Blog: I Guess I Need To Learn To Shut My Damn Mouth

I am someone who is often outwardly opposed to the cold. I have stated many times in person & probably on this blog as well that I would be fine going the remainder of my life without seeing another “winter.” Sometimes that sentiment also takes the shape of “going the rest of my life without seeing snow” but it feels like a similar concept either way. I live in the upper end of the American South, & while winters are slightly less harsh here than they were growing up in Kansas where there is nothing to block the wind sweeping from The Rockies across the plains, we still get our share of winter weather, especially with the recent surge of Arctic blasts that climate change has seen fit to give us annually. Part of the one-sided contract that I have with mother nature is that “if it’s going to be cold, there might as well be snow.” Well, I guess this week I got my wish & I fear I may have second feelings about the contract I, undoubtable, am responsible for securing us all in.

It snowed eight inches here in Nashville this week, an amount that I have not seen annually since I moved to Nashville in 2010. In fact, upon a minor bit of googling, I have discovered the annual average snowfall for Nashville typically sits around 4.7 inches, so we basically doubled that in one sitting.

Now, since Nashville typically is a snowless place, we lack the infrastructure required for maintaining our roads & clearing them effectively during our winter storms. Add to that the fact that my HOA, a mindless bureaucracy that oversees the neighborhood I live is, has seen fit to not contract a plow company simply because there is typically not a need for it, & you get me being mostly sequester to my home on the outskirts of Nashville for the last week. I am, for all intents & purposes, sick of the snow.

Was it fun & cheeky at the beginning? Yeah, sure. Did I enjoy a day or two of making soups & trying to make my furnace get my house above 65º? Sure. But I am over it & I feel like that is the sentiment for most of the people on my social feeds dealing with the same cabin fever from the storm, even those that I know live in walkable parts of town. I am humbling regretting the statement “well if it’s going to be cold, it might as well snow.”

So what’s my solution? What’s my ideal outcome? Well my ideal outcome is that all the snow melts today & the temperature returns to an area at the very least above the freezing line. What is the point of this blog? I guess in some way it’s me apologizing to you all if this is something that I, & I alone, manifested. I was unaware my skills of conjuring were so powerful. I shall do my best to be better next time & understand the consequences for the simple words I say out loud.

If you too are stuck in this frozen hellscape, wishing desperately for a beach & 80º weather, take solace in the fact that you are not alone in that desire. In the interim make all of the soups, take all of the baths or hot showers, pull out all the blankets, embrace the hibernation that we as a species are supposed to participate in, but somehow feel we are above even though every other bit of nature observes it.

Stay warm in there!

As always, much love,

-C

Blog: It’s Okay To Give Up On The Apology You May Never Get

Hi folk!

Interesting topic for this week’s blog, no? I’m sure the title put some people on edge before I’d even began but I felt compelled to write about this, this week. I actually started jotting down ideas for this blog throughout my week as I’ve been reading more introspective literature & doing more personal evaluation all in the name of trying to clear the debris that’s gotten in the way of my creative processes especially when it comes to writing. As I’ve stated before in blogs, specifically those regarding the state of the world or the way people treat other people, I have often found myself dwelling on anger. Not an emotion or a feeling I typically enjoy & usually, despite my sign (Aries), something I maintain fairly well outside of the flashes that occasionally arise in me. I was angry & I couldn’t for the life of me pinpoint what was causing it.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of journaling, answering some difficult questions about myself; the emotions & memories that live inside of me, amongst other things. I was prompted one afternoon to answer the following question:

“Why Are You Angry?”

My first response was “psh, I’m not!” That was a lie. You see, deep down I had this building, nagging rage that I couldn’t explain & really sitting & reflecting upon this question brought me to the realization that I was angry. In fact very much so.

The next prompt was:

“Is there anything you haven’t forgiven yourself or someone else for?”

That’s when it struck me.

You see I’d been dwelling upon this desire, this festering, insistent desire that I knew was farfetched at the best of times & was ultimately bogging me down. I was waiting for an apology that knew I will probably never receive. That’s a hard thing to live with, especially if that person is no longer in your life & even more so if that person is still a constant in your life but nonetheless we all still live with it.

We’re all human, we all make mistakes, we all hurt each other & sometimes we don’t realize the extent to which we’ve done damage to another person. Sometimes we don’t even realize we’ve done anything wrong. And that’s where this gets tough. It’s one thing entirely to ignore the pain you’ve caused someone out of pride or spite, it’s another thing entirely to be completely oblivious to it. But it doesn’t matter.

Let me say that again, it. doesn’t. matter. Bottling hurt helps no one, it benefits no one, the only thing that it does is harm you. Holding onto hurt leaves a piece of you in the past, it holds you back from growth & from realizing your true potential. Sometimes you just have to let it go.

There is peace in that, forgiveness. There is light, unfettered freedom. I’m not saying you have to ignore what someone has done to you, but I am saying that you can give yourself permission to let it go, to let bygones be bygones. I know that sometimes we so desperately just want someone to say “I’m sorry” for them to do the bare minimum & acknowledge what they’ve done but when everything in your gut is telling you that it’s never going to happen what good does it do to hold onto that distain?

I just wanted to come on here tonight & much like Elsa give you permission to let it go. To start a fresh, new day & be at peace. Acknowledge the pain, dissect it, but don’t keep holding onto it. You deserve better than that, you’re worthy of feeling better than that. So just let it go. I know it’s not always that simple but it is. It’s okay to say “thank you for protecting me, for making me feel like I’m deserving of an apology but you’ve surpassed your usefulness in my life & in my mind, but it’s time for me to let it go.”

You’re worthy of being at peace, of feeling light & unrestrained. Love yourself enough to see that.