"I'll open like a daisy every morning. I'll make my work."

     I'm on Vacation. The first day that I woke up I was so happy I cried. I felt like I had finally made it through some fucked up whats the word, jungle jim...not its like a course where you do different stuff like run under something and jump over something else. Crap, concussion brain. Obstacle course!!! That's the word. I've been trying to think of it for a week! Anyways. I had arrived. I was hungry, tired, and the energy that I had pent up to just make it here released. I had so many plans of what I was going to do go the the gardens, go to the tree, I realize now that if I tell all my plans then my secrets of what I love so much here will be out. so for now, I am going to keep them mostly to myself. I am just in that kind of mood. Well, I had my plans and the universe had its plans for me.  Be exhausted for several days, have your birthday, have the pre-requisite exhausted birthday breakdown, have fun with all your friends on your birthday and catch a cold. So yes this is the first time I am in Hawai'i where every day I have eaten chicken soup rather than piles of papaya.

     "Relax. Don't do anything" These were my orders and my body was making sure that I followed. So days of adventures were replaced with adventuring to the health food store to spend way too much money on kombucha, stay healthy stuff, wheatgrass and other produce, seriously it is sooo hard to not spend too much money at the health food store here. I also went to longs as well where everyone had the plague, so I stopped going there. Yes there is a nasty plague that is spreading and I haven't been doing much besides eating soup, looking at the ocean, watching some bad tv, reading, doing my homework which I wasn't stoked about, my practice, watching storms come across the ocean. I watch the ocean a lot. I joke and say that I am hanging out at my place, by the ocean, my own personal big natural sedative. I feel like I am a different person here though and the inevitable choice of returning "home" makes me sad just thinking of it. I don't want to leave the ocean behind. I love the ocean. But I have to leave.

     While I was here I did do one thing that I wasn't supposed to do. I got upset. I was doing this class where you in essence prepare to bring in all the magic you want to create in 2015 but first you have to look at 2014 what didn't work, what things from that year you want to leave behind, how you will change. It required lots of writing and delving into the past and that was not something that I was happy about doing. My anxiety about it all got kind of bad and I almost stopped doing it. I began to think that going over the past year wasn't healthy for me. But I made it through. I did my releasing ceremony, if you are ever going to burn a piece of paper in your house just be mindful that it creates lots and lots and lots of smoke, I wrote everything on a letter, I wrote everything I was grateful for, the things I wanted to release, the person I am and how I am going to be that person. It did involve lots of smoke.

     One of the hardest things to confront, was that I allowed someone else to treat me like shit.  Or maybe I allowed someone to treat me in a way in which I felt shitty. And that this had been a pattern. Not only had one significant person done it but others had as well. Speak up Chrystal! Be Authentic! Yes with a capital A. This is what I tell myself.

     I was reading Lena Dunham's "Not That Kind of Girl," which I almost regretted reading because it was sometimes triggering in a bad way and she wrote a bit that really spoke to my heart.

     "The way I saw it. I was fully capable of being treated with indifference that bordered on disdain while maintaining a strong sense of self-respect. I obeyed his commands, sure that I could fulfill this role while still protecting the sacred place inside of me that knew I deserved more. Different. Better.
But that isn't how it works. When someone shows you how little you mean to them and you keep coming back for more, before you know it you start to mean less to yourself. You are not made up of compartments! you are one whole person! what gets said to you gets said to all of you, ditto what gets done. Being treated like shit is not an amusing game or a transgressive intellectual experiment. It's something that you accept, condone, and learn to believe you deserve. This is so simple. But I tried to make it complicated.
I told myself I'd asked for it"-Lena Dunham

     It hurt my heart to look back and see the times where I compromised myself, my values for what my friend would say "Just some dick". Yep one day I was crying over a boy and my friend said "Really, all of this just over some dick. That's all he is is a dick" I won't ever forget it. Unfortunately if I let a "dick" treat me in ways I didn't like to be treated because I didn't speak up, I also let other people do it as well. In hindsight I wonder if my anxiety has just been a symptom of not speaking up.
Ugh, I am so over thinking about it and yet, I know that I need to hold this pain close to me for I need to know that it is always an option. That instead of believing I am deserving and lovable, instead of using my voice, I can be quiet in complacency as my values, beliefs and time are trampled over. I remember walking in the rain one day, realizing that I felt like shit and not thinking that I could do any better. Not in 2015, no ! NO! NO! NO! I will be authentic. I will not let the judgements or opinions of others stop me from speaking my truth and doing the things that I value. I have found happiness within and I am released from this conditioned idea that my happiness should be interdependent on whether or not I am in a relationship and how successful that relationship is. I know that I may have fucked up before and I am doing the work that needs to be done that corresponds to some of my values, especially when it is hard. I am still a work in progress, I got lost for so long in the wants, desires, needs of others that I kind of lost myself in some ways and I am exploring my dreams, I am following my heart, and I know that I am deserving of my dreams. That this life is a kingdom in an essence and I am a queen. I can decide who comes who goes. I can decide the laws. I can speak up.

     It hurt to see how I treated myself. How I let others treat me. It's time to bask in the sun of being treated well, being loved, being loving and being kind to others. To being authentic, even if, especially if I will be judged by it.  As Ru Paul says "What other people think of you is none of your business" I love quoting Mama Ru! Mama Ru, if you ever read this. I love you!

     "And I imagined my own pain, my anger magnified by fifty in the man who would send that email, the person who believes that life is a zero-sum game and girls are there to be your props, that anyone else's artistry is a mere distraction from the Lords grand plan to promote your agenda. How painful that must be, how suffocating. And I decided then that I will never be jealous. I will never be vengeful, I won't be throated by the old, or by the new. I'll open wide like a daisy every morning. I will make my work. -Lena Dunham