Sapling to Tree (WIP)

Once while watching Shrek, Shrek said something profound, Ogres are like onions. They have many layers. Trees have many layers too, but we know them as rings and the rings of a tree tell us how long this tree has been around. The tree rings can tell a lot about the climate the tree has experienced.

For us, it is more invisible. Each year, say, by our birthday, we’ve added new growth to ourselves. Sometimes its a lot, sometimes it is a little. No one expects you to feel different when you hit milestones of 18 or 21. In the present moment, you probably don’t feel different from yesterday. That’s okay. The growth is not apparent until you look deeper.

As I write this I’m 23, I still have many years left in my life. But inside I’m still 19, a part of me retains the stress mental break down I had. I’m still 18, fool hardy with freedom getting to my head affecting my college work. I’m still 16, hurt by a mother who doesn’t give me love or support. I’m still 13, depressed and miserable from the verbal abuse. But right now I’m 23, in love, trying to pay back my debts, stressed to hell and back, but still moving forward.

Some seeds grow, like ideas spawning through different times of your life. So you grow “new skin” as you age. You retain the years before as you grow stronger and taller, growing new leaves. Those rings stay with you, telling the climate that has affected your growth. They tell over the sunny days, the warm days, the cold winter, and all those overcast days too. They tell of the moisture and how dry the year it was.

Despite the fact that the past is part of us and I often advise that one should not hold it close to their chest, the past at some point deserves and needs reflection. It sheds light upon the now, how we traveled such roads to arrive at our current destination without our journey of this life. The past is irrevocably a part of us, but we have to move on from it. We have to keep growing and growing, our focus on the now.

We can never forget the child that is a part of us. But we can grow beyond the problems that our 5 year old, 10 year old 16 year old and on and on had. They happened, psychological they affect us. The key factors in the new growth for us lie in recognizing such psychological occurrences and tackling the problem. I have often found many habits and quirks of my person is formed from the rings of the past the affect my psyche. Let me give examples…

I used to be afraid of black dogs. When I was younger than 7, I got knocked around by one and had objects stolen by a black dog. The way I tackled this was through exposure. I kept dealing with black dogs, many on leashes and well trained before the fear in my heart settled down and now I can pass by them and not be so terribly frightened.

I spent a long time depressed after a member of my family died. I wasn’t allowed to attend their funeral as my family did not deem it appropriate I miss school. I overcame this with getting closure, which in this case was visiting said family’s member grave.

I still struggle with focus, but I address this with eating better (I’m allergic to artificial flavoring and coloring) and meditation as well as brain games.

As a little girl, I endured verbal abuse from my family. I was called a whore, slut, a fuck up. Back then I didn’t understand it and it hurt.

If we don’t address the struggles we face, we never overcome them. We never put on new growth and remain stagnant and dying in a state of limbo. Each situation needs a different solution, no two solutions works alike. So the question in this lies in, what internal conflicts do you face? What psychological things have happened that affect you? These personal awareness and understanding of these factors help in growing from point a to point b.

Live Fearless

So in response to Boston which is an hour away from me and the people’s around with their reactions here is mine to it all…

I’m not scared, I’m not freaking out. Terror, bombings, it doesn’t make me scared. Why should it? If it makes me scared it means they already won, hence their name “terrorists.” They are there to inspire fear and well fear, it makes you stop living. Everyone seemed to be cowering and it shows how defeated they are.

You can’t stop death. You can take precautions, but how much are you willing to let every precaution you can take, interfere with your life? You are more likely to die of a car accident or probably a house fire than a bombing. Hell I think police violence is more likely to happen to you than a bombing. But are you going to really let fear of bombings and gunnings scare you from really living? People don’t seem to really think of how close to death they can come to dying from a car accident. I’ve had several friends and classmates already dead from cancer and car accidents. Hell, I’ve almost died already due to illness and a car accident.

The fact is, if it happens, it happens. It doesn’t mean live reckless or think you are immortal. Take precautions, always remind people you love them or whatever, and do your best to live, to simply live without regret. Regret will happen, but don’t let all those fears become your guardians that cage you into place.

Stay strong, stay fearless, and live life vivaciously.

Fear Rambles

I don’t run like hell when I am afraid. I’m used to weathering the storm. When shitty situations arise, I act calmly, except for the one time with my car accident.

But there will always be something we are afraid of. We can face it again and again, thinking we can “overcome” it in some fashion. Part biological response, part in our own minds. When a situation arises where you might die, we often try to push on the breaks and hope we stop before we fall off that cliff. We can risk our lives again and again, hoping to overcome that fear and for what purpose? To not be scared of dying? To not be scared of the unknown that death presents? Or instead is it the fear of being alive?

