Manifestations on the Rise

I know I've been doormat for a while. But while I was neglecting my blog, life was happening all around me. The uncertainties and ambiguous health concerns as well as some intense emotional experiences left me feeling weak and helpless, but my body has an internal reset button. I hate to feel devastated, so much so that I have an unhealthy habit of suppressing my feelings. I do that because I can't bear the pain. Over the years I've discovered the danger of not dealing with my feelings and since I haven't had much practice coping with them, I feel like I struggle with it more than others. When it gets intolerable, my body just normalizes. I hit rock bottom and it's as if all my tears, pain, and sadness flush out of me and the water rises me to the top. I felt refreshed in some ways.

I'm pursuing modeling. It's something I've always been interested in but never gave attention to cuz either I wasn't very motivated or didn't have the time. Since it seems like every 9-5 job slips away from me and as much as I hate to admit it, so is my memory to the point that I'm having a difficult time even keeping basic jobs that it's a good opportunity to explore this realm. I feel like the universe is rewarding me in this path cuz already I've met five photographers in a matter of two months. I've had two photo shoots and have another one scheduled for tomorrow, one on Saturday, and I have to make appointments with three other photographers. These are all free, too!

Eventually I'll need compensation, of course but I like that I'm not losing money in an attempt to make money. It's an altruistic benefit. I just have to move forward from here once I gather everything I need to do just that. It's a bit frustrating cuz I want to create profiles online and I'm unable to complete the task cuz I'm not understanding how to save photos or upload them properly due to its size, etc. Fortunately pretty much all of the photographers have been exceptionally helpful, so I feel I can ask them for assistance.

So much has happened and I'm not really sure I'm inclined to record it all. It seems like a chore. But basically here goes! I stalked (yes stalked) my former English professor who now lectures at a different college from where I attended. With my health scare, it's made me examine my priorities. I've bounced around from one interest to another - writing, holistic nutrition coach, modeling, etc. While all of these capture my attention, writing has been a life long passion of mine and the only reason I haven't put together an adequate amount of publishable material is well....that's what I'm trying to discover. No actually that's what I'm trying to change.

As I thought more about this, I intuitively realized who I should seek out. Of course I could always email him and I imagine he would've been receptive, but taking the initiative and asking someone for assistance in my writing project is more likely to result in success if I do it in person. I'm so fortunate that he's receptive, enthusiastic, and has agreed to help me. I didn't go into detail but explained to him that I have a health concern I'm dealing with, it's opened up my schedule, money's tight, and I'm unable to attend school. More importantly, I don't think the key to putting so many of my writing visions together is inside of a classroom with assignments that are unrelated to my personal tasks. Since this is someone who pursued teaching English as a profession, he's more than willing to help me.

It's almost funny that I didn't think about this before. It's cuz I've never asked myself what can I do to help produce results, which is odd right? You'd think I'd ask such an obvious question! But sometimes things have to unfold at certain times and in different increments, so I'm going to choose to be grateful for what's happening now instead of concerning myself with the irrelevant past.

A friend has completed a book and is onto a second one. He's always been encouraging and supportive of my writing. He texted me once how do you not have a book yet and sadly cuz I wasn't in the healthiest mindset, I took offense to his comment which as it turned out was meant to be a kind-hearted one. It wasn't at all a judgmental inquiry and more along the lines of you're so talented. I found myself so excited and giddy for him but at the same time, that genuine happiness for him was an external feeling I was releasing and it was leaving my body. It left me feeling empty. I wanted to keep that excitement for myself, but I don't have anything to be excited for. I want to change that. I don't want my friend's success to be a bittersweet experience laced with a tinge of envy. It affects the quality of friendship I can offer for one thing. But I believe all of that has led me in the right direction.

Timing can be so magical. I became even closer with a friend who I've in the past only spent time with briefly, but you can tell there's this bond between us and she didn't hesitate to express it. She shared with me that she has two sisters, but she feels a sisterly connection with me. To this day, that's one of the best compliments I've ever received. So I couldn't be happier to have gotten closer with her. We both bring out the best qualities in each other, too.

