butterflies weren't made for nets : healing ricebag

I don't want to BE happy.

I mean, I would like to experience periods of happiness along with periods of sadness and the varying intensity and extremes of these and other emotions and I want for all of them to fall across the grey line blurring the margins separating Ricebag's conflicting Twin Loyalties of Fear and Hope. I just don't want to feel Happy any more or less than I want or need to feel any other emotion. What I mean is that while it would be a privilege to experience happiness on a frequent basis I don't want to BE happy. I like and enjoy and desire feeling happy, I do, but I have strange suspicion that happiness isn't so sweet unless it is experienced by some one that also experiences living, loving and loathing and the whole kaleidescope of fucked up and free and rampant and controlled emotions. So please please, for Ricebag, throw in the blood and tears and sweat and snot with the trophies and butterflies and stars as well ... let Happiness live in the chaos and find its place amongst the unexpected human alliance of passion and anger and frustration and fear and joy and heartache and regret and bitterness and jealousy and compassion and of course, always always Love, love in all its red haze and white hot intensity and the exquisite sadness of love palling from purple to bruising. I think that's my reality. And I want it to be full and messy and mine. Because then I can know it and taste it and more importantly, recognise it. And more spectacularly, be surprised by it. Some of the happiest moments of ricebag's life have been the surprising ones ... when happiness stuck her down in the most unexpected way, in the most unusual context, in the most undeserving moment.

Any attempt to sterilise this messy clutter Ricebag's emotional pallate will murder the tiny bitty part of me that lets me know I am unique. And that's the tiny bitty part that also tells me that Ricebag's emotional journies need to be internal before they can be anything else. Suffering and Pride and Gladness and Self-Loathing and Self-Loving. Even Happiness. All of it and the Terror too, inside me, please. Self-contained. Ricebag was never good at and still can't really share her internal intense struggle aginst her Self with others like show-and-tell or even show-and-share ... can't show you while or why I'm suffering and cutting myself up. But with recovery I can and I will give away the spoils in gladness. Although there have been times Ricebag can share the pain and I want others to see it and recognise it and acknowledge it and maybe take ownership of their part of it, those times are bittersweet and rare ... and even rarer are the other times when I can't help but that awesome fears tumble out of my mouth and out of my eyes like cracked marbles, well before awesome my pride can keep them in.

Is that why I'm splitting at the seams? Maybe. Probably. Ok, Yes.

What I do know is that I don't want to BE "happy" - as in a perpetual state of "happiness" where I am generally a "happy" person. I don't want that - even if in some alternate universe it could ever be true for me. While there are some people who are genuinly "happy", I don't believe they are the ones that proclaim it - in truth I don't understand people who say they "just" want to be "happy". Maybe they mean something else. But I'm pretty sure I don't want that either. And I'm not being critical or judgemental of what people desire - I'm trying to accept who I am and the limits which mark that space.

What I DO hope for is contentment. It would be satisfying, I think, for me, to live a life that reached a point where I was content. And just the idea of "satisfaction" feels HUUUUGE in my universe where the air is full of choking-promise, of unfillment and 'less than'.

To ricebag, "contentment" would be a place where all the bullshit and the tears and the sheer hard work and the partying and the playing and the sad sad waste and the slim but wondrous product and all the moving and all the static - where it all meant that I had reached a playing field somewhere in me, in my gut or in my head, a place where all that detritus and all the physical marvel of me could sit at the same table as my Ego and I would just know that I had done something with what God gave me. And it might not have been Glorious but it was truly some thing that God through Nature had sworn was the best possibility or the fullest promise of someone as feeble as me.

And maybe then all the cutting hungry drying yearning of wanting to be MORE will be silenced. And it's THAT silence that I crave. And that is why I seek contentment.

But while living a as a content being would be a utopia for someone with my restlessness, in truth, it might also equal death - for the satisfaction of the need to be free of desire. What I really want is to be healthy. To be healthy mentally and physically. To have Mental & Physical Health - as far as I am mentally and physically capable ... and then some. A little, tiny, Some.

"When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied." --Herophilus

Because maybe the resolution to ricebag's discontent doesn't lie in ticking off the boxes of things DONE and DEFEATED and ENDURED that mark my worth and my contribution. That sounds a bit like one hand clapping. A lot of air. Instead, maybe resolution might come with Healing Ricebag.

Because I don't want to live without Hunger. Hunger for something rich in this life, like the need for experience almost above all else and second to that, cognizance. An innate desire, an innate hunger. And I am praying I can learn to live in a world where I can be both hungry and healthy (rather than just seek an ending place where I had succeeded in Accomplishment and could laud in it). So Lord, that's my prayer to you. Let me be Healthy and keep that Health so that I can use my Hunger to Do More and Be More in all of the ways that Matter to You.

Amen.

And that sounds like I want to be Spiritually Healthy too. And God knows that's my greatest desire. Let me masticate on the idea of spiritual hunger and healing internally and maybe later vomit it up on these pages when I know what I feel and when I know what I understand to be true. Until then my laziness and weakness prevent me for being the Warrior He needs me to be.