No heroes, no villains, only survivors.

Baby, I promise I didn't come crawling back to you because all the things I usually would have filled my time with have been taken away from me.  Baby, I promise this time I'll stay. Baby, you believe me, right?

I'm trying to ignore that my last post is still the thing I am struggling through aka "What does it mean to live creatively?"  Maybe I don't write anymore because it forces me to confront how little I've actually accomplished and/or how little I have to say?  Naaaaah.  That can't be it. Maybe if I focus my writing?  On what though?  Does it matter?  Is writing even part of my version of "living creatively?"

What story do I have to tell?  What experiences can I share?  What's relatable?  Is trying to work through my decade long writer's block just another distraction from dealing with what is front of me? Is trying to organize and make my creativity productive actually stifling it?  Maybe.  Maybe the goal is just getting through this.

Yeah, yeah. I get it. Bad things are happening.  Bad things are happening, and I care a lot about those bad things.  But, being oversaturated with grief, feels a lot like not caring at all.

I stopped to stare at my phone for like five minutes just now and just scrolled through more of the same: Covid19, Covid19, Covid19, funny animal video.  Whenever things get too heavy, I fidget with my phone.

It feels surreal to know that huge swathes of humanity are being extinguished, and we still have all the funny dog videos at our disposal. It's surreal to drive on the freeway and see marquees telling me to wash my hands and stay away from people, alongside Disneyland ads.  Is this how the world ends?  Just feeling out of place and dissatisfied?

I checked my phone again and watched an ad about a blanket.  It was better than sitting with those feelings, I guess.

This morning, I did half a yoga class before my connection was so spotty that I gave up.  An hour later, I joined up with another yoga group--not fitness yoga, but spiritual yoga--and chanted and meditated as a group.  Instead of feeling connected to either experience, I felt like a fraud, a spiritual tourist.  Sometimes saffron is just orangey-red.  Sometimes the machine has to chose who to save, before the wave hits.  Sometimes you  need to make it procedural and matter of fact, so that when the choice is in front of you, the part of you that is part of the machine, makes THAT choice.

Oh wow, that's still bothering me. So it goes and goes and goes.

I check emails, I check emails, I check emails.  I watch hundreds of Youtube videos. I add a inspirational quote to my bullet journal.  I work on my handstands.  I imagine how it would look like if I snapped my wrists.  I move through some asanas. I vow to be better.  I vow to be better.  Maybe I'll get tired on my own bullshit. My hands are flakey from all the alcohol spray.

Hey, I'm sorry.  I'll try to be better. Hey, I'm already feeling better.

Hot Yoga

Maybe if I  keep posting something like a sentence at time, I'll get back into the swing of things.

Hot yoga is like redemption.  It's like, "Yeah, I've been shitty at my home practice, but now this impossibly thin and flexible woman is enthusiastically telling me find my edge and go past it, and god I think my muscles are tearing, is that sweat or are they tears?"

Forget all that I said, maybe distraction works best.

I was planning on writing something introspective and maybe contemplating whether or not I was having a psychotic break from reality, but then I remembered that life has always been weird and terrible and amazing and exciting.

For example one friend is interviewing for a television show.
And another had a lot of money mysteriously deposited into her account.

Oh, and I did go ghost hunting in an abandoned medical facility, but let the people I was with go first and they were chased out by a swarm of bees.  After that, I decided it was a good time to pick up my car from the shop. 

Haunted

I stumbled upon the realization while ghost hunting, wandering around abandoned hospitals--I feel haunted.  Not in that moment, but in my daily life.

I feel like so much of my most basic personality, the bits of me that make me feel most like myself, hinge on confidence.  The confidence that I am being myself as hard as a I can and that no matter what happens I will manage. 

I mean, I still feel like myself, but I also feel like I'm always watching myself too--always peeking around the next corner trying to see the blurry faces of strangers just before they're in my line of sight.  It's a weird feeling.  It's not the feeling of loneliness which is this weird gnawing grey thing, vague and insubstantial thing that could be easily distracted and mitigated.  This is something very specific, a noticeable lack.  Like there's this hole in the world and like a hole everything rushes to fill it, but it still drains away.  

I have always been very fortunate.  It's cliche to say this, but it's probably the most accurate word, but I've been blessed.  I've always managed somehow and I've managed to become kind.  I've met wonderful people and continue to go on wonderful adventures.  I have learned to appreciate kindness and the difficulty of being kind.  I have seen my goals and taken steps towards them--for me there are no more "what-ifs."  It hasn't been easy and I won't lie, there have been very dark moments.  But that's what they were--moments.  There was no disconnect with myself; the person I was awake was the person I was asleep.

But now, my dreams are so angry.  And I have differently dark moments.  They're dark the way lava is dark.  But also bright and violent and burning.

What do I do with this?  Is this something I can bring to a priest or witch or whatever?  I feel like I can't talk to my friends, how do you explain that you're being haunted by yourself?  I feel whole, I mean if I'm not myself, who else can I be?  But now it feels like there's someone else here with me too.