A natural flow of events landed me as her Personal Organizer, which has rewarded her energetically and for me, as well. She gave me some money for my efforts, although I wasn't looking for it. Since she doesn't have much money, she's now offering me products. She's a designer. It's amazing how such a seemingly small gesture became an epiphany. A year ago I thought to ask her to help me accessorize but hesitated since I rarely talked to her and didn't want to run the risk of disturbing her, even though she's always been open and inviting. I rationalized during that time that although I love her designs, the jewelry she makes isn't really my style. To think I wasted an entire year not asking for her advice when it was available all this time hidden in her closet!

It made me realize that I still have self-sabotage traps, and I'm so grateful that I have her in my life cuz she's providing me with a safe, encouraging, and supportive environment for me to say and do the things I instinctively hesitate to do such as ask for help. Her genuine nature is an eye-opener. This is more than accessories for me. It's teaching me to trust my intuition and myself. I want to accessorize more cuz I have a difficult time seeing the big picture. I'm excellent at attention to detail, which is analytical and intellectual. But my creative side is underdeveloped and I want to practice it more. I want to find my creative identity.

Much in the same way I hesitated and rationalized, I remember years ago watching Martha Stewart with a guest who reconstructs t-shirts. I was intrigued and yet I rationalized my attention away by telling myself I'm not crafty, it's too much work, and I'm not creative. I don't even give myself a chance! As I was cleaning out my friend's closet, she was showing me shirts she wants to reconstruct and I remember that vague feeling of appeal resurface, but I yet again ignored it! Now I want to explore it.

I may decide to not pursue it, but I want to allow myself a chance to make informed decisions, rather than rejecting ideas before they have a chance to take shape. The truth is I need the money and this could be a way to do it. It doesn't have to be permanent or maybe it can be. I feel like this free time is about exploring. No matter how much effort I put into filling my time with productive agendas according to societal standards, I find myself in the same place I'm at now. Maybe I'm supposed to discover something.

I want to build my portfolio for modeling. I want paid photo shoots. I want my rent to be lowered. I want more income. I want to explore the creative realm and develop my creative identity. I want to build more meaningful relationships. I want my relationship to deepen. I want to learn to be more honest and open about my feelings. I want to feel comfortable taking the initiative to show someone how I truly feel or at the very least not withdrawal by giving mixed signals. I want to find unconventional ways to make money. I feel that I have to take advantage of uncommon ways to profit at this point in my life, so I'm trying to keep my eyes, ears, and intuition peeled for those opportunities. Manifestations on the rise!

Trying to Snap the Uninspiration Out of Me

I know "uninspiration" isn't a real word but it's a real feeling. Writing has always come naturally from me. But lately I've been feeling dangerously unmotivated and a ton of other adjectives I resisted from posting on fb, not out of discretion but out of my own fear that these feelings I wish didn' exist would become more real. Then I realized that these feelings that are leading to a sense of indifference in my own life are more real than what can be seen or touched; it's becoming a part of me and I want to change that. So I thought it best to just start writing even if I have no major epiphany or deep insight to offer.

In the back of my mind I'm aware that people are reading this or I hope so, and that affects my writing but I stopped doing it for an audience a long time ago but the bad habits that restricted me still linger. They just manifest during different moments of struggles. I used to hesitate writing when I felt that it wasn't good enough for the readers, not because your time was important to me but because I couldn't stand the idea of someone hating my entry. Now I don't give a fuck!

And that's great because I write for myself now. But when I don't consciously feel like I have nothing of value to express, write, or read myself, I forfeit the attempt altogether and that's detrimental to my self-growth because our subconscious minds understand far more than our conscious minds. So I shouldn't be afraid to write just because I feel I have nothing to say. How much information am I holding back from myself? This place is my sanctuary. I shouldn't only visit it when I'm on the run. What a symptom management oriented approach.

Imbalance has always been a struggle of mine, but I didn't become aware of it until recently. I used to be overfilled with poison and my body was so polluted in this state that I never knew what it was to be free of it. So I never recognized the damages. When something becomes a part of you, even if it's something horrible, trying to separate from it is one of the most painful experiences you can ever go through. I was bludgeoned and beaten. Because so much of me was infused in this poison, a part of me was extracted during the separation process. So I had to rebuild a new me. I wish it wouldn't have taken such an extreme and necessary force to snap me out of it, but I'm grateful for the results and who it shaped me into.