I cannot say I transcend fear, all I can say is, I embrace it when it happens. If its an issue that affects my life, I work with it. Courage to me, no matter how small it is, is the ability to stand and do while afraid. It took courage for me to drive after the accident. I got into a car accident earlier this year, someone drove into my car, but I’m not “afraid” per se. It’ become more of the cautionary and I am more of a defensive driver now more than ever.

The thing is, I think is impossible to completely eradicate fear. We always fear something. The point is, to not let it control your life.

For example the fear of dying, we could a) try to do crazy shit because we don’t want to die without having done it b) or try to ‘avoid’ such situations. I don’t want to die yet. I however, am not going to let the feelings of ‘death’ drive me crazy. I’m not going to stop getting into a car, or traveling by train, or airplane, or sledding, or ice skating, white water rafting…because I am scared of dying. I don’t let it control me.

It doesn’t mean go be stupid. I’m not stupid enough to walk around the forest at night because of coyotes and fisher cats and god knows what else. I try very hard to be a defensive driver, but my fear of another car accident is not going to stop me driving my car. The other day some old man as he was coming out of the gas station almost hit me. Damn old man, look where you going, but I can’t let that fear grasp me and control all my actions.

Fear isn’t meant to be comfortable. Fear is there as a response for a reason. It used to be us, the fight or flight response, an instinct deep within us even to this day. To me, it’s like the lesson of when you first touch something hot as a child, you understand this is hot, this burns, and it hurts and so you don’t do it again. You become cautious because you recognize the danger. This is where you ’embrace’ the fear. You become aware and cautious.

Pain, Fear, & Physical Activity

I love pain, I love fear, and I love physical activity. I love these three because they remind me of something, that I am alive. I remember my car accident, the one I nearly died in and it awoke something in me. When I regress to that time, the feelings of fear, but mostly of the will to live arose so strongly. There was no flash of my life before my eyes, there was the screaming in my head, “Not yet!”

Fear is something I struggle with, because I really do not “feel” it. Anytime a small amount of fear arises in me, it is only out of caution, like do not get to close to the edge of this rock ledge, because there is no railing. If I am up high, I look down, if there is a railing I lean against it and stare at it. Once in a while I get startled, but that can be hard to do, because I am normally very aware of my environment. I am usually the one that does the scaring. My friends tell me I get this expression that scares them, this creepy smile just gets on my face and my eyes just change when I’m about to do something to scare one of them. I used to scare my family a lot, it was fun playing the trickster on all of them.

As for pain, I love pain. It gets my endorphins running, adrenaline pumping through my veins and part of this is why I love tattoos and piercings. I honestly do not care when I am older and my skin is saggy, that my tattoos are not going to look like they once were. I am still going to make my back a canvas of art. As for the piercings I am modest since I do want to be a Nurse, there are none on my face, but I wish that people would judge not for what you do to your body but by your actions. Pain to me almost equals pleasure, but please, do think I am a BDSM person, I honestly do not fit into the crowd. I like some pain, but what they like is not my style. I got my own style. Of course I am in constant pain too, my knees has tendinitis in them that hurts almost every day. My lower back has a malformed bone so I have to twist then bend, or vice versa, I cannot twist and bend or I’ll be on the floor withering in pain. Pain reminds me I am growing older, that I am not younger. With each year, I do grow a little more wiser, as I understand what I did not before, but it is still not something I look forward to. It still reminds me that I am alive, whether the pain is of my choice or not. Here I am, alive, growing older day by day.

As for physical activity, it makes me feel more alive than fear or pain. Endorphins are running through me as I run, bike, hike, white water raft, etc. I love to dance and be in a rave. Physical activity, especially dancing, is meditation for me, like soup for the soul. There grows to be a quiet focus in me as I dance within the crowd, or mountain bike in the quarry, or quietly hiking and observing the world around me. There is a quality there that I sometimes lack to achieve when I am sitting by myself. I employ emptiness, attempting to be a void in my mind at times because my thoughts run a million miles, like a river overflowing its banks finding its way to another source. Maybe that is not the best analogy.

Yet all of it reminds me, here, now, this is my moment. In this moment I am not dead. The quote that keeps running through my head is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I’m not dead yet!” Actually I think I am going to go watch that, kick back and enjoy. I’ve been catching up some social time since moving back in with my parents, several states away from my boyfriend.