Guts.

It’s only day 2 here with this blog and I’m not trying to burn myself out or anything like that… In fact, I’d rather slow down if it meant that I could pace this process out and by all means stick with it until it actually turns into something. But if I feel inspiration strike, why not run with it?

I made extra time today just to be home and allow myself time to sit with this some more- you know, really let myself get away with diving in if that’s really what I want to do, and look! Here I am.

Diving in.

We are so different, holy smokes. There is so much I don’t know about you and you about me. But what makes us the same?

Everything.

We are one.

We are the universe breathing. All as one. We are so divinely and infinitely connected always, we just forget that when we get lost in the matrix of our lives… we only THINK we are these separate things. I’m honestly just so excited to be here and to talk like this. I feel I may get more and more unhinged as time goes on and these entries progress so if this is too much, please bow out now. You can always choose to come back. The universe has a way of bringing us back to certain things anyway.

I have a story to tell you.

I feel I’ve told it to myself a thousand times since the events have unfolded. It feels like the story of my life. I feel there’s much I can’t tell out of respect for the beautiful souls involved. I’ll do what I can to avoid spilling tea that’s not mine. But this story feels so important to me. It’s colored me, changed me. I feel I simply have to tell it.

But first I must ask you a few questions if you don’t mind. Firstly, how do you feel about your guts? Do you connect them with your intuition? I always inevitably end up asking my friends questions about the feelings that arise in their midsections, their belly, their guts and innards… how is your relationship with this area? What does it feel like to you? Do you ever have “gut-feelings”? Can you hear clearly the messages? If so, are they easy instructions to follow?

I never understood any of this to be more than belly aches when I was growing up and as a kid I always had a LOT of belly aches. I have memories of having bad feelings that I was about to be scolded when there wasn’t anything discernable wrong… Beyond that and into my developing years through being a teenager and into my young adult hood, I was not only not listening nor considering the voice from within my gut- there simply was no voice! Just my belly. Just this big old nuisance, always big and uncomfortable, always rolling over the top of my jeans ruining every perspective outfit and glimpse in a tall mirror. As a result of these feelings, I sucked in. Always. I was constantly, and I mean constantly, at many points during this journey, sucking in my belly.

I had no real respect or love for this part of my body. I at times visualized cutting the whole of it off with a giant pair of scissors, squishing as much of the sweet little roll as I could into my clenched palm and squeezing as hard as I could.

I didn’t give it much more thought than that. It’s so easy to just go on living life like normal with thoughts like that. Sometimes they really would get to a girl, and I would get to feeling down or ugly or too big- but what do you do? You keep showing up to life, sucking in all the while, as one does. And in my case, you kick ass and you thrive and you get good grades and make a lot of friends, and you do what your parents say and you do a lot of it by people-pleasing and biting down on your truth. And sucking in. And often keeping yourself from living your biggest and fullest.

So I get through high school. A few notable things happen here. I become a little estranged from my sister who was confronting much different mountains than me. At this point, I hadn’t truly realized the value of my family, of her, the way I do now. I was much more focused on boys and working at a movie theater and getting my own apartment and falling in love with my first real long term boyfriend. Soon, this person and I, our lives intertwined and he colored my life or I should say I colored my life around him. We ended up spending seven beautiful and complicated years together.

Keep in mind that there are always at least two sides to every story and this is just mine. I would never want to say and ill word of him. What I learned in our time together, me and that man of seven years, I wouldn’t change for anything. I had loved him with my whole heart. But truth be told, I wasn’t all the way happy. I can’t imagine he was either. Our problems would get worse and I would make very big mistakes that would hurt both him and I tremendously. Like, really really badly. And remember, I’m a people pleaser down to like, the cellular level, so to hurt someone I love with all my heart so damn bad… it was a transformative experience for me for sure. I had done something that I never thought myself capable of doing… and it broke me open. I wasn’t who I thought I was. Around this time in life I would often gag on my own stress.

And I loved him. And I was so damn sorry I’d hurt him and so I resolved to stay, to make it up to him and fix things and be who I wanted to be for him. I vowed to myself that I would always be honest with him and never ever break his trust again. I would be there even though what that ultimately meant for me and us was that we would be building on something that was, despite our best efforts, broken. Time would show him continue to shut off from me in ways I was desperate for, but my resolution to stay only continued my efforts to heal and be a better person for him and me. He still loved me and listened to me and was kind to me. Time went on and soon, the house felt like it had never been cleaner (all though the only room that bared any resemblance to him was his computer room). I had begun to explore health in a new way thanks to my new job in the mental health field and I had begun practicing yoga and meditation regularly. I was experiencing new feelings. I felt at one point I had awakened to the universe inside myself! This was a wild time for me indeed! I remember recounting these feelings to my person and I was deflatingly not met with the same enthusiasm. I resorted to journaling to try and record these terrific sensations!

