To Be Aware Is To Be Alive

These words are on a To Do List hanging on my fridge, written in my boyfriend's angular chicken scratch. It's a saying from his work (he works as a chemical dependency counselor at a prison) and he said he thought of me when he'd heard it. I wasn't really sure how I felt about that, or how I really feel about his growing penchant to 'therapy' me. I guess he's only trying to help me the only way he really knows how. I don't think it's him really, I think it's my general distaste for really any form of therapy from anybody.

I get this almost knee-jerk reaction where I want to chock any advice even remotely 'therapy-ish' right into the bullshit pile. Maybe it came from spending my teens getting force fed the kind of advice you find in fortune cookies from doctors who couldn't tell me what was wring with me. Alright, so maybe that sounded a little bitter.

Still, annoyed as it might make me, I keep finding myself reading over that stupid little phrase as I walk past the fridge or get myself a soda.

'To be aware...'

What does that even really mean?

I've rolled it around in my brain since yesterday, when it took up residence on my fridge like some stain I can't get rid of. How can someone not be aware? Well, I guess there's always denial, but I'm not in it....am I? And just what am I supposed to be aware of? My surroundings? Myself?My feelings?

Well, that made any rolling that idea was doing come to a rather screeching halt. My feelings have never been anything I wanted to be aware of. And perhaps that was the crux of it.

I wasn't mad at being advised or 'therapy-ized'. I wasn't upset that my boyfriend felt that I needed to be, because honestly, I know I'm still recovering and struggle with a lot of things. It upset me because I knew the truth in it, and knew that recovery meant being aware and being aware meant feeling things I didn't want to and have never wanted to.

Well shit.

It's not as if I don't want to get over the things I struggle with, and it's not as if I haven't made amazing progress thus far. I suppose sometimes I just get scared of having to face the harder things, the scary things.

I'm still afraid to stop running and really feel it all. I'm angry that I have to go through all this shit to get better. I resent the unfairness of even having these kind of things to deal with. Even now, I'm hating writing out how I actually feel. It's so much easier to be angry than to be hurt. Being angry feels safer, stronger somehow.

Yet, I know in that still rational place that it solves nothing to run away. Running is a way to survive and exist, sure, but feeling...being aware...I guess that really is being alive.

So I Thought About It...

So I was lying awake a couple of nights ago, doing what I suppose anyone does when they lie awake at 3-am. Think. 

And my thoughts wandered to the conversation I had had with my future fiancee, who works as a counselor at a drug recovery center that treats inmates. He's a believer in self-exploration. In writing and expression for healing. Honestly, I agree. I find that in writing the things I am feeling or struggling with, I am better able to handle them, visualize them and conceptualize them, and to find solutions and put the problem away, so to speak. 

And so came the birth of this idea. 

What if I kept a journal regularly? Well, that sounded pretty good, I thought to myself, and yet, I wasn't satisfied somehow. I wasn't sure why really, but as I lie there, letting my thoughts ferment in my mind, I began to feel like I had more to offer with my words and ideas than what they could ever accomplish sitting on a shelf between the bindings of a beat up composition notebook. 

The more I considered it, the more I felt like I wanted to give something, share something, SAY something. 

I wanted to help others like me. 

I'm reminded of two of some of my very favorite quotes. One is from a graduation speech turned song by the name of Everyone's Free To Wear Sunscreen. The quote reads:

"Advice is a form of nostalgia; dispensing it is a way of 
fishing the past 
from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly 
parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth." - Eveyone's Free To Wear Sunscreen, Baz Lurhmann 

Maybe that's some of it. A way to make something out of my life's experiences, to somehow take the ugliness of my past and use it in a way that benefits the world. Or maybe I'm just an idealist.

The other quote comes from a Kimya Dawson song, Loose Lips. If you saw Juno (and who hasn't?) you might remember it.  The quote reads:

"And ask you what you think because your thoughts and words are powerful." -Loose Lips, Kimya Dawson

I truly believe that, and in a round about way I guess that's why I decided to start this blog. 

I can only hope that this blog will do that. Reach someone, touch someone, or maybe just be a guide for myself. Whatever it becomes, I know that this idea is one that will push me and stretch me, but I guess that's the only way we really grow, isn't it?