(written on the 16th because yesterday was… 😅)
Gratefully, despite the fact that I took a long grogginess-inducing nap that usually demolishes my ability to fall asleep again for the night, not only was I able to fall asleep last night, but I was conked out all the way until maybe 8:30 in the morning?
😶
I’m definitely not going to complain about the sleep part of things, but it was a pretty rough day otherwise.
I’ve been battling some darkness that’s wanted to come in, and today it just got the better of me. 😕
It’s pretty stupid in the grand scheme of things, superficial foolishness, but I think the main driver was how self-conscious I’ve become of the massively prematurely-aged skin on my face.
It hits me pretty hard every time I see myself in pictures or in good lighting in a mirror. Living in my van, I don’t really ever look in the mirror, and I’ve cut my hair by feel for so many years that I don’t use a mirror to cut my hair anymore (not that I’ve even been cutting my hair lately).
I just don’t look in the mirror much at all.
But seeing myself in photos at the temple and in the mirror in the bathroom at church… I find myself comparing the weathering of my face with everyone’s faces, and I’m losing the battle, even with some people in their 60s, I think.
😶
I’ve asked God to help me be accountable for all my choices, to be aware of the fallout of my choices before I make them, and he has obliged, so each time I go to make a decision, I have those little words rattling around inside my brain… “Where will it lead?” or “Do you really want to do this?”
Phrases like that…
This morning the superficial stuff hit even harder than the last couple days, because I think my body was badly retaining fluid, which made my face puffy when I woke up, and when I leaned over, I could feel all of the skin in my face sagging down with the extra weight of the fluid.
One voice inside my head pushes me to pull out my phone, turn on my selfie camera and look at what I look like that way.
The other voice says, and if you do that, where will it lead?
I knew it wouldn’t lead anything good, positive, uplifting, light fueling… It was clear choosing to dwell on those fears would be destructive… But I chose to grab my phone anyway to give myself a visual of what I could feel.
That was rough. 😞
Superficial fears. Foolish choices.
Devastation.
Instead of moving on like I could have, choosing to invite light, I chose to lean into my fear, and it hit hard.
I felt unwanted. Undesirable.
Every time I look in the mirror it’s discouraging… devastating…
And what compounds the darkness that comes with those fears is that I’ve trained myself to seek to escape… somehow… somewhere…
The neural pathways that have been reinforced the most are those that find me turning to mindless consumption of neutral-to-destructive things.
…Or wishing to just be dead. 😕
…so afraid of what Emerson might call “evils which never arrived,” that I don’t even want to face the possibility of ultimate rejection and simply prefer death to the terror of the fearful unknown.
I’ve felt ugly before, but I’ve also sometimes felt attractive, and I thought I was at least attractive enough to have a shot, so to speak, of attracting someone I was also attracted to.
Not that it’s even relevant… but still…
And now… I think I’m losing that hope, trying not to blame God (another of the neural pathways that’s been routinely reinforced over years of pain and struggle).
Obviously, it’s not God’s fault, but it’s easy for a thought like the following to creep in: “If you hadn’t told me X, I never would have made Y choices that directly led to the circumstances that brought all of this on; and you knew this is what was going to happen.”
Blame. What ifs.
That’s just destructive, stinkin’ thinkin’.
And it was that stinkin’ thinkin’ and deliberate choices to invite in the darkness instead of turning toward and consuming light that led to today being what it was.
And it got a lot worse. 😞
After mucking the barn and letting the horses out to munch, I had someone want to look at my Skid Steer. The first person to actually go out and see it.
Gratefully, My mom was willing to go over there to be there when the person showed up to look at it. 🙏
Unfortunately, the battery was dead, and apparently so dead that it couldn’t even be jump started. It seems like everything is going against me trying to sell my equipment. Thousands of dollars worth of value damage occurred the very day I had buyers who were excited about buying my dump trailer.
Skid steer won’t start.
It’s really discouraging. My equipment just gets older and older and develops problems without getting much of any use, and I pretty much pay to own the stuff while it deteriorates.
Anyway, so that was discouraging. 😞
It was also discouraging that, while someone else was trying to help me with something (and I was grateful for their help), even though I’d given an exact example of what I needed, they just didn’t seem to think that I needed what I was asking for (they kept sending something different). I tried I think three different times to request exactly what I had shown, and after the third time, feeling like a jerk, because I kept asking them to redo what they’d already done, I just gave up.
And then to top it off, PJ Trailers (the company that made the dump trailer that I’ve had so many problems with because of manufacturing defects) messed me over pretty good today, at least for my perspective.
