at home

First I must make a place for myself in myself to be at home at.
All follows from there.
The things that are most important to me are the things I hardly ever write or speak about. Afraid of getting ridiculed by people. No God in my poems, no destiny between the lines, it's all about feelings and images and fear. Some pretty things or thoughts, but not the big ones, not the ones that gave me hope, kept me going over the years. No lifelines in my poems.
It seems to me I should be able to speak about it if the inclination to do so arises. Not in a I will talk about it no matter what and you can't do anything about it way, but just not keeping quiet when I want to say the word God, or mention my destiny. Because yes, I have a destiny, I believe I have a destiny because that's what the universe's signs seem to indicate, seem to have been indicating all my life.
And before. Why not speak up? Only when I feel like it. In a poem or aloud. But not keep quiet, not keep myself invisible in order not to be ridiculed. I have been ridiculed in the past and I survived.
First I must make myself a safe place to be, for me. A soft place to fall. I need to be able to come back to myself when others, read: family, tear me down. I must not do their work for them and beat myself up for not being able to connect in a 'normal' way, like regular people do. My sister knows I am incapable of it, and that I'll be there when she asks.
First, I need to be me, for me. Be my own home.
From there, many things are possible.
First, forgive. Accept, allow, let go, trust, love. Make a home for me, inside me. It is no shame to make me the most important person for me, because no one else will. It's a starting point for.. well, everything. I must be my soft place to fall because there are already too many people who judge me and try to crush my spirit.
I must choose me. Be there for me. Unconditionally.
Others will benefit inevitably, but I need to do this for me first.

Whence

It's hard to write something authentic. It's hard to be authentic. It's hard to be authentic when others are around. It's even hard to be authentic, honest to myself. I avoid painful thoughts about my sister. I have been avoiding painful thoughts for years, maybe for decades, about my life, about what really happened. What seemed so normal then, becomes more horrible at the same rate that I am changing, seeing more clearly, becoming clearer about everything. Become clear about one thing and it spreads throughout. Thankfully clarity is contagious as well, not just ignorance. It takes much longer to gain clarity than to impose ignorance on yourself, blinders, but apparently that's the price we must pay. What has been destroyed or at least severely damaged in me in a few years, takes decades to undo and reshape, transcend, reprogramme.
I wrote a short story about a fire last week. Right after I wrote the previous post I heard some strange noises outside. It was 3am and when I looked out the window there was a shed on fire, with the flames roaring up, just a few backyards from mine. It scared me.
All the houses were dark, people were sleeping and then this roaring fire.. The next day I started writing a one page story about it and spent at least 15 hours on it, rewriting, rerewriting, rererewriting.
It helped me calm down, a lot. Even though there's been a group of arsonists roaming around this neighbourhood for the past months, the writing helped. Then I saw it was shit.
It started out alright, I took the writing advice to heart and wrote a first draft without editing every sentence. Write first, rewrite later. So the first draft was fresh. Then I revised it TO DEATH. With axes and hacksaws and lots of blunt objects. Then I wrapped a rusty chain around it, dumped it in a building site and poured concrete over it made from baby-bones and puppy teeth. Then I peed on it. And then it was dead.
So. Within days I wrote a cute little story about an experience, rewrote it to death, brought it back to life so I could kill it again and then squeezed the last drops of life and potential out of it til it was a bore to read. Something which had scared me to death became a boring recipe for a boring meal. Now that's what I call talent. Sometimes I write poems and they just come out and I leave them like that and they're just right, exactly as they should be. Not great, but true. Sometimes people say: you said what I feel! Thank you. Cos they're authentic. They come from within and I don't get to dick with them. Most poems get either rewritten to death or aren't good enough to bother with any of that.
It's the impatience, the impatience that can't be killed. I have to be patient with my impatience. Which I cannot. I am trying, I am. Letting go, realising it doesn't have to all be good this year. I don't have to fix everything by myself, this year before the world ends or some such thing. it can't end yet because I haven't done my part yet. Impatience, things must be rushed, hurry hurry, or my important work will be in vain, too late, not useful to anyone.
All will have been in vain. If I don't do this, if I don't do that.
Hurry hurry.
And so I saw that my little story was shit and it shocked me.
How on earth am I going to write one of the most important, world changing books if my writing is shit? Good question, right?
The upside is, that this is no longer a question for me. My doubts, all the distractions of the past decades, which weren't distractions but necessary detours to work out shit, well MOST of my doubts have evaporated. Because of a book I was once again reminded of the dream I had when I was a kid, the most important dream I ever had, which basically told me I was going to be one of two people to meditate evil away from the world. Or something like that. I don't want to go into details.
If I can't admit this to myself, how am I ever going to write a book about it?
My destiny is this book, to write this book and pour into it everything I've been through in my life and more importantly, what I've done with my experiences, how I used them to gain insight, reprogramme myself, from the depths of human scumness to the peaks of enlightenment. Except I am not enlightened, so there's another reason why I shouldn't be in such a rush. It's hard enough to get a clear image of the structure of the book. Because I haven't reached 'the end' of the journey yet. How can I write about something I have not yet experienced? I only had a taste.
Of course I am worrying about effects, when all I have to do is keep working on the causes. Everything will change from the inside out. From whence comes this sense of haste? (Did I use that word correctly? It's so pretty.)
Upside to noticing my writing is shit. A few days earlier I still thought it was pretty good. I guess that's progress. In the same way I can pour out my heart and worried little mind here and a day or two later think 'what drivel, what the hell are you doing.' So, progress. You can't fix something if you are unable to see it's broken, where it's broken, where the screws must be tightened, where glue must be applied, where sweet words of mechanical tenderness must be whispered to create a whole again out of a pile of broken pieces.
The mosaic.
My destiny is clear. Trust is building. The feelings of unrest and haste are silly, as if everything could be perfect 'if only' the pace was upped. As if the Universe is right in and about everything except the speed with which it comes to its conclusion. Conclusion being just a word, I don't know what will happen, I only know a little about my part and how it will unfold. Or not. I would like to read my book.

