Chapters maybe? Volumes? Levels?
Compartments is probably the best word for where we put our feelings.
We don't address our own properly, but we are expected to handle everyone else's like experts. Well, if I don't understand myself, how the hell am I to understand you. And why do we feel we need to put our feelings onto others, is it because we think they don't understand? So, we blame, we coddle, we cover them with medications. We talk about them in therapy but not with the people we are talking about. How does that make sense? Why can't you talk to me? Why can't I talk to you? Human communication is chaotic thing.
I pushed mine down for years and years. I remember from early childhood, knowing my feelings were something only I understood because the people around me had their own problems, and those people were grown up and their problems were bigger and mattered more. You ever feel like that? Why does everyone else's feelings need to matter more than mine? But if I focus on yours, I don't have to address mine, or me or how I play a part in it all.
The human condition. Now that I'm older, my feelings are bigger and louder and demanding to be heard. And so, I wrote them down. I told a story of heartbreak and pain. Growth and forgiveness. Most importantly, about love and how love always wins. How do I know, because I have learned to love myself. Maybe I validated myself and now I can stop looking for it in my relationships.
The poems in the Life inRhymes collections tell a story in the way they were written. Repressed feelings coming to light in one of the darkest times of my existence. A time of internal struggle, throw in a few medical conditions while trying to reassess who I am supposed to be in this life now that my children are grown and out in the world doing their own. On top of it all, I feel the world has gone crazy. I'm in a world where I don't belong.
Do you know what I have learned in the process, I am not alone. I have angels that watch over me, in the people that I love. I'm in a world of me(s). We are all connected in our collection boxes. I have divine angels that only I can see and that's okay with me. I'm learning that I don't need to be perfect because the only opinion of me that matters is mine.
And I can only be defined as imperfectly me. I shouldn't apologize for being who I am meant to be.
inRhymes was a verbal storm of past mistakes and hurts. It was time to take accountability for the way I have let others make me feel and the way I have treated others. Both sides a balance of love and regret. But I am responsible for what comes next, I always have been. It is truly a crime that I have given my power away so easily in times that it really mattered, and I fought a fight for things that didn't. Do I stay the same or do I change to be better. There is no real question there, but will I do the work? I did and I will continue to be until I die. Isn't that what we are here to do in life, by living it. Feeling it. Always striving to get it right.
My whole life I have done my own thing, and I have met a lot of great people along the way. I have had experiences that have stripped me of my dignity and self-respect, I have lived experiences that others are envious of. All in all, I really have no complaints. What I do have is a book of shadows and reflection and a tall order of good times and shame. But I've also had a lot of love. And the love outshines all the rest. I just needed to slow down and learn the lessons.
Now that my guilt and shame and mistakes are out in the open, it is time to forgive. Forgive myself and others. I'm choosing internal peace for the greater good. I am picking up the pieces of my life and this is where I decide which pieces to keep and which ones to let go. The wisdom in getting older. I will take the pieces I want to keep and put them in a collection box away in storage for another day.
I put down my baggage so I can be free. Free to be me and to stop carrying the weight of others. Only I know what it is like to be me, so I write my own story and share these collections of lessons and truths with you.
Love and Light,
Imperfectly me
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