Tag: growth

Autobiography

Compassion

Ruby Pipes4 Comments
forestforthetrees
“Forest for The Trees” © Emily Horne and Joey Comeau, 2014. a softer world.

Florence Scovel Shinn said, “When you send out real love, real love will return to you.” I think that’s the only way you receive it. You get out what you put in. You see the things you’re looking for. It’s easy to forget. Fall victim to the idea everything is cruel. Fail to realize there are kind things, too. You just stopped seeing them. It becomes ingrained. Accidental habits. Maybe that’s just one of the those things depression does to you. Rolls the fog in. Puts the blinders on. When you’re hurting it’s hard to see the goodness in the world.

It’s hard to see it happen, though. I understand. Bit by bit the softness goes away. Sitting in a room, having a conversation. You don’t notice the sun going down until you can’t see the person in front of you. As if the night landed all at once. When did this happen? When did I become so hopeless? So negative. So angry. Continue reading →

Addiction

Recycle

Ruby Pipes3 Comments
“trash” © Quika Brockovich, 2013. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Stop.

We lean on things because we are clinging to the idea they can make our feelings stop. Not help cope with anything. Not deal with our anxiety, our depression, our loss. That isn’t our intention. We just want the emotions to stop. The anger, the frustration, the hurt, the fear. Cast it out. Cover it up. Make to stop.

Even when we stopped drinking, stopped using, stopped whatever addictive behavior we’d deemed useful. Even when we started looking at our damaging behaviors. Everything we did was still under the guise that this too would somehow allow us to make the feeling stop. We became bound by the idea that if we can understand where the hurt comes from we can fix it. Make it go away. The goal was never to embrace it. To face it. We want to trace everything back to its origin so we can destroy it. Time-traveling to kill the would-be mothers of our greatest influencers before they conceive. Continue reading →

Addiction

Emerge

Ruby Pipes2 Comments

"City behind a barbed wire" © Michal Macura, 2012. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
“City behind a barbed wire” © Michal Macura, 2012. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
“I don’t understand where this came from and I just…I just hate it. I never used to be like this.”

“Yes you did. You just masked it.”

I constructed an idea of who I am out of hundreds of nights spent smoking cigarettes and drinking bourbon. Trimmed it with drug abuse. Dusted it with a series of destructive relationships. The things I did defined me. They let me ignore the person underneath. I was a series of actions. Choices without a skeleton to hold them. Fragility. Vulnerability. Insecurity, frustration, and anger. There was no place for them between empty bottles and bloody noses. I could pretend I was the person the substances made me. In that there was safety. Continue reading →