Turning Towards

 I called this blog 'Kinder Living' because it's the first thing that came into my head. This is meant to be automatic writing so really I shouldn't be punctuating at all but it is a place to pour out all the thoughts and crap and splurge that are accompanying me on this sober journey. The word kinder is about the fact that I am not kind mostly to myself, I am impoverished, I live in such scarcity, such self-denial, so pinching, and I am determined that this next crack at sobriety should not be about denying myself something, or feeling bad or ashamed and penitential but that I am walking into joy, into a wider place, into beauty, into seeing things properly, into being fully alive, into what I deserve, into being lucky, into what I can give myself not what I deny myself, how will I treat myself, I will I LIVE - I want to eat the delicious food I have so often gone without, saving the calories for booze, I want to wear all the sweet smelling face creams and have long baths with candles and bubbles, I want to have long walks, I want to go out on my bike and take a cheese and pickle sandwich and flask of hot chocolate and sit in a field to eat it, I want to read and listen to soul music when I want to, I want to properly sleep and have lie ins. I want to feel well. I want to really live and be awake in my life, not numbed.

"Still my whole life I have answered every cry for help with a pour, a turning away,' writes Kaveh Akbar. But now I want to turn towards. Previous attempts have been about what I am turning from. Now, what I am TURNING TOWARDS. My problem is that reality has always been too bright, almost hostile, too arresting, too intense - i once read that for the poets 'life is a crisis at every second' - I think it was written about the poet Shelley, or maybe he wrote it, but I understand that. That's why I wring my hands and squeeze my arms, to contain it, so no wonder I needed to numb it. Needed to numb myself to it.

But what would it look like to really live it, to not numb it, to not drown it.

This is the quote that has spoken to me: 

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

– Gospel of Thomas, verse 70