I was also getting so strong! This was something I’d never really experienced before. Health was always a shitty and uncomfortable phys. ed. class for me in elementary and high school. I never believed improving my health and strength was really something I could actually do and accomplish and really feel! I was feeling grateful for my life and all of these blessings. I think during this time, he and I moved into this sort of domestic-autopilot mode. My person, he lived with me, but the mental landscape of my journey was changing and the journey itself was beginning to feel like a solitary one. I felt like I was always waiting for him to join me somewhere emotionally or spiritually or intimately… but all the while I was actually moving farther away from him. To the outside world we may have looked like the perfect couple, and I believed it too, but something so deep inside was off.

Meanwhile, my sister and I had reconnected after such a long while. And she was so complicated and different from me. She had been through so much and I didn’t think I really knew who she was any more.. and I had no idea that the events that followed would lead our worlds to collide in ways I’d never imagined. I would get to know her story much more intimately. I think around this time, her world was slightly crumbling apart and in survival mode, she had crash landed at our Mom’s house; a move that would prove to be both of our first reactions in times of crisis.

One night I was laying pretty peacefully in bed with my person by my side, but I woke around 3 AM which was odd for me because my sleeping schedule I believe had been pretty routine. And I was like, WIDE awake. I decided for some reason that I just wanted to meditate. Not struggle to meditate, listening to a guided recording or anything, but I just wanted to lay awake and be there. Experience.

So I went out to the couch and laid out nice and flat and just laid there.

And something happened.

I had an experience that would change my life. A vision! I remember thinking of my sister! Her name! Her face! How important and wonderful she was! My perception was overtaken by joyousness and inspiration and the deepest peace one can experience in every cell, it reverberated through my core, my bones. There were arrows! Everywhere arrows! All pointing up and to the right! Arrows and joyousness! Magnificent! I loved my sister! Why can I not feel this way every day?

And all of a sudden.

As an answer to that very question

from the depths of below, from the pits, from my guts, bubbled one muddy sentence into my consciousness.

“I don’t want to be in this relationship anymore.”

And I woke up.

In a cold sweat. Ready to vomit.

And I ran to the bathroom and was dry heaving and panic crying. He was in the other room. Ten minutes before his alarm was to go off for work.

I couldn’t lie about it to him. There was no coming back from this. I could not UN-experience this. I felt like leaving my body and never coming back.

I did all I could do. I pressed my face into a cold, damp wash cloth and then slowly made my way into the bedroom. I crawled over the covers into bed, up close next to him and roused him from his slumber. “Hey… something happened.” And he was so sleepy. And unaware. But hearing my voice tremble I’m sure brought him to consciousness quicker. And I just. Said it. I said exactly what happened. Exactly what I saw. And I fell back into my skull, into my body and some other part of me, some other part of the universe destined to be intertwined with my being stepped in behind my eyes and did all my talking for me. Watched him as I stuck the dagger in. And the part of my that loved him and couldn’t stand to hurt him just surrendered and lay there powerless in a field somewhere feeling numb but forced to watch all this happen. Him processing as my mouth, her mouth formed all the words. She answered his every question. Sadness and heavy unwavering truth in every drop of word that fell from her on the ruffled comforter between them. There I was doing it. Telling him. I don’t want to be in this relationship any more. And I don’t know how much of his reaction I have in me- I just was there. Watching. But removed. Something in me took over. It’s as if my guts had taken over my actions, my voice. It took over my vessel.

What had been in control prior?

Next thing I remember is him being gone and me by myself in the house slowly packing my things. My most important things. I would drive to Mom’s house with everything I could fit in my car. I would leave him the cat. He needed all the magic he could get as I was ripping mine away from him, having pulled the dagger out. I remember telling myself that, “this was the slowest and most mindfully she had ever packed for anything,” and it was this weird mantra I repeated over and over. This was just so important. Some part of me wanted to remember it. Some part of me knew it was in some way sacred. Tears came and went. But I remember this almost eerily peaceful feeling in my belly that was… worth noting.

I drove to Mom’s house where my sister was waiting and I opened the door, walked to the living room, dropped my bags, laid down on the cool scratchy carpet and broke down into great big heaving sobs. Body in complete surrender.

