I Live By.....

The main character of the movie Memento tattoos important messages into his skin as a recall technique in place of his inability to remember things from day to day. 

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There are certain codes I live by, and certain themes that are recurrent in my life. Sometimes I draw my brand, my initials onto my skin. This ritual started a few years ago when I was presented with a situation in which I could give in to what temporarily felt good and soothe my loneliness and desperation, or I could be truthful to myself. They were mutually exclusive. I could not be true to myself, and also have his affection, which also meant I leapt into a self-made position of heart ache.  The worst injury I could commit to my soul would be to wrong myself. 

I live by these words: 

I say what I mean and mean what I say about 98% of the time. The remaining 2% happens when I say something I don't mean in order to be conciliatory or to diffuse an argument or bad situation. I'm striving to make that 2% as honest to myself as the other 98%. I strive to be a person of my word.  I want people to know that when I say something, I stand behind it. 

I'm an all or nothing sort of woman. I don't want halfway. Halfway is a No Man's Land filled with nothing but rough gems hidden under land mines. Halfway hurts; I know, because I've done it more than once. 

I believe in the idealist, romantic, optimistic potential of human life. I believe that we can strive to be better than our base instincts and sins. I believe that love and faith and compassion are the best parts of being human. 

I keep placing my faith in faith. I was in the car just yesterday thinking about my lack of a job. I feel as though I keep knocking on doors, but without one opening, I can't go far. All of the knocking has to eventually be reciprocated at one point or another in order for me to move forward. I was thinking to myself that the world needed to reciprocate and then I had a very sober thought: I asked myself what makes you think the world owes you anything? I'm still not sure how to answer that. All I can say is that I'm putting out all of this mental energy, and for what? And I want to shout and beg and plead with God, verbally shaking my fists, pounding the earth with passion, because I so badly want to know where I'm going and what I should be doing and when I pray, I hear nothing but silence. I understand how Luther and others were mad with a fervor to understand in the face of silence. 

I live these things with all that I am. I am a writer. I am a seeker, a wanderer, a dreamer a reporter. I'm willing to work as hard as a plough horse--a great big Percheron or Clydesdale, hitched to equipment, throwing my shoulders and muscled quarters into the work, but the work has to present itself. 

I ask myself, how much more can I ask the universe to grant me what I want, as The Secret people say? The only thing I can think of would be to etch my words and codes of conduct into my flesh, but they are already in my heart. My moral codes and my wishes for meaningful work are with me everywhere I go. I think I'll leave the self-inflicted harm to that dude in Memento but I wish I could do something more than all that I have been doing.