unity consciousness is pretty rough right about now

Today I continue to be broken. It's been a while.
Interestingly, I started to cry while I was washing my hands in front of my bathroom mirror, and somehow stepped outside myself and saw what maybe one of my friends would see. My rosacea was calmer than usual, my eyes were bright green like they are when I'm emotional, and my hair was gently purple grey amidst the brown, straighter than usual because it was slept on for too long. My eyes filled with tears and I thought, huh, poor baby, you're so sad still.
And the feeling I had a few years ago, that bit of compassion deeply felt for someone I care about but can't help, for someone that doesn't 'deserve' to be sad, who is just as special and not-special as everyone else, and who really worked hard and failed, arose.
I put my (now clean and dry) hands on my face and sort of hugged myself. While the tears spilled out and my face got ugly. But I could see still, underneath, as well as superficially, a person who learned how to love deeply quite recently, and was cast aside. A person who watched her mother die sad and lonely and grasping for love from outside reality. A person who's lost all her parental figures so far, to dementia, cancer, a religious cult, and misplaced blame. A person who's had every male parental figure and partner in her life she tried to love decide she wasn't worth their time. No one ever wanted to claim her as part of their family, their life.
A person who is therefore free, very privileged, with a job that might allow her to help a few people sometimes.
My best friend asked me yesterday (yes, there are three women who continue to be my reasons for living) what I'm going to do about this feeling of darkness I can't seem to shake. And I don't think there's anything I can do to change it. I'm seeing reality and it isn't good, and no medication or mushroom will stop wars, famines, environmental destruction, or even just people being selfish jerks to each other. I feel every day how we are all one. It just lets me see how everything is logarithmically building to a chaotic end.
Maybe all I can do is learn to be more skillful at seeing and functioning better in the dark.

uncertainty

there's a whole chapter in my book about uncertainty
i imagined i was ok at navigating it
i'd done ok through rough seas before
but this is too deep for me
the possibilities are all completely out of my control
and most are too painful to fully imagine

risk of suicide increases with social isolation
bad choices often fuel bad choices
lying about one thing likely means lying about others
beliefs that are untrue cause inordinate suffering
difficult circumstances are sometimes too much for people to take over and over and over as life seems to close in and cut off ideas about what it should look like if you were worthy or deserving or good

but you are good
your worth is not from a job or money or a functioning truck
it's not about whether you're depressed or need therapy to quit the guilt and shame addiction
it's not even about being a good dad to someone who lied to you (and presumably to her son)
you deserve time
to rest to heal to regroup
but you'd have to take that time
doing the daily flossing of rebuilding reserves and health

i wish you would let me be your safe little fort
i wish you could see the good things you have access to and the people that love you
i wish you could start practicing not abandoning by not abandoning me
if wishes were horses...
i'm not too proud to beg, but i don't know what to ask for because i don't know what's wrong
so instead i am learning, so very painfully, about uncertainty

poet

There is a poet that lives above my heart

who sometimes makes the journey to my mind to help me write.

though she rarely speaks in complete sentences,

she is always there, translating the world to me.

on normal days it is a word here and there, but sometimes,

When my eyes catch something beautiful,

she holds my breath for me in her hands while she sings.

on full moon nights, she paces back and forth in my mind,

restless and drunk on moonlight,

spouting insight or nonsense.

When my heart breaks,

she falls deep into the cracks,

poems tumbling whole out of her mouth

as she cries with me and fights not to drown.

When love overflows from the heart beneath her feet

she smiles out of my eyes so I smile with her smile

and her home becomes as beautiful as the world she sees.