Never do I dare accept there are powers out there looking out for us, for to speak of it would be to admit lunacy. Yet I feel I am supposed to 'be crazy'. After all, you only live your current life once, but the previous ones have an impact on who you become, and what burdens will befall you in order to learn, and to move forward.
I have shed the burden of guilt. I have shed the burden of my own inability. I have shed the burden of resentment. I am alive and awake, powerful and vulnerable, beautiful and threatening. More than anything, I'm just me.
The Dragon Lives.
Since October, I'd been unofficially promoted to assistant store manager while retaining the title of sales clerk. My manager was transferred to another store, and my new manager now had two stores to handle - thus, he left a lot of it over to my care. After two years, I felt capable to run the show, and I daresay I did so as well as I could. Even my disctrict manager was proud, I think, that my store barely had any issues, and that I didn't complain much. Why would I have ? My (ex-)colleagues were/are like family to me. My job was more than a job - I was a part of something else. Had great contacts with everyone.
My store shut its doors on the 24th of June of this year. I had a breakdown at work end April, and there was no one available to replace me. I was unable to work. I kept crying and crying and crying and even my manager was worried, as much about me as how he'd solve the workhours were I to not be able to work the following day. If it'd been just a job, I'd have indeed gone to the doctor's to get out of there - but I endured, for my store and my customers, and for my colleagues, because if I fell sick, then we were all in deep shit, with not a person to spare, and already understaffed. I was as relieved as I was sad when the 24th rolled past and the store was entirely emptied. Since July 1st, I am completely free of obligation, but I keep an eye out on my former family because the firm's been in very deep shit, itself. It's looking like it'll be saved though, along with my former colleagues' jobs, and I am so very relieved for them.
And still glad, for myself, that I am no longer working there. I've said it before and I will keep saying it: it was the best damn job EVER. But I learned all I needed. I saw the end of that chapter coming, and already started making plans for the future. One part of it will be creativity. I spent the past 6 months before the end unable to write. It's the first thing I did when my contract ended.
So in finality: I love you, Free Record Shop. May you prosper and return to your former glory, and may this family I loved prosper as well.
Recently, I spoke with an old friend. Discussed certain things that had gone wrong between us, and as I thought the conversation was going well, she suddenly turned on me and blamed me for everything that had gone wrong, and using another of her friends as indirect reason for her blatant hatred.
It is true I'd had issues with that friend of hers before. And the guilt had never left my heart, so I spoke with her, and I discovered a kind-hearted, albeit strong-willed and a bit intimidating woman who held absolutely no grudge towards me. In retrospect, 'all' I did was to ignore her. Still, from discussions of 5 years ago with the old friend, I'd gotten the feeling that her friend hated me deeply for whatever I'd done to her. I realized, at last, this was absolutely not the case. So, when she tried again to use her friend as a beating stick, I repelled the attack and fought back.
Why I never had before, was because I was afraid of losing this friend - but, right then and there, I understood I had no need for her anymore, that I was clinging to a false hope. To a false image. To someone full of deceit, who dared say to me she didn't understand what I was going on about when I told her I felt like she coiled away whenever I tried to get close to her. My instinct always told me I was being shown a mask - I was right. And realized, I had always be shown a mask. It pained me to see this friend was no friend at all, and perhaps never truly had been - used me as she perhaps uses this friend, to fill her own life, to exist through someone else, desperately, for she is but a void herself. So I filled that void with a truth.
I told her that the reason I'd rejected her friend all those years ago, was because I realized I loved her more than my boyfriend at the time. Which is... terrible, horrible to say, pains me to no end, because I could have avoided his heartache had I admitted sooner to myself that something wasn't right between us (not just this, though). But, I didn't. Because I needed to be loved, after a decade of depression. His love gave me self-worth and it is something I choose to value, something very important, invaluable. Much as it is stained by my self-deceit. But I needed to believe in this love to exist. It was the missing piece of the puzzle of my life, which I could not find within my characters.
I had a hard time telling my current boyfriend about this. I did, though, and he listened as he is wont to do, without much feedback to go on. But I only needed to speak and be heard. I have severed all ties in my heart for this old friend, whom I cannot speak of as a friend anymore - just some person I once knew, who holds no more value, as I hold no value to her. This was the most painful thing about the venom she spat at me, the last of which I never read: no gratitude. Not a shred of evidence that she even felt glad I was there for her during the hardest times of her life. I know what I have meant. I know that, without me, she might not be here with us anymore - and the opposite is true, as well. We were extremely close and grew up together, even though I was six years older than her... but I'd missed my entire adolescence. She started to turn on me when I got my first job and I couldn't be online as much anymore (7-hour time difference, USA-Belgium). It started long before she met her new friend, and is likely the reason she turned towards her and away from me. Having been friends for so long, having loved her, this void she left me with I couldn't bear. But this void has been filled with others, who truly care about me, and whom I care about.
Goodbye, quicksand beast. I will still feel gratitude for meeting you, for loving you, and will expect you to deal with my words eventually, for otherwise there will be no life for you. I don't want all these years, all this care, to have been for naught, and I want to believe you're better than this - you just need to believe it, yourself.
I have made new friends. After years of preciously guarding my heart, of hoarding every piece of it like a dying Dragon, I am capable again of loving others. Of giving of myself. Of letting go. I've even been able, little by little, of regaining some sort of relationship with my ex, whom I prefer to refer to as an old friend. I don't like the word 'ex'. Ex means 'outside', and that just isn't accurate anymore. There is a long road ahead, but like all things worth while, they take time. All people I gather round, are people important in some way or another, consciously or not. People whom I'm supposed to assist, in one way or another, more than being assisted myself. They drift towards me of their own accord. I don't yet know what to think of this but, as I open myself more to the possibilities, I believe this trend will accentuate. The friends I make nowadays, are all of the open mind. People I need, people who need me, equals. Many things must still happen. What they are, is up to all of us, but I feel great changes. Nothing negative, just change. And it might be a bumpy ride.
In the spirit of change, a few words.
Go forth, O Dragon,
And rise from the ashes
of your dominion.
Rise, power of the Elders,
And bring about change
for those who suffer and pray.
Hear the voices of the Prime,
bear the words of the Calm;
Change, and be Time.
Thanks for reading. I plan on using this blog now as a venting space for my novel-to-be, much as I will still now and again update with other things. Writing these is therapeutic. And I love writing. And I... just, love.
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