Crazy Beautiful: Knowledge Is Power

Crazy Beautiful: Knowledge Is Power: People just don't know what they don't know... and how can you blame them for it because it was once you in their position. My heart just ...

Crazy Beautiful: Unfinished Business

Crazy Beautiful: Unfinished Business:      Some things in life cannot be sufficiently explained or understood... some truths will never be told... and some injustices may ...

Crazy Beautiful: How Do You Want to Be Treated?

Crazy Beautiful: How Do You Want to Be Treated?: "You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you." "How people treat you is their karma; how you reac...

Crazy Beautiful: Run Away Robin

Crazy Beautiful: Run Away Robin: Stay in one place. Breath. Don't run. Feel. These things can be my worst nightmare. I have always been a runner. Things get scary, RUN...

Run Away Robin

Stay in one place. Breath. Don't run. Feel.

These things can be my worst nightmare. I have always been a runner. Things get scary, RUN. Things get hard, RUN. Things get boring, RUN. Someone hurts me, RUN RUN RUN. When I became a mother, that was the end of the running. FUCKING HORRIFIC concept for a girl like me. I protected myself many times by running. I have ran away from scenes barefoot in Beverly Hills, jumped out of a moving limo, hopped fences, ran into target to hide with the dressing room staff from the man who raped me few years prior... I mean you name it, i've experienced it as far as most traumas. So for me to be forced to stop running is like asking me to do the unimaginable. Yet, year after year I am doing it. I am not running. As a result, all the pain that I have ever ran from begins to surface one experience at a time. I am becoming tough as nails. I am becoming patient & tolerant not only of myself but of others as well.
I am in pain right now. I saw things in my mind this weekend that I have not seen in a long time. I smelt smells that I had tried to block out. I saw faces that I wished I never saw. I felt things that make everything inside me scream NO. I sit here in my nice town home, with my beautiful daughter home from school sick upstairs, my UC Berkeley reading assignments out, but I can not focus & I can not feel joy in this moment. I want to run & I want to hide & I want to believe I can give up if I want to. Its so hard being me! And, I have to give myself credit damn it. I am choosing not to run! I am choosing to feel this pain on this couch by myself. I am choosing to take the necessary steps to comfort myself & take care of my mental, physical & spiritual health. I am choosing not to drop out of school even though my brain has shut down & I can't understand the paragraphs that I am reading. I wanna give up so bad. So so bad. And I can't. There is no where to run to except into my heart. There are no arms I need to fall into except my own.
I just made a list of all the things I love about myself so that I can see this is just another lesson, another level to be cleared, another stepping stone into my greatness. I was questioning what is so great about me? What makes me lovable because I don't feel lovable right now? I saw on paper some of the things that I have been able to do. And just the fact that I have been ripped apart by bad situations & people and utterly dehumanized... but I can still sit here & talk about it, the fact that I still have an enormous amount of love in me to give, the fact that I work my ass off to give my daughter emotional safety & self esteem... are all reasons that I am an incredible human being. I am a miracle but just the simpleness of being makes all of us worthy of the highest offering love has to offer. As much as I want to run from love, from fear, from pain in the past, from pain right now, from school or any commitment... I LOVE my journey too much. I know something great is right around the corner & God is whispering in my ear... "just hold on tight, baby. I have not abandoned you."

How Do You Want to Be Treated?

"You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you."

"How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours."

- Wayne Dyer 

     Being a survivor of multiple layers of trauma involves a lot of soul searching, discovering, and serious choice making. I grew up resenting the way people treated me, yet I continued to put myself in situations to being abused, exploited, or robbed of my dignity. How does one go from no boundaries and allowing people to walk all over them to a having the life they can only dream of? I'd say the only way to begin this healing process is to make a determined decision everyday to give yourself what the world did not give you: Love, Appreciation, Gentleness, Belief, Hope, Comfort, Guidance, Adventure... etc. When you start discovering yourself on the inside & building yourself up... love can't help but exude out of you & people are drawn to that. 

     The people who treated me poorly just happened to weed themselves out. Darkness cannot survive where there is so much freakin light! I've watched loving, kind, generous people surround me year after year & shower me with there love. I know this is because I began to love myself & open that love up to the world. I realized I let those people abuse me... & I abused them in one way or another. I thought I was a good friend, but I had been selfish, flaky, and deceitful at times due to my partying life. I wanted to be this radiant human being, yet I was blocked by fear & self loathing. 