Reading this thing over, this nearly made me cry so I'll copypaste it.

it can't end yet because I haven't done my part yet.

Life on a stick (it sucks)

Watching Jeff Dunham and his buddy Walter, who says he loves the coffee-shops in Amsterdam. "I'll have a latte and a doobie and 19 dozen doughnuts thank you." Sorry Walter, but 'those' coffee-shops don't actually sell coffee.
Anyway.
Lately it's hard to write about what's going on. Writing is so definite, makes things more real. Can't get around them.
Oh wait, it's Achmed, I love Achmed.
He's such a diva.
Right.
One thing I can't seem to accept is that life hurts and I can't protect my sister and her kids from pain. Physical pain is another thing that still scares me. But that first one is tearing me apart at times and this is one of those times.
My mind has a voice that says: 'if only'. If only is a dangerous dude. Visits all the time, comes in through the back-door and won't leave when you tell him he's pointless.
I've somewhat accepted my own mental pain, fear, sorrow and grief, just not that part where it comes to my sister and her kids. Not them. Like any other person I try not to mock, I think "if only they could be alright, they would be happy, then I could live my life like I'm supposed to. Only then can I get on with it."
Oh my God, Achmed is killing me.
It's mostly worry and doom scenarios. It's not the first time.
There've been times when I thought that everything would be a whole lot easier if my entire family died in a plane crash (something painless). No ties, no feelings of responsibility and despair, no endless days, nights of worrying myself sick, literally, crying myself to sleep.
Of course this is part of life, but why my life? (Trying to break it down.)
I can't. That part in the (third?) book where Jed talks about the man who slams a baby into a wall, and how magnificent that is.. I can't.
It horrifies me when I read it, when I think about it, when I try to look at it in a different way. I can't see it, experience it like that.
I don't see the beauty in things like that. I can't even look at clips on tv about animal abuse, or children in pain.
I want to show my sister every way in which she's ruining her kids, preparing them and especially the girl for a life of trauma, aggression, self-abuse. Yes, me, the one without kids. Tell a kid she's too fat and feed her candy. Teach them to hate their father, father bad, aggression funny. Child abuse for the win.
The one good thing I did for my kid is not having it. It would have had a horrible life, as crushing as mine has been, excruciatingly painful, desperate, terrifying. I die inside when I see what those kids are going through and what they will have to go through later because of what they learn now. If I had a kid of my own I wouldn't have been able to handle it. It would kill me, or I would kill me.
All part of life, right? Screw life. A mediocre life where the biggest worries would be whether I'd make it to that fancy dinner on time, or a flat tyre, yes please, that would be nice. THERE ARE PEOPLE WITH LIVES LIKE THAT. Oh my, a bad hair day. "If anyone sees me with my hair like this I'll just die!!!" "I screwed my secretary on her desk and now the big boss doesn't want to extend my contract, that's so unfair!" (This is a true story by the way, of an acquaintance, that's how oblivious loads of people are of real problems and to a little thing called taking responsibility for your own actions.)
I don't know how to accept these things. This is life. I know, I realise, but maybe I don't, I don't know. How can I?