I am a dream bellydancer

"We must remove the skin and burn it all for fuel," he sings. Later, "I don't feel like ever getting well, tell me the lie you're taking your time, over and over."

I dreamt last night I was a belly dancer. I felt free, beautiful, sensual, goddess incarnate. It was divine. I don't think anyone was watching. I was dancing near the ocean, then suddenly transported to a forest opening that led to a waterfall feeding into a beautiful expanse of trickling water. I was surrounded by rocky formations and the sun warmed me before setting heavy behind....then the sky was moon and stars only and still I danced, undulated beneath silvery lights. Movements were graceful, sinuous and almost snakey, a fluid mirror of the waterfall. I pulsed and released it all up into the sky and into the ground with arched back until I was empty of it and then I welcomed the good to fill the emptiness I had made. Wishing with all my might that I do right by it.

When I was a teenager, I went through a very short phase of breaking through my skin when I was in emotional pain, which back then, seared through me. I think teens react so strongly to the pain because they are new to life, and it's a fresh experience. Like an animal, we lash out from the gut so sometimes the resulting behavior following the alien emotions don't make any sense or have any root in a logical mind.

I stopped breaking my skin on my own after a month. I am weird that way. Habits die hard sometime but with me, sometimes they die abruptly with no warning, like smoking did. I remember it pretty well, not completely understanding why I was doing what I was doing and once I did, I stopped and began to paint (which unfortunately I allowed to die when mom died). Something like emotion is so abstract. We cannot see it, touch it, taste it, hear it directly. Something about not being able to express it, see it, examine it, handle it literally... made me feel like I had no control over it, that it had control over me. To regain control, I tried to make the abstract something visible to my naked eye, something I felt on a simple, physical level that I could cope with somehow more easily than on the complex level I had brought it down from. I still have one faint scar, like a whisper from the past. No one would notice it except me. I don't even think I have ever told Jessie where it is.

I think I yearn still to draw the emotions and thoughts that are building up inside of me to the surface, translate it into simple language, something more visible. There is comfort in witnessing a representation of the abstract. Somehow it assures that I exist. That I am real. I very much want to be real. Obviously I have this body with which I can express and experience myself sensually. I yearn to bring the beauty, the important stuff that MAKES me feel alive to the outside somehow. I think being unemployed I have turned to stupid outlets like Facebook which is entertaining and fine. But it's not what I really want or crave. I am reacting but not necessarily in the best way - it's not cutting or harming my physical body like breaking my skin from teenage years but....I see the parallel.

Maybe the dream was my mind/soul's way of expressing another way to release what's inside into more visible form that would satisfy my desire without harming. I am not sure if the end result should be bellydance but I think that is an good starting outlet for me.

And now I get ready to pick Jessie up for an early morning doctor's appointment.

Goosebumps

Ayla by DJ Tiesto draws out goosebumps of nostalgia. I feel like the ghost of who I was is watching me, wondering, maybe admiring although she could be disappointed. I don't know. 

I had tidal wave dreams the other night. Ocean poured in through the bottom of an open window in my room. At first I was scared and doing everything I could to avoid being touched. But then I went outside, climbed onto the roof and up into a nearby tree. I watched the tidal waves roll up on the land, tickling my dangling legs. A male passerby asked if I needed assistance and I told him I was just fine. The fear had subsided and I eventually jumped down to play in the water. 

I had other dreams of being involved with people I don't know in real life. It was like an odd history book of me that was inaccurate as far as reality goes. I can't remember much but I wish I did.

Tears won't fucking stop

All I can do is cry and I don't know or want to look at why. There's something that got lost along the way and now that I've thought to search for it I can't find it. Images of that American Indian woman I once "remembered" being centuries ago spring to mind. I see her clawing at herself, wringing arms and pulling hair and neck. I still see the blood trickling down her brown skin, and why? Because she has just realized that the thing she was looking for can never be retrieved, forever lost. 

I can't stop crying. I have not been this stubbornly depressed in a long time. Often I can yank myself out of it in short time but the quicksand effect pulling back this time has greater force than times past. It worries me. I either want to hide away from everything and everyone or drive far, far away. Neither seems progress toward any end at all and I need to get a hold of myself.

Past

Leaving the past behind is difficult, especially when it is so inextricably woven to the present, and in fact shaped the "now" we know. There is no real escape from the past. Therefore, it is important to know to draw from the past without letting it draw from you.

Commit, goddammit

I crave solitude for the healing. I crave social action for the distraction for a different form of healing. A strengthening exercise to pump me up for the Things That Matter.

I am my own person. No one else's. I am responsible for me. I am the creator and artist of Chance. I want to set aside the weights and pursue a self-created destiny, eke out the life and future I know is for the highest good. But everyone can want like everyone can take a shit - it's biologically encoded for survival. Surviving is not reviving or living. Transcend "want" and transform it into "do". Commit. Goddammit, Chance, commit to yourself or you won't be able to commit to anything or anyone in full ever. 

Internal locus of control is a good thing

So you were upset

About me telling you that I wanted to jump into the technical communication course

And telling you the cost

And you said you felt kept out of the loop

But because I've been talking about it this whole time I didn't feel that way

Also I made the decision to "just do it"

As I was driving home

But realized that it was an IMPULSE

That I didn't research my options well enough beforehand

And that I tend to get impulses/urges to take action when I feel like other things are out of my control (i.e. money, some aspects of us, my future)

The impulse to take action is my way of regaining control over what I believe is controllable

It re-establishes identity I think is getting lost

or threatened

or security

safety whatever "good" thing is threatened

The end.

Last night

Every fiber in my being glowed fire-red and I felt like a hair-trigger bomb. I was going to drown in it. Once it faded, everything was depleted. Damaged goods, like I said. I am so rarely that angry and it almost made me throw up.

I kept feeling a strong presence in my room when I tried to sleep afterward last night. It has been a long time since I felt anything like that so I told it if it existed, I was not in the mood and to leave immediately. It did not work so I read erotica and worked on myself to give the remnant, shaky energy leftover from the inner fire a place to dissipate.

Today I look forward to being a stereotypical girl with Tomasita. We are going to do MAKE-UP fun for the wedding and our ex co-worker Alexis will be the artist. I hope I can still find that package of my contacts.