When I very first reached out to them, I gave them the date of purchase and explained that I knew that I was passed the normal warranty claim, but would they be willing to consider an extended warranty because the issues were actually manufacturing defects.
They had responded by asking me for pictures and making it sound like they were open to the possibility. It took me a little while to get pictures because I needed someone else to get them for me, because I don’t live in the state, but after sending the pictures to the PJ representative I was working with, within probably 30 to 60 seconds after sending the final email, they sent back a message denying the warranty claim.
I was a little confused, because they replied so quickly that they couldn’t even have had time to properly look at the pictures I sent.
The representative replied back that I was well past the warranty date, and I was thinking, yeah, you knew that from the very first email.
Apparently, they needed pictures to attach to a warranty claim, even though they knew they were going to be denying it immediately. So they basically strung me along making it sound like they were willing to consider a warranty claim even though it was beyond the warranty period when they actually had zero intention of even considering it and only needed pictures to attach to the claim they were going to automatically deny.
Crappy crappy customer service.
Sadly, with everything going on, I had a major meltdown, vocabulary down to about 4 and 1/2 letters on average and a partially lost voice in pretty short order.
😞
Highly (but quote catastrophically) developed neural pathways. 😕
So on with my phone to escape, gratefully only with my more neutral escapes and nothing destructive. Though anything that’s not actively perpetuating or increasing light is, in a way, destructive of that light.
Gratefully, Cory called in the middle of that, and we chatted for a little while.
And I cried.
The feeling ugly part is generally, if not always, a poignant reminder of my lack of companion and everything related to that and is a trigger to give into powerful fears.
And it’s really hard not to let myself get swallowed by the darkness.
But I worked really hard to choose light during and after my conversation with Cory.
I talked to my mom a little bit. And my friend Dan in Arkansas, after hearing what happened with the skid steer this morning, said that he felt a little hurt that I didn’t think to ask him to go over and get it running for me while the potential buyer was there.
He’s such a good guy. 🤍
I don’t know why it didn’t even cross my mind to ask him. 😶
When Heather got home, she and I chatted for a good little bit, and she helping to inject a little bit of light. 🤍🙏🤍
I was feeling super heavy, and I still am.
When Hans got home, we all chatted for a bit, ate dinner, and I chatted a bit with Heather again as we went on a little totter looking for Curly.
I think I mentioned it, but I’ve been concerned about her ever since it looked like she got stepped on by Fiona. I hadn’t seen her since, but I thought maybe I spotted her hanging out underneath a pile of fence posts (I could see a deformed ear, but I couldn’t tell which shape of deformed deer it was because it was up against the wood above it, and multiple of the rabbits around here have deformed ears [possibly from frostbite?].
Anyway, we thought we saw Curly at one point, but it turned out to be a different rabbit, but then, going back and looking under the same fence post pile that I had looked at earlier, Curly ran out from under it. 🥳
Hopefully, we didn’t scare her too badly, but I’m glad that she’s okay. 🙏
With the day having gone the way that it did, I didn’t really get much of anything done. I wasn’t ready to drive away to Utah like I had planned to be, so I started working on trying to figure out installing a couple of solar panels back on Rover’s roof, so as to be able to recharge my power station.
But after a while, I gave up on that. It was just… too much for today. The sun was already down, which was actually good, because I didn’t want to be out in the sun (I’m scared of the Sun now 😞… and I’m somebody who likes to spend all of his time outside. 😞).
Anyway, I got stuff loaded up enough that I wasn’t leaving a mess for Heather and Hans to have to look at, and I finally got myself out and on the road I think somewhere around 10:00?
😅
I chatted with Cory a little bit. He’s been a really great support today. I really want to rid myself of this darkness and get back to the light.
Why do I let my fears bring in the darkness? And then why do I keep choosing it? It’s a synergistic degenerative cycle.
When I got to Edgemont, I stopped off at the gas station where we’d met the cashier the other night, but she wasn’t behind the register tonight, so I didn’t even go in the store. I didn’t need gas. I was only stopping in to let her know that we cared about her.
I spent most of the drive listening to recordings that I’ve made of spiritual experiences… thinking… pondering…
Didn’t get stopped for the night until after midnight I think, even though I stopped probably 30 or 45 minutes earlier than I normally do.
Gratefully, I wasn’t tired while driving, but it was so late that I needed to stop if I wanted to get a decent amount of sleep.
With it being as light as it was, I also chose not to journal… so here it is a day late.
Better than weeks late, though.
I hope I can get back some light tomorrow. 🙏
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 