Dear Pneuma,

Loneliness is interesting. Last night, staring out my window at stars in the blue moon sky, I was feeling angry and terrified. My beloved was home with me. My beloved was happily contemplating plans for the next day. My beloved was surfeited on food and the day's activity. I was emptiness and dismay.

Like a train falling down the track, I couldn't brake the negativity. Inside, I was hearing that I am unworthy and lazy. Inside, I was hearing "fuck thems" and "I hate this." Ugliness spattering black lines across the choices that have led me here. My fortune is that there is one reason I can cling to, one choice I've made that I do not question, but the rest . . .

My beloved was home with me. My beloved was happily contemplating plans for the next day. My beloved was full. I was empty.

I felt alone. I knew alone. I thought about God, being in a different place, being in a different time, being different. I wondered about Goddess' lonliness, often being separate from us, in that we are in a separate feeling, a separate meaning, a separate frame from the Divine.

My beloved was home with me. I was alone.

Looking for You,
Cobalt Dreams

Dear Pneuma,

Have you ever seen a therapist? I've been contemplating giving counseling sessions to all the special people in my life for Christmas this year.

It never ceases to amaze me how willing my loved ones are to suffer. I've seen one walk around on broken feet and another hunker beneath blankets with a migraine for hours unable to bear the light. Yet, they refuse to see a doctor. They take aspirin, and they sleep it off. How much more do they resist the need to heal inner, spiritual and emotional hurts.

I know I do it, too; I try to "tough it out" alot. I mean, who can respect a person that can't even decide to be happy, right? But, why resist so hard?

It's OK with me that I am terrible at sports. I enjoy working with an instructor to improve my skills so that I can play with my friends, even if I cannot seriously compete (yet). I have no problem asking a taller person to get something off a high shelf for me; yet, if I can't talk or work or distract myself out of a funk, I tell myself I must be weak and broken. If I cannot just bounce right up from the blow of my brother's death, something must be deficient in my being.

Why do I believe I must be sufficient in myself alone?

Of course, there may be an opposite problem. I've seen my loved ones give up completely in order to avoid suffering. I myself have decided against travelling because I might get hurt. I have even used a disability to save myself from having to participate. I wonder how many of us decide we can't do anything about an inner illness. I wonder how many of us leave healing up to medication and find disappointment that the pills don't actually make the hurting go away. I wonder how many of us decide we cannot, so we needn't even try.

Why do I believe I am insufficient in myself alone?

That is why I want to give therapy to all of my loved ones for Christmas. Sometimes, I am not sufficient in myself alone. Sometimes I am not very good at fixing my broken bits. Sometimes I need a bandage, a plaster, a pill, or a splint. Sometimes, I am more than sufficient in myself alone. Sometimes I need courage, support, or a hard, swift kick in the pants. Learning to know when I need not suffer, and when suffering simply must and can be transcended is a precious gift. I want to give it to everyone I know.

In the meantime, I hope all is well with you. I hope you know that you are loved, even when you feel alone.

Love Always,
Cobalt Dreams

Dear Pneuma,
I was wrestling with some thoughts yesterday, and I want to share some of my conclusions with you. I really value your insight when it comes to such matters, and I know you will not hesitate to share your own thoughts with me. I was sitting in a coffee shop, and I was watching people at their tables. I was feeling really strong and happy. What came into my mind was this:"NOTHING CAN DESTROY MY LIFE. I am indestructible. Christ in me is to live." Now, you may know that I was baptised two years ago, so I relate to God as a Christian, but I realize that you do not, so I hope you will hear my ideas as ideas, and feel free to engage with them in a manner suited to your own beliefs.

I had just come from church, and that thought, "nothing can destroy my life," seemed so clicheed. I mean, every week some Christian is shouting the same thing, and yet, I have never spoken with anyone that expressed exactly what that claim of indestructibility means. What's more, I've never been "lifted out of my pain" when someone has held the promise of eternal life before me. Everyone I know is pretty clear that anyone of us may be killed in a car wreck at any moment. Isn't that destruction? Many of us have lost someone close, or something precious. Isn't that destruction? I even know people so closed off from human contact that they have no real relationships. Isn't that destruction?
When a preacher says "eternal life," I reach for ideas like heaven-or-hell, death-and-resurrection, personal gain-or personal loss. In that framework, I find myself swimming in guilt that I do not have enough faith. I still feel and fear. I still want to hold on to breathing and to my loved ones. I still want to eat, dance, drive, play, work and be alive in the world. I am filled with terror at the thought of losing any part of this life, and I believe that it is right and good to care enough for my world to feel fear for it and to dread its loss. Compassion makes no sense otherwise.