     After I began this journey, I started dating & that showed me many more deeper layers of how I needed to alter the way I treat people (especially men). I saw how I placed unrealistic expectations & began to digress from loving myself to wanting a father figure to love me. Wow. That was a huge revelation... I had three people in a row create so much pain in my heart. The pain that I needed to see & face. So, I started looking at each painful experience as a lesson... took the weight out of feeling rejected & started seeing that I was being taught lessons & redirected. Looking back now, I would never put up with the bullshit that I used to in the past with dating. No way, no how. It's like when you start treating yourself & others with love, you can no longer pretend or sacrifice what you really want just to be loved by someone. As a result of this work, relationships & dating aren't that intense or scary. Who cares... I say just love everyday, love with all your heart, love your enemies, love your friends out loud,  drop to your children's level & love them til you explode, serve the heart of your partners & not ache for them to serve yours, give & give & give, & then let yourself receive. Let go of social/cultural norms & just follow your heart. Treat people this way & the love & magical things will come back 10 fold. I see it everyday!

 

Unfinished Business

     Some things in life cannot be sufficiently explained or understood... some truths will never be told... and some injustices may never be made right. This is the fact I have to face. I have to be ok with being who and what I am right now. I have to be ok not knowing exactly why people have harmed me or the details of what really happened. My memories of a Halloween night when I was 15 years old are foggy & fragmented.

      For all these years since, I have wanted so desperately to know what happened to me. Why was I in so much pain the next day? Why was I convulsing & hallucinating? Who were those silhouettes of bodies I vaguely remember? Why didn't someone stay with me to make sure I was ok? And, why did those people from school torment me after? What did I do to deserve this? ... I may never fully know, but I have to learn to be satisfied with not knowing. 

     Last night I saw a beautiful picture of my childhood friend's sister on FB, and I commented. Following my comment was the girl friend of one the men who was involved in some kind of raping that happened to me on Halloween. Im shaking inside to even think of this woman. She was known as a bully and the bold, relentless type. Last night she made smart ass comments below mine, and my heart began to race, my whole body started shaking as if I were shivering, and I was short of breath. Seeing her meanness again reminded me of one of the most traumatic events of my life. My hands are shaking typing this, but I now this is the only way through this lesson... it is to feel & to let it out creatively. 

     After all the rape stuff went down, and all kinds of detectives getting involved, this woman hunted me down. I think I was set up by another friend so that the girl friends of these terrible men could confront me & they forced me to stand in front of everyone and tell them step by step everything that I remember... to one of the men's face. The guy looked me in the eyes and lied. He told me that I am just a sick little girl trying to get attention or something when in fact, it was his own friend who ratted him out. I was so humiliated and terrified. I wanted to die... I tried to die. I ran away, I started smoking meth with strange older people with guns, who harbored me for 2 weeks before the police found me. I was hospitalized and then sent off to a boarding school in Mexico where I began to heal in a very intense, brutal environment. I was forced to start dealing with it all. 

     Today, here I am... a mother dedicated to healing from all past trauma & trying to make all my dreams come true. I am willing and ready to face what ever arises. Last night, I guess it was my time to feel this pain and relive the horror one more time so that I can forgive those people. How can I forgive this woman who tormented me, who I feared would jump me, the reason I had police patrolling my parents house for my safety? I am not exactly sure how, but I can have compassion for her. She has to live with her mean self. I would never treat anyone poorly without remorse. How sad that she married a man who raped a little girl when he was grown already. She, too, has to live without ever knowing the truth about that night, just like me. Only I am the one most affected.
      I learned recently that I am aloud to be angry... I don't have to hold it in or cover it up or let it explode at someone else. I AM ANGRY THAT I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. I AM ANGRY THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD WHO WANT TO HURT ME. I AM ANGRY THAT I AM THE ONE WHO HAS TO BE STRONG & PICK UP ALL THE GOD DAMN PIECES & GIVE MY DAUGHTER A GOOD LIFE. I AM SO ANGRY!!! BUT, even though I am angry... I still have enough love in my heart to get through it. May God be the one to make things right. It's just my job to forgive and let it be. I forgive that woman because I know, and many others know, that I don't deserve to be treated poorly. I forgive her because I am the one who gets to be free & choose to be surrounded by sweet, loving people... she is stuck living in darkness.
     Even deeper... I can forgive those guys, however many there were, because they know not what they did. This world is full of sickness; it just manifests in different forms for everyone. Empathy I believe is the solution. I have this vision of being in heaven or something & meeting them at their death bed in spirit & kissing them on their forehead to tell them, I forgive them with the most gentle words. God can handle all of the rest. When I die, I want there to be no unfinished business... I want to have loved my people the very best I can, I want to close all wounds that were created, I want to forgive deeply and be remembered in the highest way possible! So, maybe I will never know the details of what happened that night or have justices served, but I can be healed enough & forgive enough to truly thrive in this life.