your nightmares are the old you trying to keep you safe

Good morning.

I’ve been changing. I am changed. I have moved inward to the core of myself and now I can’t help but live anything other than that core. The centrifugal force of my being is poetry, imagination, mysticism, sacredness, even in the mundane. This is my core and I know her better than any of my intellectual pursuits. She is full of heart and ecstacy and deep liberation when her fingers do exactly this.

Thing is, dear reader, I’ve finally granted myself permission to put writing and mysticism first. All the way. I’ve surrendered to the forces of my nature. I’ve accepted what I am. There is a wild rebelliousness that comes with this shift.

I am prepared to let go of everything that does not honor that core, even that which I love, and which benefits me.

I watch as my decision-making shifts directions towards all that has changed. I say goodbye to bounty, I say goodbye to external validation, I choose to surrender all of the goodness and magic in my life for this. It takes time for the material to catch up when you shift your identity in such ways. It also takes a relentless meeting of fear against the sharp blade of truth, again and again. (but let me tell you the secret, truth always wins.)

I wish I could tell you that I am fearless, but I am not. I have nightmares that relay my fears to me almost every night. I remember once in college a photographer told me that I was so positive in my waking life to compensate for my deep unconscious restlessness. That struck a chord.

My nightmares used to be much more severe, but they still reveal to me my own unrest.

Just last night I dreamed I was on an endless staircase down to a beach and every few steps we encountered some rocks and other obstacles that seemed to rise out of no where. I was with a man, my man, only it wasn’t my man. It was the erratic viking king walking next to me, and then he became some nerdy tightly-wound stranger that I didn’t recognize, and then the viking king again. Whoever it was, they were not right, yet they flickered in and out like a mirage. And there I was, walking down toward my sanctum, the ocean, the place my soul feels the deepest sense of belonging, hesitating as I took every step, pondering in the back of my mind, how exactly I would abandon my loyal post and escape this situation. Fuck.

I woke up tangled in sheets alone in our bed. The bed I share with the man I am certain about. The man I will one day soon marry. He’s downstairs working since 5am probably. Relief courses through me. Yes. I am certain. He honors my wildness and lets me be totally free. He enables my freedom and takes care of me in every way that a wild writer spirit like my own needs. I locate that feeling and breathe into it. I am certain, but I am scarred by my own past-uncertainty and mistakes. My own mistakes in love haunt me sometimes. I wish I could say that wasn’t true.

What can I say, dear reader? What else do you expect from the child of a custody-battle-divorce? I love my parents, but if you saw how they are still relating to love, you’d understand the miracle of the stability that I’ve created.

What a miracle that someone from my background could find such powerful, transformative, stable, certain love.

And yet, that deep fear of making the wrong decision, of being trapped, it bubbles up within me sometimes like a fever dream. My dreams make me aware of all of the places where I’m still gripping, where I am still afraid.

I am not fearless. No.

But I am relentless in my willingness to meet fear in the arena and charge headfirst with everything that I’ve got. I feel the fear and I do it anyway. I am honest about my fear, and that honesty dissolves it back into pure and utter freedom.

I can claim that boldly.

The old me pulses fear into my psyche at night to make sure that I’m staying safe, even as I move towards the version of life that I want more than anything.

The version of life where I’m almost-high in a state of ecstacy as my words pour out onto the page and empty out my million-miles-per-hour brain. I write imperfectly sometimes, but if you look closely, you’ll find little pieces of yourself within these words.

As always, thanks for reading me.

— B