Listening to our Lives
We have to learn to listen to ourselves, recognizing our stories must be told. I've moved through my life creating one tale after another in fact and fiction. I’ve held my stories close. Now I’m beginning to see I’m more than the sum of my legends? Tales have become an anecdote. I’ve discovered while expressing these tales, I’m not always conscious of the qualities of the balance I seek. I’ve learned life has changed. “The world is not always according to Dona” I still have a desire for a life that boggles my mind and a continual education of self. Seeking knowledge and discovery as I substantiate my internal hungry child. I am moving from the world of others while shifting memories to living my life within the immediate. Effervescence has become a daily exercise. Is this my fear or wisdom touching me by grace? Illusions of control are found as I wait, confronting feelings for affirmation.
I needed my stories as if they were a drug of choice. I wouldn’t stop my inquisitions until I had understanding... Whatever was occurring within each new chapter, I became the show, entertaining when possible. I took custody of whomever, when I didn’t have a perception of what to do, and this was my default performance. My evasive distracting activity found its understanding. I did it with great trepidation of thoughts, often over thinking which led to being paralyzed in my deliberations. If I couldn’t find an explanation, if something felt missing; my inner war began, looking for accounts to comfort, until they ceased. Never did I realize as I began story telling, there was healing occurring from my past psychological wounds.
My amusing manner wasn’t always welcomed. I now know I could have recognized a new truth. I had to accept that waiting existed while my process continued in its discomfort. I began learning in narrative there are no quick fixes in life. Life was my art form, with attitudes from my past changing. Each vivid response reflects back on my lack of thought in discomfort. I would get lost in chronicles, while my dance with thoughts flowed only in poetry. Caring about the legacy of my mother as well as her anger and blame. During her grieving, my childhood growth was left with a huge hole. Her narcissistic control promoted my continual looking for the buffer after my father’s loss in other men.
I wanted to have the charm of being a little girl who had attention surrounding her in my father’s business and from his customer’s. He idolized me, and that love carried me after he died in ever searching; to be my own little Shirley Temple, Pollyanna, even Marilyn Monroe; making sure I loved everyone, in order not to experience another loss at the expense of my own self love and ego. I often gave up integrity as I fell into my need. Never looking for a way to care for myself and accept myself. What seems to be offered now is my more positive containment to recognizing my gifts.
I didn’t realize how courageous I have been in entertaining my wild child. My losses had become my strength. It carries me through while I entertain the world, searching for esteem. I now understand how my dynamic personality has developed. What I have to do in evolving my choices is erased or work with the wounds still lodged inside deterring me from living in reality, while accepting each day. This may not be possible, a searching tenacity from my childhood. Life is messy and I am not always a good housekeeper. This metaphor for my history has taken me to other people reciting and repeating trials till I get the truth in the lesson; if there is one?
