Take a breath. Breathe deep. Lie down in an open space and spread your limbs. Withdraw from the things that won't withdraw from you.
My insides have been swivelling around and around the last few days, and I feel dizzy.
Something is pushing unrelentlessly against the thing which has lain dormant within me for a long time. And the push is as unwelcome as it is welcome.
Quiet belief that the world could be my oyster if I so chose, has been enough, until now. I knew that potentially I could reach the stars. My haughty secret. My certainty that I had a little more substance than the average John Doe didn't scare me, - it made me feel good. But Now. Now, people are asking "Well, if you're bright, and have potential, that's fine, but WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT??" This doesn't make me feel good, - it scares me a lot.
I am here because I was restless. Now I am more restless...That's probably not what I had intended. My being here is one more opportunity that I have received, one more opportunity that someone else has not received. What does that mean? I wonder if Man's first utterance was a question?
My mind is a minefield strewn with traps which seek to suck me into pits of despair and hopelessness, so that I may never rise above. Above what? Above what I have come from. (Long sigh.) To supercede the secretions of past failures and pains, to repress the reverberations.
"Words"...never enough, but something, nonetheless. The words that we use change. Depending on the mood. I know all kinds of words, and use all kinds. I do not care for a particular kind, for it is not a stagnant thing. I cannot do so, because, everytime, before the feeling is cemented, it is lost to a new feeling towards another kind of word. Words of unfaltering faith in one moment can be banished by words of despair in another, and vice versa. We are volatile creatures.
Will the result of a life of repeating the words of belief and strength to myself, differ from that of a life of saying either the opposite, or perhaps, nothing? Probably. If I utter them with genuine conviction, and allow them to be the first step of a violent awakening, a quaking mental shift, a realloction of my centre.
I met a lovely lady, shortly before I left Ireland, Geenan. Her name means 'Paradise'. She told me, after doing some calculations with my horoscope, that I 'have a long way to go'. I interpreted that narrowly, specific to me; part of me felt reassured on hearing that. I'll get there. Eventually. Part of me felt tired.
I must degrade my fragility, and not allow it to degrade me. I must replace it with steeliness. A weak centre is deadly. I have much ahead of me, I hope, with the help of God. But yesterday's wounds must have sealed, for the pangs of the future will have a greater severity if pangs of the past remain.
I want and need a sack of sand of strength, so that I can rise above. I am gathering one grain of sand at a time.
This is my most honest and revealing blog to date. I felt ready to write it after I read Thulani's (South African WIP intern) blog. His brave words made me brave. That the seven incredible, beautiful interns are here from South Africa, with their infinite richness, is one of my favourite things about the programme.
