Thanks

I’ve just had the best birthday and New Years Eve combination ever.  Had a magical little interlude of a holiday in our daily routines of cleaning and cooking and amusing and adjudicating and hugging and telling off and talking…..which is a pleasant little hum of a routine, but one that’s so sweet to take time out from as well.

Before we left my frangers (cyber bullies or haters) were biting, and when we got back I found a whole mess of new haters had found me and were traipsing silently and anonymously through my blog by the thousands.   When I get signs of haters on my blog, my whole body kind of quivers and internally shakes for a while, as a reaction to the pure hate and venom that I know will exist on the forum or venue that’s hosting the little hate debate.  With odd comments that make me smile or show a fragment of the angel inside the demonspawn commenting.  But it’s generally pretty nasty. 

And overwhelmingly, I feel a need to say to my shadow fans and my haters……….

Thank you.

I realised very strongly as I looked at the one and only comment on a new forum that I needed to read to test the flavour of, that I really didn’t need to read any more.  And most likely never will.  Because I already know what you’re saying.  You’re saying things in a similar vein to the things I’ve been told all my life.  From my family, my church friends, my school bullies and teachers, my employers, my lovers, and random strangers on the street and in venues.  You’re expressing the voices that you hear inside yourselves, and from the media, and from all your peers, and it’s the voice of fear. 

The fear of sticking out, and of fitting in, and of doing things differently, and of heeding the call of the wild within.  The fear of what might happen if you threw all expectations to the wind and did what you really wanted to do.  Fear of what it might mean if those radical unstrung hippies were really ONTO something.  Fear of success, and fear of failure.  Fear of the dark and messy emotions.  Fear of rejection.  Fear of the future, especially if the whisperings of change and revolution come off.  Fear of what’s on the other side of what you’ve been told is ‘right’.   And a monumental fear of getting it right.  Loving ourselves and each other.  Letting love in. 

And of course at the root of it all for many of us, it’s fear of death and pain and grief (what would happen if we lost a loved one!), fear of joy and happiness and wild abandon, and fear of sex and love and intimacy (what would happen if we felt it and then it WENT! And even worse, what would happen if it stayed…..), and fear of birth and its inherent power and magics (what would happen if it went WRONG!  And even more, what would happen if it went perfectly……)

I don’t have to read your comments and your hate and fear, because I see reflections of it all around me.  The hateful things we say about each other in private and in the media.  The hate and fear we have for people who swim upstream, leave the flock, challenge our norms.  I see you when we go shopping, and you give us a filthy judgemental look, and I knew you really well at school.  You’re expert at creating teasing nick names, cause you got called so many yourself.  I knew you most painfully in my family.  The taunts and barbs and cruelties visited on me by siblings and parents who were giving to me what they felt for themselves, and also what was done to them. 

And through my adult life as I’ve slipped from one reality to another on a search for my truth, testing out hierarchy after cult fetish, and besotted short lived utopia, after tangled dream………I’ve got to know a lot of the stereotypes and judgements and boxes and ways, that folk that think they’re fitting into the ‘mainstream,’ can shred the self esteem of the ‘others’.

And I’ve danced and whirled and tried my best to impress, and to make you love me, and accept me, and understand me.  And I’ve taken all the things that you’ve said to heart and examined them, and examined them, until I can work out what belongs to me and what belongs to you.  Till I can understand the impact of your harsh comments.   I sucked those criticisms and judgements into my skin, and wore them and carried them for as long as I thought I deserved them.  They became my critical voices and internal cynics that tried hard to hurt me before anyone else could.  And I’ve learnt so well about love and hate and fear, and in the process of becoming who I really am, I’ve faced fear after fear after fear, and it’s getting to the point where I really love my fears, cause I know that the embracing of them is going to be one helluva authentic ride.  One incredible story to tell.  And another deep lesson to learn. 

You’ve led me a merry chase trying to get your approval, till we come to a time when I really know that I just don’t need it.  I don’t need the approval of a society that hides from itself and rapes the world whilst pretending that it’s all Santa Clauses and Tooth Fairies and bargain hunting………was it you that got that note from the woman in a slave labour camp in China tucked into your plastic toy?  I don’t need the approval of my family of birth, who are all tucked up in their own realities.  I don’t need to keep searching for a place to fit in, because it’s all around me, everywhere.  And late at night, or in intense life moments, or when you have enough of whatever drug you need in your system to let your guard down and tell your truth………..I know that all the bitterness and hate and judgement that you project, is the nest that your soul lays in.  I know you judge harshly in others what you can’t deal with in yourself.  And I also know that underneath the prickliest exteriors and hardest faces……lay the biggest hurts and softest hearts behind barbed barricades.

And here’s where the thanks comes in. 

I’m so glad that you’ve been there with your examples and lessons cause you’ve taught me to just keep going.  You’ve forced me to evolve.  You’ve shown me that there really is no safe harbour in societies expectations, and that the only really true haven is to be found in self love and acceptance, and connection to the rest of creation.  And you’ve taught me enough in my years on this earth about pain and fear and sticking out, that I can feel the shakes in my body, and not take it on.  Not need to peek at what you’re saying about me!  Not feel an urge to try and change your mind and get your approval.  Not feel a nagging doubt somewhere at the back of my head that you may be right. 

What was it Mae West said about no press being bad press?  You angry mob have actually brought more people to my blog than anything else in its history.  And some have been kind enough to let me know, that even though they thought I was totally whacky in many ways, I’ve also written bits that really made them think.  Presto.  Shazam.  What an awesome result.  Couldn’t think of a better outcome.  I know that even if you’re metaphorically vomiting in your lap as you read my words, that a seed of love nonetheless goes in, and someday may get nurtured.  And I know that even if you’re attracted to me as someone to spit at and despise, that you’re still attracted to me.  There’s something in me that mirrors you, or whispers to you, or tempts you, or secretly delights you, and you can’t but help give me whatever it is that comes to you first, while you take tid bits of me back to your cave, to ponder in the silent hours. 

Cause we’re all literally one.  I know you so well, because I know myself.  And my voices that have come and gone, and been quiet and strident, and are all finally on gentle speaking terms.  I feel more and more a gentle metamorphoses opening and waking between me and the rest of me, of parallel paths coming into clearer focus.  Our great human clan is walking nearer each other all the time, and getting closer and closer to stopping in its tracks, turning to really look at each other, and give ourselves a hug.  We’re coming out of our isolation, and our loneliness, and our fears, and our seperations, and seeing that we’re all family afterall. 

Keep doing what you’re doing one and all!  Because it’s all these tendrils of possibility and connection that are being formed as a fragile web, that we’ll strengthen with our gatherings and the love we feel with the families we form.  As all our possibilities within the universe come together to weave the song of our lessons.  All the dark and sordid stories and the grievings and the fears, will add their deep blooded colours to the learnings and the feelings we can be. 

For a new age is upon us.  An age where after having explored the perimeters of our boundaries, of how far we’ll go, of how bad it can get, we come back to ourselves.  Mature.  Make peace with ourselves, and our internal mother and father and child, and grow into the humans that we want and need to be.  That we already are and always have been. 

Consciously evolving into chaotic harmony and the sacred balance of life.  Taking our part in the terrestrial dances of total interconnection and harmonising symphonies. 

So bullies and haters?  You’re doing your bit to force the evolution and self awarenesses of the people you attack.  In my case at least.  I hope that one day you find peace enough in yourselves, that you can choose to stop giving other people a hard time about who they are. 

Peace.

And thank you.

P.S.  This little meme turned up on Facebook just in time to be totally relevant.....