So, is this promise of Christ, this indestructibility, that "I" will never feel pain? Is this promise of Christ that "I" won't end someday? Does this promise of Christ mean that no one "I" know will ever die, or does it mean that "I" shouldn't feel bad when someone does, because she is in a "better world" with God? If "I" feel pain in disappointment or loss, does it really mean "I" do not believe in Christ? Is it simply "Christ in me" that leads "me" to a comfortable life in a nice house and leaves a child in an abusive home?
I know many that do not believe in Christ. They live in comfortable homes. I know many that believe in Christ. They are daily betrayed by people they love, so my understanding of "eternal life," of "indestructibility" cannot mean that we feel no pain. It also cannot mean that we won't die.

I know the truth of Christ as an experience of the eternal time that is life-without beginning, without end, and, in some paradoxical way, both embedded in and completely separate from physical existence. It is true that nothing, ever, can deny me. I am. I was a will be. I will be a was. Without proof, without document, without a known purpose, or an understood goal, I am, and whatever I am, whoever I am, whyever I am, all that comes into conversation with me prooves my being separate from whatever else is. That 'being' is not touched by loss, pain, desire, worry, or even action. Even were I to stick needles with heroin into my arms, even if I were to do so unto my death, I was, I am, I will be. Taking that thought into my entire being is the most frightening and most liberating knowing I have experienced.

Hmm. That's as far as I can go for now. I hope this letter finds you well. I hope you know how much you mean to me. Take care of you and yours,

Cobalt Dreams

Dear Pneuma,
Have you ever lost yourself? I seem to be hiding from myself. I've been looking, but I haven't found me, and now someone else is walking my life. Someone else answers the phone and dresses for the day. I hate to admit this, but someone else has been sleeping in my bed and eating my dinner.
This other is a pale copy, a copy full of cowardice and heavy energy. If you see the real me can you send me back? I miss me. I miss the colorful, loud, energetic brave beast that I am. Maybe I could tear down the oppressive wallpaper the other put up in my kitchen.

Love Always,
(Am I?) Cobalt Blue

Overture

I stand in a jet stream, propelled by conflictions to write here.  Lonely, I want to reach out.  Reaching out, I know no one's actually here.  Alone, someone else may be reading.  Is this real?  Is this phony, fake, virtual?  If I find comfort, does it matter?  Should I write aware that someone may be reading, or do I write believing that no one ever will?
     I've had a lot of experience with writing journals.  I've wrestled thoughts to submission, and I've defeated despair a time or two.  I've even allowed myself to hate my mother, but journals are frustrating, because no one ever gets to read them; not even me.  They are a way to expunge and extract, and two days after writing an entry, the words make no more sense.  
     I suppose then, that this will not be a journal, and I had better pull it together to find some sense.  I suppose I believe someone will read this, maybe I even hope that someone will; so I will address "Cobalt Dreams" to you, and I shall give your you-ness the name Pneuma.

Dear Pneuma,
    It is raining here today.  I want to go out, into the rain, but I have no reason to leave the warm and dryness of my empty space.  An aimless walk would still lead me somewhere.  No matter whether I go by front door, by side door, or slip out the back, there are sidewalks waiting for me.  They moved me to the city, and all doors lead to sidewalks.  All sidewalks take me places.  I hate sidewalks.  
    I remember being a kid and getting on my bike.  I always liked going.  I never liked coming back.  I think a eutopian world would have roads and sidewalks that go away forever, and that whenever you stop, you are home, without ever having to go back.  Does that make sense, Pneuma?  
    This feeling seems a bit like restlessness, and a bit like running away.  When I sit to read, I want to get up and pace.  When I get up to pace, I want to sit and read.  I walk window to window and door to door.  I neither come in, nor go out.  I neither look out, nor acknowledge anyone looking in.  I want to scream, but no one will hear, so I hold it in to be proper and polite.  
     I cannot tell if the day makes me feel this way because I am bored, or because I am terrified.  Maybe, Pneuma, I feel this way because there is so much life inside me burning to be used, and I fear a day in rain will dampen the fire.  Maybe I feel this way because the landscape of my mind is so limited it cannot imagine an occupation for the heart while water falls from the sky.  I don't expect that you have answers, but I was missing you, and I don't feel so far away when I write.
     I hope all is well with you and yours.  If it isn't, I send my sorrow, and apologize for adding my concerns to yours.  

Love Always, 
Cobalt Dreams