Once I recognized the damage it was doing to me, my body naturally tried to expel and reject the poison surrounding me. I've gotten receptive to keeping those things at a distance but what I failed to realize is that now I'm an empty vessel. I'm no longer filled with poison, but I have to be filled with something. I should be nourished, but I'm not used to feeding myself anything. I'm used to crap just being crammed into me that I have left myself spiritually malnourished and that's why I've been feeling uninspired and indifferent. I have to be filled with something whether it's negative or positive. An absence of either is still a form of imbalance. Negativity inspired me to not be the failure I was suspected to become. Without such discouragement to fight against, I became blind to the fact that I was failing myself.

As I found myself becoming dangerously unmotivated about the fact that I have no job and could get evicted if I can't make rent and slowly digressing into a state of indifference about it, I started becoming detached. I memorize phone numbers. I don't rely on my cell phone to be my memory, but I forgot so many of my friends phone numbers and it's not because I'm becoming 27 in 7 days that in the past month I began forgetting phone numbers I've known for well over at least six months, if not years. It's because I began detaching in general with myself, the people around me, and with reality.

I've been going to sleep early. I'm tired throughout the day. I'm unmotivated. I'm losing touch with people. My diet isn't what it was. I'm stagnant. I'm beginning to develop the symptoms that constitute depression. Don't get me wrong. I don't think I'm depressed, but it's frightening to think that I'm not too sure how I feel because feelings are starting to become absent in me and these symptoms are so close to what depressed people do experience.

But here's something new. Throughout all of this indifference as the lack of employment is about ready to swallow my life hole and shit out nothing but crap, the only thing that's managed to make me feel anything is empathy. When my friends got sick. When my friend started developing breathing difficulties. When my friend expressed sadness about Valentine's coming up. When a friend I hadn't spoken to in a while confided in me that she's been seeing a counselor and battling depression, that's when it hit me.

It was at that moment I realized I'm not far from that path but without having talking to her, I may not have known because I've been so emotionally detached until it was too late. People, even new people in my life, just naturally open up to me and sometimes it trips them out that they do and feel they can share so much with me and I love it. I realized that when I help others, I help myself. Altruism.

Not having a job. Being bored. Uninspired to write, the one constant in my life that I felt I needed and without it, I believed I'd fall apart. Feeling helpless. Feeling unwanted and worthless in society. Forgotten. At the brink of losing my apartment and losing all of my beautiful pretty things. The freedom I've come to enjoy and recently acquired was at risk of being snatched away from me and all of this left me apathetic. I've been homeless before. I know how difficult it is to not have a roof over my head, so it isn't like I'm just not properly frightened that's keeping me from caring. And yet what made my heart turn was another person in pain.

Small but significant moments like these have been making me feel like lately I've been wanting to go into an altruistic field. I've contemplated counseling but also something more expansive like a charity organization. I want to be part of the team that makes the changes happen. I don't want to just push the paperwork. I have to know and see that my actions, whatever they are, are helping people in need. I want to talk directly with people who are struggling and both feel and see their progress. I have to sense and know that my contributions are making a difference. With some things, I need more than faith; I need evidence.

I'm not sure what this means but I plan to find out. This isn't at all the entry I had in mind. I've had some powerful experiences. I missed one job fair, so I went to a recent one that was pretty incredible. It gave me hope and left me with some sense of wisdom I wanted to express, but that moment has passed. While the experience resonates in me, I'm no longer compelled to express it the way I desired when it first happened.

It's tragic but I have to accept that moments pass, one of the most difficult realities to grasp in life. Lately I've been wondering what I'd do with my life if I didn't want to write as though I'd have to find the answer to that question, but I've been too afraid to face it. Now with each growing day of indifference and the only thing that's able to spark me is empathy, I think I need to stop feeling selfish for wanting to help people cuz it helps me and just be a part of the conducive process.

