My birthday is just around the corner. I will deal with that subject later, but its imminent arrival always makes me reflect on the year just past. And this year, what comes to mind, “what the fuck was that all about?” I mean, I know. I always do. But if there was ever a year that required super human strength from me, it was this one. On all the levels.
Let’s just say it was a year of bottoms. Some of them light and somewhat feathery and others full of gravel upon bedrock. Neither particularly fun, but some harder to bounce back from.
I guess what strikes me as different this year is the willingness I had just to turn myself over to the process. I knew I was being changed, led, altered and rearranged. Never before, except maybe the first year of sobriety, did I seem to recognize the daily growth while it was happening. I mean, this last year, I fucking felt it. When I backslid, when I didn’t. The whole time, I was growing and changing I had this level of awareness that even as things completely imploded or fell apart, I was not only ok, but that these grenades, land mines and shrapnel were required for my healing and evolution.
I mean I always can see it AFTER the fact, but this last year I felt it all the while. Even as things fell apart, I had a level of comfort, of peace, that things would be ok, they actually were ok. My job was just to keep allowing the shit to blow up, fall apart, implode, whatever. And just keep recreating myself in this newer, latest version.
As you can imagine, the phoenix is pretty symbolic for me. It occurred to me that the phoenix always rising from its own ashes and always ending with a fiery demise, has to know this is happening while it is happening. It just keeps happening! Over and over and over again. So the phoenix, or in my case me, has to have some level of awareness about what is going on!
And I can say this last year I did. Even as I walked back into the blades of a shitty relationship. Even as I left that shitty relationship one more time. Even as I watched my children struggle. My parents struggle. Work to be hard and never ending. I knew the entire time that even as I was getting tired as a phoenix, I would always rise, no matter what.
Even as I left more people behind in my relational life, I drew closer to God and myself. It was as if I had to allow those persons to leave my life in order to close a gap that existed in my life, my spiritual being and emotional self. I just had to keep going and those people who were not good for me, or holding me back...they just had to go. And so they did.
It wasn’t that the changes weren’t painful. They were. It was just that I am caught in the perpetual cycle of change, all of us are. None of us remains static without a great deal of effort and pain. The growth is similarly painful but it is nevertheless less painful than a refusal to expand more into yourself.
There is always a rising, sometimes just with fire. Sometimes with an attendant crash. Sometimes with pain and loss and fear and sadness. But regardless of which was that goes, there is always a rising to be had.
And as this year draws to a close, I am better. I am greater than I was at this time last year because I have risen through a great deal. And I not only survived but found ways to thrive in spite of the hardship, pain and the loss. And I think part of why I feel like all the bullshit of the last year was totally worth it is because I have accepted my phoenix like nature. I have just agreed to the process of growth, ascent, death and rebirth. It is the way life happens if you are paying attention. And I seem to be developing a belief that this just might be the cycle of everything even after what we call the final death comes for us. Maybe not, but who really fucking knows? Not me, I just know that I have developed and grown a great trust in the whole process. And I didn’t do it intentionally, it just happened. And I allowed it to happen and did my best to embrace it all and grow and change and alter my life and the way I lived it.
So today I feel like I am in the rising part. Lately I have just felt so good. Like I am soaring upwards and untethered from so much that used to shackle me. I’m content. I am even happy. This life I have is the best it has ever been even if there are painful things, relationships that are in dire need of reparation and care. Even though I age and I don’t like it. Even though it isn’t all worked out and there is still a great deal of uncertainty. I love this life of mine. I love me. I love you, well most of you. If you are still in my life and I haven’t jettisoned you, then I love you.
And I realize that I must, I must continue. And I have gratitude for all that is and all that was and all that isn’t and all that might be. It is all a grand adventure. And I am grateful to be a Phoenix in this life. It turns out, it is great skillset to have to be able to reinvent yourself, your own destruction the seeds you need to grow and change and evolve. It is also a great way to look at your life. It is all just a process of learning and unlearning and suffering and losing and gaining. And if you pay close attention, you might just have a blast.
That is what this last year has been for me, a grand adventure. A great deal of fun, pocked with moments of intense sadness, loneliness, loss and pain. But I have learned how to let those fiery embers of hardship burn away the parts of me that are no longer functioning, are lame, are malignant, are holding me back. I am rising...and I am here to tell you the view is amazing! Totally worth all the charing and searing.
“Always rising from the ashes...mending all her gashes...”
Thanks Taylor. One more time, yep. I feel ya!
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