August 2011 -- 11; Strength
Strength is potency. It is the ability to meet what is difficult and act in alignment with our values.
For the first part of the month I filled with the Ten Day You Challenge ( Loves, Fears, Wants, Places, Foods, Books, Movies, Songs), and getting into Pottermore (gifting it to Steph & Earl). I started working on a completely, cards on the table, intimacy list and finished listening to all the Jim Dale does Harry Potter audio books.
It was when I discovered I graduated my master's, pretty much loopy as high kite thing, but on The Dean's Honor List. And when I celebrated by Ten Year High School Reunion. Which I did not write a lot about. But so much happened. Especially with Jae and Joey, who wanted to date me, with memories of the past. There were Border's sales and Life Avoidance and Mail Call's to distract me though.
Joey, Jae & I
I passed the second of my four trips, in the eight-nine week roller coaster started the previous month, with only the most stray comment at it.
And then the second private post to hit my journal. Short.
The answer to a question I never thought needed asking.
I started my Steepster tea subscription with Li.
My relationship was oddly calm. Not like a spring day calm, but like the center of the hurricane calm. A way that it would pretty much stay, through the next two months. (I never would hit the water wall again.) I wrote about an odd fluke, that started only to end just as abruptly.
I wrote really not much at all. Twitters, meme's, and poetry reigned supreme in a lot of the month sections. I talked not at all about religion even, except for three times. I had a truly deeply happy moment, and didn't even write about it (Li asking to come visit). But I did start focusing slowly on comforting the heavy weight in me. I wrote You Letters to (Steph, Her boy, & mermaiden/willow_cabin).
The end of the month belonged entirely to focusing on Dragon*Con. Which was another form of comfort. To dressing- up, and seeing of many, and the early before-getting-there refusal to be barred in. Finally.
A good quote for the end of the month;
If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into
other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.
- Audre Lorde
~*~
Closing Thoughts
I went with the cards of this deck over the numberings of the readings I’ve done before. This one flips where Justice and Strength are, the 8-or-11 of the lovely game. It actually surprised me for a moment, and I considered swapping the numbers around. Except I'd already done Justice, and it had fit, and the cards speak for themselves. This is the deck for this year, and this deck says Strength is 11.
And so it was. Quiet strength. Insanely, inconceivable, blatant quiet strength. The number of Twitter posts back to back at the end of this month -- or twitter, poetry, meme, fandom in the beginning -- with no substance, no real word of how I was or where i was, burns as I read back over this. I had retreated far from the written word in this month. Far from the space where i could be honest about my world. But, I can see me, here, there, even now.
It's not like I'd ever gotten to tell the world the truth about my joy, openly, even those who could hear had some in so late from that golden weekend I clutched, so why should it even matter when i couldn't tell them about my tail spin. There’s a second private entry, following on the one from the month before this. The first two private entries in the whole year. Somehow the memory of them causes my heart to ache.
And yet, I was not going to go gentle. Success through Surrender is the motto of The Hanged Man/One. And I spent a lot of this month thinking about that, because Sisal and I were meeting to plan Star/Tower weekend, which I never wrote about planning during this time either. But I thought about how my Year Card effected everything. About fighting, and what was worth fighting for.
Strength is about faith and certainty, not physical prowess. The naked girl, closing the jaws of a line with her bare hands. Because she can. Because she never doubts. Mingling Strength's naked faith and The Hanged Man's success that is gained through not fighting, not bucking the system at all, I began to ponder the options of my world as much as I didn't focus on it at all.
I was not ready to be her, Strength, in my opinions and waffling silent, bucket spilling need. At least that was how I felt. But looking back, things I felt were rebelliously over the top, like my grand plan to finally get to spend Dragon*Con happily at panels and seeing things, look from this side as markers of where i started reclaiming the tiniest piece of myself. Starting drawing lines saying, no, I won't give this up without you noticing anymore.