DISCLAIMER: this blog is a method of release for me and with that release i hope to let go of some of the great shame I have held through the years as I have dealt with my mental illness, bipolar. I hope to also educate whats its like through my journey and to even help others around me learn how to help me when times are tough. Know that I am ok. Sometimes the darkness is rough but I want to share it all knowing that i have the help I need and Im finding my way through to the light again. With Love Liana
It was a long night. The chill of the night making its way up and down my spine. Impossible to sleep. All my clothes piled on, layers upon layers. My sleeping bag just short of being able to bundle around my neck, leaving a slight breeze entering in. brrrrrrr. As the hours passed so did my positive mind. What started out as a reflection of the days events, evacuating my student and knowing dam well in the begining that I did all I could to help her turned into a maze of critical self evaluation followed shortly by the ugliness of insecurity. I began to doubt my ability to do a good job in the field and as the night disappeared found myself picking apart all areas of my life and just as the sun began to make a peak above the mountains wondered if while I was freezing the man I loved was keeping someone else warm. Gross. Where does this bizarre take on reality come from. A lack of sleep, too many hours laying awake with nothing to do but watch the clock. Only a little down time was ever good for me anyway and certinaly not a long twelve hours. My mind was bound to take me to dark places, after all it had all night to create stories and recreate and recreate. Oh the brilliance of the mind!!
‘Tea, tea’ I heard from our kitchen staff. I was laying in bed, what a waste of a night. I grabbed my tea and layed back pulling up my sleeping bag. I was not ready to move yet. But I didnt have long, fifteen minutes and I had to be up and running. I reflected on my night of crazy stories, fuck, my mind went to crazy places. I grabbed my tea and jumped out of my tent ready to let go of any remaining negative thoughts of the night. Knowing well how distorted they were.
No sooner that I started walking the beautiful Ilka visited me in my mind and in my heart reminding me that I have everything in me, there is nothing outside of me that I dont already have and with that my smile broadened and my heart opened again. I smiled I have all the love and hugs I desire inside me. Everything I think I need from those around me, I remember truly is inside me. I walked in my love, my love of myself and for everything that I am. Its true, I do have everything and throughout the entire day thats all I felt. Have you evver noticed how when you feel love for yourself you dont feel like you are missing anything? and yet when you are experiencing not loving yourself, eerything else around you and in you tells you that you are lacking? The mountains did what I knew they would from the moment I arrived, they showed me again who I am, all of me, my light and my darkness and today I felt my own love for me return in a way that is more powerful than ever before. Today I see everyone around me for who they are, for the beauty that they too are, I feel the love that I have for them without attachment, without my need. Its nice today to know I dont need them, I just love them and want them in my life. All of you.
It has been an interesting chain of events throughout the past eight weeks or so. I have felt a slow loss of love for myself, something I can put down to coming off my meds, spending most of the past six months overseas, and losing all the rituals I had in place to help keep my balance, my usual self care, and time for myself and reflection. Oh and I cant forget not enough potting time!! Leaving me in a wirlwind of life, ups and downs, everything slowly mounting on top of me, unable at times to know how I really feel as I go from one place to another, I want something then I dont, my own fuze for life becoming so short that almost anything that anyone did to annoy me would push me over my own edge… and leaving me feeling like I am lost in the world of living, unable to see if I can actually do it anymore. I get it now, and as with any time of challenge I am thankful. Thankful I can see the light, I am the light. My curiosity and questioning for life and why life goes this way and that for me leaving me again with the answers I need to keep moving forward. Even in my darkness I have never given up, never given up looking for my answers and how I can move forward in my life.
I hadnt really realised in loosing my love of myself lately, I was loosing my love of life, of those around me and it was getting dark and dangerous. Ever so slowly pushing those I love away. Well it feels like that too me anyway. A lack of love for myself, reflecting to me that love for me is not out there.
Now I have all I need and more, again I see where I am heading and I walk taller than ever before. My smile and my light is shining greater than it ever has. My love for life back and Im ready.
Although i still have another nineteen days before I get home, I am more excited than ever about the journey ahead waiting for me. I have new plans, for new challenges and new adventures and Im ready. My love is beaming so watch out, I want to love you like never before. xoxoxoxox
Wildflower 