes pliable in some brand new way, I look back and marvel at the depth of this complicated journey. No stone was left unturned. Everything that hurt, not longer hurts. What I wanted to be, before I was raped (at the age of 18), before I reacted in self-destructive ways, before I signed my life over to someone else, revolved around one wish. It was to live a life that may have been pleasing to the vacant notion I have of my father, wanting to be a good daughter who honours whatever his dreams for me may have been. I can only imagine.
But the animal of teenage lust bit down hard, with no protector in sight, and held me to the ground until my life-force nearly ran out and when I could no longer find the strength to dream, I reverted inside my shell and made decisions in there that paled in comparison to the choices I would make now.
Now? I feel like I can think, I can act, and I can choose, for my own betterment based on a just sense of self-worth, and self-love, and self-understanding.
Every moment that brought me to today represents a perfect measure of spice–salt and pepper (for example) (metaphorically speaking) to build and sustain all the components needed to make me a version of my father's daughter in which I can be proud of and pleased with. There is not a human being on Earth who can take that away from me, regardless of any circumstance that lies in the wake of the Phoenix within me and it feels pretty damned good.
I read a good quote yesterday. It was this: you can't burn a woman made of fire.
I read another good quote yesterday. It was this: WITCH is just another word for a woman who won't betray herself.
They are small purple surprises
in the river's white racket
and after you've seen them
a number of times
in water-places
where their silence seems related to river-thunder
you think of them as 'noisy flowers'
Years ago
it may have been
that lovers came this way
stopped in the outdoor hotel
to watch the water floorshow
and lying prone together
where the purged green
boils to a white heart
and the shore trembles
like a stone song
with bodies touching
flowers were their conversation
and love the sound of a colour
that lasts two weeks in August
and then dies
except for the three or four
I pressed in a letter
and sent whispering to you
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