Empty as the new moon

Wow what a decade!

As we have all been struggling to leap from one edge of the cliff to another in this never ending growth cycle of life, let me take this moment to say congratulations to us all for surviving the last years and now we are standing in the horizon of another blank canvas in this new chapter of our lives, individually and collectively.

Okay, I might have been talking in confused words without trying to make sense at all, but as I said in my previous post, we have to heed the call of my master and take a serious inventory of our lives. Yes, this post is still in connection with the previous post I made about unpacking the box and living in the present moment. We need to make a serious inventory of our lives because nothing in life is permanent, life is constantly changing. Life and people and relationships are in a never ending cycle of growth, death and rebirth.

Anyways, I am just grateful that in this present moment, my family and friends and people I value are all safe and well. The past years were not easy. The past few years have seen me meet a lot of interesting people and I have been to many great places, experienced lots of challenges and hopefully came out a bit wiser, but haha, I am not sure about that bit.

But as I was contemplating on bidding the old year and even older years goodbye, I somehow heard this phrase inside my head: the anatomy, the structure, the basics. So, I was really trying to come up with a nice piece with the title: The anatomy of closing a long cycle and making peace of the life that was; I was so inspired by the title, but the journal entry that should follow never materialized.

It will materialize eventually.

But now, I am empty as a new moon.

So, I would just like to share with you my dear readers about the dream I had some days ago. It bothers me a lot actually, but well I will write it here anyway.

The dream goes like this: I was in my dorm room, which was so similar to my college dorm room and I was talking with my roommate while I was preparing to go out. I was dressing up, fixing my hair, etc. Then I went out of my room to get something at the corridor of my dorm before fully leaving. There was a door at the end of the corridor and when I opened it, it was dark and there was a young girl begging for money/food, I was surprised because a stranger should not enter the dorm. The girl was obviously a stranger to me and she looked like she didn't live in the dorm. I hurriedly went back to my room to tell my roommate that there was some stranger on the other side of the corridor door. I went on and on about the girl stranger to my roommate when an older beggar woman came inside of our dorm room, she was also begging for food/money. I was shocked because my room was my personal space and the older woman was surely a stranger and not a dorm resident, so I told her she should leave or else I would call the authority. End of dream.

Isn't this dream very revealing?

It is somehow telling me something.

Now, I need to do some deep inner journey to find out its message, lest I make Furies/Erinyes furious for not doing my 'life homework' immediately.

Oh The Kindly Ones, have mercy upon this soul.

New look, from the teacher's table

 

Time to open and unpack the box

Long silence. Yes, I know, I somehow drowned into the deep dark waters, I thought I will never float back again. Actually, I am not so sure if I have really floated back or just given a short sweet time to surface and breathe in some air then I will be pulled back down into the deep again.

The past few months, well I have no word to describe them. 

*Absently staring at the screen for a long long long time,

yeah, no words. Just pure nightmare. Just pure darkness. Just stark black all around me.

However, I still try to rationalize what happened to me and what has been happening in my life lately. As my wise master would say, "Take a very careful and mindful inventory of all the things you have done in your life," in short, she means we have to deeply reflect.

Well, of course this task of taking inventory is both painful and freeing. I imagine, just like those people with PTSD, just imagine if you have to take an inventory of what you have done within a traumatizing event. The brain really wants to shut down all the unpleasant memories, those dark painful times, where you nearly lost it, where you only cry when you feel them again inside your heart, within the mind. I liken the experience to the early practice of medicine, where the surgeon will operate on the patient without anesthesia, nothing to numb the sharp pain, just really surrendering the whole body under the knife and to the skill of the doctor. Maybe we can call it faith.

But what I am trying to say is that recalling memories can be nostalgic and it can also be traumatic. How long can we hold the memories in our brain? Do we erase those unpleasant memories immediately? Do we keep the pleasant ones in our safest memory spot? Do we change our perception of those memories as we grow older? Do we edit memories? Are our memories authentic? Or it is already subjective?

The past few months have been totally difficult for me. I cannot even start recalling them because it makes me tremble. I cannot believe I survived and still surviving. And even now, most of the brain shuts down any attempt to remember the past weeks.

But still I will venture to make an inventory, but I am giving myself time to heal and time to recover some energy so I can go through the memories again and journal them one by one.

Anyways,

this weekend, as I continue my 20-year-research, I have been very fortunate to read this wonderful book by Leonard, a Jungian analyst. 

In one of the chapters, I read this line that resonated with me ~ living in the past.

With all the waves of change coming one by one, sometimes two by two or sometimes all at the same time, the only way I know to protect my sanity is to continue living in the past. I was reading a very interesting topic and story under the chapter Rejected Lover, when I read this line ~ living in the past.

Not that my reflection is about being rejected by a lover, no, not at all. It is that I resonated with her sentence about living in the past because as I have mentioned in my previous posts, I have moved into a new house along with so many boxes. I failed to mention that some of those boxes were still unopened from the previous move I made from QC to another place in Dasma just before the pandemic. See, if we have to compute, there were a couple of moves already but some boxes remain unopened.

This made me think deeply. What could I have been hiding from myself since I haven't gotten the energy to open those boxes and to put them in the proper places? Then after some thinking it dawned on me, perhaps I am still living in the past, I am still preserving the past by preserving the packed unopened boxes. I am reluctant in the face of the idea that I have to roll out my packed things. Just to give you a background, I was used to moving places every 3 years or so. I was used to not unpacking since I know I will move out. I never really settled in a place. I never really put down roots. Which made me think about the situation of my life right now, it feels like I am going to stay longer in a place a little longer than I was used to. Sure, when I was a young girl, I stayed in my Dasma house from 7 years old (Grade 1) to 17 years old (4th year high school), that was a complete decade of not moving. Of course, needless to say, I moved from Makati when I turned 7, so I never really stayed in one residence for a long time.

Then from 17 or 18, I stayed in QC, then Makati, then QC again for longer time (20s to late 20s) then Cebu, then BGC then QC then back to Dasma (pandemic) haha, and now, here in my current residence. 

Okay back to my train of thought, I think by unopening the boxes, I will preserve the magic of ease of moving from one place to another, however if I open the boxes then I will release the magic and I might not be able to move for a really really long time. The thought makes me scared, actually.

Sadly, things and situation and circumstances change. With a lot of deep thinking and reflection and somehow forward thinking, I feel like I have to face this fear of settling since I cannot see myself moving to another place in the near future. So, I feel that I have to slowly let go and open the boxes. Perhaps, it is time to change the items inside the box, time for new things to touch, new stuff to learn, new objects to collect or study.

Change is really terrible, but everywhere I look, it is glaring at me, time to change, time to transition, time to grow.

Time to embrace those experiences and situations we thought we never liked before.

Time to open our hearts and minds to the magic of something we have avoided for a long time, but something that is fated to be ours or fated to fall under our protection and guidance.

Time to change our perspective and embrace what we thought will never change, but still we have the passion to change it instead of just accepting it. 

Time to remember the promise of courageous spirit, that it will always help us see things through.

Time to finally confront what I have been putting off for a long time.

Time to live the life we ran away from, and while at it, try to effect little change and transition.

Time to stop running away, time to turn around and embrace the life I once knew and left behind. Since I am more mature now, maybe I can learn to tolerate it or even like it.

Maybe I will give it some time. Maybe I will open my heart. Maybe I will change my mind.

But yes, time to open and unpack the box.