My world would evolve and change and quite poetically so as a result of all of this. My sister, my mother and I spent a few months (I think a few months anyway- I lost all concept of time during these next couple years) happy and together again. I quickly relaxed into life here with them. I spent quality time with them and other family. My guts were feeling more open and peaceful. Was I sucking in less? I enrolled back into my online courses and got a new job and a local restaurant and that was that. And I spent every second trying to listen to my body- my belly. Hello in there?

And all of a sudden one day, my mom got diagnosed with cancer.

And it progressed from there to her death within like a year I think…

And,

yeah. There’s everything and nothing to say about it.

but to me,

all this meant something.

And my hand was held through all of this. The universe, and Death himself was holding my hand. And the way I see it, as difficult as it was to just be there and watch everything happen, I was right where I needed to be. With my roots. With my mom. With my sister. There were were.

I can remember rubbing a topical solution on my mom’s back towards the end of her journey to help her in any way with pain relief. I meditated on the cancer I had been told lay just under the skin under my palms. Her warm back. I can feel her. I miss her. I know my sister misses her with everything under the sun.

What can you do… Just be here. There I was. There she was. There we were.

And time was time and does what time does and I was just moved like a reed in the wind or a wave in the ocean, going with the moon and the tides before me, witness to it all.

And time does what time does. And now here I am, only a few short years later living with my sister in the cutest little pink Girly Palace you can ever imagine. Mom would love it. And I’m thankful for the perspective I have. I got to be with her, with my family, right when I really needed to be. And yes, though the events leading up to everything were at times sincerely the MOST unpleasant, I’m grateful for every lesson, for every experience, for all of it. I’m grateful I got to experience that man for seven beautiful years. I’m grateful for everything he taught me and all the love he gave me. I’m sorry for how I hurt him but I will never take what I learned as a result for granted. I will be grateful for my mother for letting her girls come home to her when they needed her the most. I’m grateful I got to be with her towards the end of her life. And though it was not easy to witness, it was an honor. I am honored to be her blood. Her daughter. To be the sister of her other daughter. I wouldn’t trade her or these memories or that pain for anything. This has been our destiny. Together. Always together.

I’m grateful for what was unlocked in me. That a deep something in me- whether it be my guts or my intuition or my spirit or my highest self, my guides, my God, my universe- would fight to reach me, to reach out and fight for a spot in the light after a life time of being pushed down and sucked in, to get me and this vessel where it needs to be.

I feel changed.

And I feel like I will forever now, I will always be striving listen to my guts. These feelings in my belly have been, in all seriousness, some kind of spirit guide for me since our first formal introduction during that vision at three AM on that fateful morning; a vision during which a desperately important message was sent to me through worlds, through the literal mud and the muck of my person. There how now been a channel opened in me. Perhaps an unblocking…

Several times since I’ve been aware of my belly as something more than just a nuisance, (something far greater and more mystical and magical than I can ever imagine, in fact) my belly has spoken to me. Unfortunately it always happens in the form of sickness, or to be more real with you, gagging! Specifically in relationships! I feel connected to these people and I love them quickly and feel like I could give them a chance at love with me but my gut has just honestly and outwardly simply rejected them! I’ll be all happy and in love and playing video games with them and all of a sudden I’m taken over by a bought of utter sickness in my belly. Often I’d have to sneak off to the bathroom. I look in the mirror and fake a smile for a second, but the muscles fall. “Something’s off. This isn’t it. You will have to hurt him like you did the last one.” For a while there, with one sweet soul, these feelings were the bane of our existence and our relationship. My belly was that which refused to let me sink into his ocean- like a giant, over-inflated inner tube: not going anywhere. I refused these feelings and pressed desperately to dive into him again and again in a series of no less than forty fruitless attempts to be together that only left us battered and bruised and pretty badly. I loved that boy too. But within this vessel of mine, something new was calling the shots. There was a new sheriff in town. And she was just not into it.

Finally now in this moment I’m getting the sense of peace I feel when I write like this and get into the zone… I think my belly is happy for so much recognition and attention and because I’ve said that I will now always take into account her feelings, as annoying as difficult to deal with as they’ve been in the past and taking account what I’ve given up because of her advice. She knows something I don’t. I think she may hold the keys to my ultimate happiness. Maybe one day I’ll even go as far as to consider us one singular entity. But for now hopefully she can be satisfied with only my deepest gratitude and a little of the recognition she so rightfully deserves.

I’ve been telling myself I want to write a book for so long now. There so much I need to say and I just know it’s for you to hear! I just need to talk about her. It’s my turn to speak for her. She is a main character. My guts. This little ball of energy in my core. She will no longer be taken for granted. I may not always understand her or agree with her, but dear God, I see her. I know she’s for me. Let me try and be for her.

How are your guts?