I can no longer be the way I am now. I feel like I failed my friends. One friend who always came to me when he struggled said he doesn't want to burden me with his problems because he knows what sadness does to me. It wasn't always that way because I wasn't always that way. And I know he's struggling. He knows I'll sense it from him, so he's staying away. I don't want that from my friends. I can understand why he does that, but it's also hurtful to feel like he wants to detach himself from me. That's not what friendship is about. Well it is from his perspective and I'd do the exact same thing if I were in his situation, but I'm in my mine and this is how I feel.

The scary thing about being indifferent and detached is that I don't know what's going on or that this is even happening. I'm at risk of becoming who I was before and I don't want that. I still feel like premonitions plague me, but it's also a sign that I'm connected, connected to myself, connected to the universe, connected to my friends, connected to feelings, connected to what makes me human. I didn't even realize it was missing and I channeled the very little emotional energy I did have on worrying about my friends who were visibly in trouble, but the ones that really need help are the ones who are silently suffering and that's what I became blind to.

They're the ones who are lost like I am and often times unaware of what they're going through. They never ask for help. You have to be one of them to recognize them. Blind leading the blind is often mocked and trashed, but the ones who know where they are don't know where to find where the lost people are, nor will they recognize them. So many of us put on fake smiles, go out into the world appearing not at a lost or confused and severely struggling the way we are, and people buy into our ability to put our problems behind curtains. When I lose myself, I lose the ability to help others.

As it turns out, writing is a smaller priority than part of me wishes it were. I wanted to become a writer when I was a child because I wanted to be heard. I thought it was the only way people would pay attention to me. Then as I became older I wanted to become a writer, so I wouldn't be forgotten. I didn't want children. That was sincere then. I feared that without a legacy I'd be erased from history and I thought having my name printed would be my mark in the world, but that was the detached me talking. Now I realize that to truly be remembered, you have to make an impact in peoples' lives. Authors are forgotten all the time. A record isn't a memory. I want to be remembered and with significance. I believe I will be because I can feel what I have done for my friends, and it isn't always through my writing. I want to be remembered and I'm realizing that being a writer isn't the best way to achieve that. Plus I wanted to become a journalist to help people. Then when I lost my desire to become a journalist but clung onto writing, I've been sort of aimlessly floating.

I can't continue to deny how I feel or . I wanted to be a writer and maybe I still can be, but that only appeals to a smaller side of me as I continue to grow and evolve. My self growth and embracing who I am has led me to my premonitions. It leaves me more connected to others than some. I have a friend who I should've never lost touch with. It wasn't too long but long enough. As my indifference was building in me and my intuition was suffocating, it manifested itself as a voice in my head taking on a friend's voice asking me to check up on my boy and I ignored it/me with the rationalization that I'm worried about friends who are really struggling like with breathing. As it turns out, I should've listened because he's been sick and as I'm returning to my intuitively receptive state I keep getting this, "How long have you been out of sync?"

If blind leading the blind is beneficial because it's having a mirroring effect, it's a two way street. How long have I been out of sync? Long enough that I wasn't able to see my friend's downfall. And I don't like feeling like I failed them. It's not my responsibility to keep them from falling, but it's also not my desire to lose myself as my friends struggle. I wanted to write because that was my way of wanting to give back. The detached me was more than satisfied to give back to society, but as I became a more intimate person, I want to give back in a more personal way.

The truth is that writing isn't as satisfying to me as it once was, although this is very therapeutic. What led me to finally do this was that when I realized I'm in emotional trouble, too, I instinctively looked up ways to combat depression naturally through food, vitamins, and exercises, the healthier way to combat depression and what my friend prefers. I wanted to compile a list of choices she can reference at her own time, when she's receptive to it rather than to heal myself. My priorities and habits definitely have to change, but I'm beginning to realize what my desires are, to help people.

I also want to end this by thanking a long time friend of mine who surprised me with an encouraging email. We don't keep in touch as much as I'd like, but every so often he checks up on me and his timing couldn't even be better. And the advice you gave me, you were right. I mean look at this never ending entry. I'm at a friend's place and he asked if I'm writing a novel. LOL! But seriously thank you!