I always said I would be the one to break the cycle.

That’s exactly what I’m doing right now, and I need to take it easy on myself. This is hard fucking work. Grueling fucking work. This is the work that matters—changing and transforming energy patterns. Killing karma—throwing up a detour sign and redirecting traffic. I’m not traveling that worn out road anymore. There are so many ancient footsteps and wagon tracks that I can’t even see the path anymore.

Good. ‘Bout fucking time.

I feel like I’m being ripped out of my skin and my head. During yoga last night, I found myself entertaining thoughts of completely losing myself, of shedding every ounce of ego, every memory, every energetic watermark. Of being born completely anew, fresh and unburdened. Seeing life through new eyes—living life devoid of darkness. Seeing only the light, letting it cleanse me, purify me, make me whole again.

I think it’s a miracle that any of us are even remotely sane. It’s beyond fathomable to me that we all continue to get out of bed and do the things that must be done, day in and day out. We carry so much weight, so much heaviness—it’s amazing any of us are still upright at all.

I feel like I have so much to purge and I’ve only just scratched the surface. I feel like there’s a volcano of hurt and agony and damage burning inside of me and I’m barely keeping up with clearing the way for it to explode so that it doesn’t take me down with it.

Sometimes I feel like I’m living on borrowed time. Like I keep urging my life to begin, and the more I push it, the harder it pushes back.

Sometimes I feel like I’m nothing but a fuck-up, taking everything and everyone I know and love for granted.

Sometimes I feel like I’m going to crumble under this self-imposed, illusionary mass of unbearable weight.

This is the darkness. This is what always tempts you back, finger curling, beckoning you back into the twisted solace and comfort of complete break down and despair.

A good friend recently told me that there’s always been a darkness around me. The difference between now and when she met me five years ago is that I don’t stay in the darkness as long anymore, she said. I’m different—feel different. I look different. I’ve changed. I’ve grown up.

Five years is an incredible amount of time in both the short and long sense. I was single for five years after leaving an emotionally manipulative relationship. I spent five years getting back to myself—everything that made me, me. I started writing again, building up my freelance career, interviewing my favorite bands, going to endless shows, surrounding myself with music, art and the people who shared my passions. I drank, I partied, I traveled, I wrote. I lost and found myself every day and every night.

But in spite of all that, I was still lost. I kept searching outside of myself for completion, for fulfillment. For validation.

And now I find myself here, again. Getting back to writing. Getting back to myself. Being confronted with the truths that I wasn’t ready to face until now. In the five years I was single before, all I did was run from any glimmers of awareness. I drank them all away. I did whatever I could to avoid them. Five years could have been five minutes for all the good that time did. Or, more accurately, for all the good (healing) I allowed in that time.

That’s why the notion of time is such an illusion. I know I’ve used that word a lot, but it’s so much more prevalent in our lives than we realize. We create these illusions of time periods in which we think it’s appropriate “time” to heal, appropriate “time” to strike out, to make a move, to take a chance. Appropriate “time” to let everything go and really get the fuck on with our lives.

We decide when the timing is right by making the most of it. By following our gut, which is in direct alignment with our heart. By truly listening, being present and acknowledging our inner promptings.

This time around, finding myself at the next level of my spiral, cyclical journey, I see a lot of similarities, but I see them differently. And that’s how we travel through time. We come back to our passions and our dreams and loves and desires, but we handle them with more care; we infuse different, more experienced energy and see what we can do with them at this new juncture. Because to not honor the varying rings of spirals and cycles, to not see them for what they are and truly appreciate them for all of the lessons they’ve delivered to us is to merely tread water, taking this most precious gift we’ve been given for granted in the most deplorable way.

We have second and third and fourth and fifth chances to change whatever isn’t working in our lives through every second of every day. We hold the power of choice and change in our hearts and hands. We all have roots, but what we don’t realize is that we have the power to pull them up and replant and re-situate them in any place and fashion we desire. Our hearts hold our roadmaps; our hands hold the immense potential and strength to dig and establish our roots in accordance with our true essence.

It’s up to us to release the weight and heaviness from our hearts and clear the way for communication to our next greatest vehicles of healing. It’s up to us to release and forgive ourselves so that we can step into love. Because that’s the entire point of this maniacal, glorious, miraculous experience.

Love.

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Editor: Bryonie Wise

Photo: Francesca Woodman