note: I also write on Medium https://medium.com/@sylviasolanas
Is There Any Joy? (09 October 2024)
I don’t know about you, I can only talk about my experiences.
I can count on my fingers the joyful moments I’ve had in the last decade. (not that I had galore before). It’s just been so hard, living.
I do mindfulness and being in the present moment. It helps, yes.
Everything is crumbling or has collapsed. Things and relationships I tried to build and sustain. Getting out of the comfort zone. Taking chances. Expectations may have been too high, probably. Is it bad luck, wrong timing, what it is, fate.
Dopamine and serotonin seeking notwithstanding, the quest for joy is a necessary one. Though it’s not the right way, is it. Let it find you.
What if it never comes?
Joy is a human right.
"Will I Always Be Here?" (07 September 2024)
This week I listened to Depeche Mode’s Songs of Faith and Devotion, in the same way I did when it first came out when I was 15: in bed, in the dark, with headphones, filled with passion and despair.
This line from track 06, In Your Room, has stayed with me in the days following.
Will I always be here?
In life we feel stuck or like we’re moving, sometimes too fast, and we either want the moment to last forever or end as quickly as possible. Doing inner work, you then understand the space that exists if you let it.
I often feel I’m not at the right time, right place, and that I’m simultaneously doing too much and not enough.
I won’t always be here. Neither of us will.
I’ve experienced, again, small but with long-lasting repercussions, traumatic events.
You don’t want me here. I wish you were here. Confusion is perpetually trying to lead us.
The only here that truly matters is the peace you make with yourself, as unfulfilled as you can feel.
In the opening track of my band Tremosphere’s new album, Becoming Creatures, I sing “try not to resist love” (Tide), then I repeat the thought several times throughout the song. It’s something that I didn’t have to overthink when I was writing the song. It just came out, and felt extremely appropriate with my state of being, and the world’s.
How many times have you refrained from saying something kind to someone else, by fear of being judged (“you’re too kind, someone may take advantage” – kind isn’t a failure nor a character flaw, taking advantage of someone is), or ridiculed (the supposedly weakness of kindness – a capitalist, patriarchal lie), or even rejected?
It doesn’t have to be this way.
In the name of Life is Tough, we are trained to be mean, untrue, deceiving. Untrue to ourselves is probably the most damaging imo. But, good news, we can count on the brain’s neuroplasticity and make a change.
How though? How can I retrain, rewire how I think and how I act?
There’s nothing as easy as saying “damn, I love coffee” with the most genuine sentiment. You do love coffee (I don’t, but you do). You could tell it to anyone on the street and online, for drinking coffee makes you feel so good and alive.
Well, try that, but about people.
In her SCUM Manifesto, my probable cousin Valerie Solanas wrote “the meaning of life is love”.
We are here to love. We are love. We are beings (becoming creatures, if I may – indulge me, thanks) that can nurture and support each other. We create. We are artists. We are beings of pleasure. We make love.
We Make Love.
the serendipity of letting go.
My friend Myk (https://coda.io/@mykola-bilokonsky/public-neurodiversity-support-center) invited us to ask ourselves this question in one of his life-changing Twitter threads recently. A question I’ve been struggling with for a while as it turns out. Ask the question and listen to what you’re hearing from inside. Let it come and go, let it be chaotic, try to see the answer through the noise that’s made of you.
As my children are getting older, I’m not a “soccer mom” anymore (even though not of them ever played soccer). I still do the occasional school run but now my car is filled with preteens who smell like sour sweat and are in competition with who’s saying the most stupidest thing so that the others will laugh. It’s very sweet to witness their growth, but I’m just the fucking driver.
I’m not a wife anymore, nor a daughter (have I ever been a child? -a question for another day), and I’m not a coworker. The list goes on, and I don’t want to keep defining myself with what I am and am not in relation to people.
I’ve started reading No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness With the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard C. Schwartz, I had the book for months but was waiting to be ready for it, it’s a very emotional read.
I also read in one day, which is unusual for me, The Cassandra Complex (Cassandra in Reverse -US version) by Holly Smale.
Two books about identity, about our relations to ourselves and the world, about welcoming the “good” and the “bad” and, more importantly, about stopping to relentlessly try to fix what we instead need to love.
Who are you?
I am love.
Where Do We Go From Here? (18 May 2023)
entering middle-age.
Yesterday was my 45th birthday. I got a migraine for part of the day, either due to the weather change and wind or from Tuesday’s wine. I had ordered a cake last week, and I shared it with my children after dinner. I lit a 4 and a 5 with a match, and took a selfie while blowing the two candles. I forgot to make a wish. I didn’t open any present – I got one in my emails though, a gift card (I like gift cards).
I’ve wanted celebrations filled with people and balloons for a long time, like the ones I could see on TV or now on Instagram ; the ones that make you feel cherished and normal. I still do sometimes, not so much depending on the day.
The more I’m finding myself, the more I feel lost, but in different ways than before, does that make sense? I think we tend to look for external expectations to tell us what to do, because when there aren’t any: who are we, what are we supposed to be doing.
My emotions keep changing, from being angry to sad, to being ok, over and over. I don’t seem to settle in a mood. Could me premenopause, could be that things aren’t going the way I had hoped they would.
Hopes and wishes, they can be sustenance for our inner fires and they can also bring us down when misused. Everyday we get to choose.
Be beautiful.
(“Where Do We Go From Here?” – Buffy The Vampire Slayer cast, from episode 6×07 “Once More, With Feeling”)