Seeds

 "You just need some seeds and a little dirt... It's not much." It didn't mean anything. I didn't mean anything by it. I forget that I need to listen to my words as much as I need to ignore some of my thoughts. It's not much. Not much that I need. I think about sitting by the water and just listening to the water lap against the dock. The smell of the water. Not salty. Not fishy. Earthy and a bit slimy with algae. It's what I need right now. I just need a little water. A little bit of cold wind whipping my hair around getting stuck in my lip balm. The looks I get from locals. Locals. Like I'm not one of them. But I am. And so I smile, because I am a local. I was born there. I spent summers there. I know the back roads better than where I live now. It doesn't change much. That part I kind of like about it. My favorite restaurant there looks like it was built in the '80s with wood paneling. My eyes glow and my hair shines and I smile. I'm not like the other people who grew up around there. I look like both my parents, but when I'm there, they just see my dad's eyes and my mom's beauty and spark. It feels good. Here I'm no one. I can just disappear. I even see people I know and they still ignore me. I fade into the background. A chameleon. Someone who doesn't exist. I guess that's part of it. I feel like I don't exist a lot of the times. Or that I don't want to so I don't. But, up there... I exist. I can be there and there's not many people but I still exist. I can smell the air. The chill in the wind. Did you ever smell snow? It smells like that there. Like cold water. Ice, wind, snow, and algae. Maybe a little bit of Canada goose shit. There's tons of those fuckers up there. The sky takes up the whole view. The clouds are bigger than you could imagine. Perfect. It's like a movie up there. It reminds me of stock photos. It resets me. It cleanses me. It shows me everything I try to hide and places it there. Just to wash it all way. So I can see exactly what it is. 

My feelings keep getting in the way of that place. There's too much. It's too much. It's a lot and I don't know what to do so I just avoid it. But, I really need it right now. I need the water. I need to reveal everything. Show myself what I need to see. I tried before. A few years ago. I was diving deep and finding out how much I wasn't ready for it all. I knew it. I knew a lot of it. For a long time, but I didn't understand the roots. I didn't understand that all along they weren't seeds anymore. They were full grown forests. That I had just been trimming the bushes. I had just been pulling weeds. So the forest could keep growing strong. Not realizing that I needed to pull out a lot of the trees. That the seeds I had planted were still overshadowed by the old growth forest that had been thriving all the while. Fuck. The waves that overtake me at times... they didn't touch all the trees. The trees reveled in it. 

But it's okay. I planted some strong seeds of my own. I took some strong roots. I am evolving all the time and I can dig up these trees one by one. The ones that I don't need. That no longer serve me. There's things that I can get past and things I can't and I'm taking it one by one. I find that the more that I realize the patterns I don't want to repeat- the more that I see the things I didn't understand before. That I have the power to turn my weaknesses into strength. 

I was reminded. I was reminded that it's okay. It's okay. I can keep planting seeds. I can start again. I can spend a few hours trying to do better than I did the week before. I can do this. 

I'm tired. I'm just so tired. I feel so many things. I want to be where I was before. The feelings I had when I was finally free. But over time I realized that I'm never going to be free. Not truly. Not yet. I just learned to cope in different ways and one was to just shut down. To ignore the people who made me feel trapped. And slowly I let them back in. I let them all trickle back in and now I feel it again. Trapped. 

I can't control that feeling. The trapped feeling. The overwhelming sucking of the ocean's waves. When all I need is the river. A nice constant flow of life source. Not a drowning salt tsunami. I can't control feeling suffocated. I can control some things though. And it's so strange that your space can reflect how you truly feel inside. The more flighty and cluttered I get in my space, the more trapped I feel. I put objects around me to protect myself. To surround myself so there's a barrier between those feelings and myself. But really, it just makes me feel more suffocated. What I need is space. Space. Water. Some dirt. Some healthy food. Sun. Some peace. 

I can't control that feeling. But I can control some things, so I do. I forgot how much I used to enjoy being in control. That I really liked to make bold decisions and lash out because it made me feel in control when it just came across as reckless and like... I had no control. Strange how that works, isn't it? I felt like I wasn't in control of myself so I just went out of control but in a controlling way. If you ever felt the feeling then you know. 

I feel like I'm past the goo stage. I went through the goo. I'm not quite a butterfly either. I just feel as though I'm meant to come out and let my wings dry a bit. And I did that, too. But I just got back inside the chrysalis and stayed there. I need to remember that I was born to feel the wind whip around me. That I was meant to be free.