A Solas

It is not death that I am uncomfortable with....it is the suffering that comes before it. the physical suffering of having only half your strength. the mental suffering of accepting defeat and coming to terms with what you have become. the emotional suffering of dying alone.

But more than any of that...it is the silent suffering that begins decades before we are supposed to die. Ignited by unfulfilled dreams, unmet goals, unpassionate love ... continues to persist as we live half-heartedly. It stays with us, subconsciously .... thickening our blood, fogging our vision, misguiding our hearts away from happiness. There are no fits of crying, no overt signs of the sadness, but an overwhelming, ever-growing sense of emptiness. the pain is insufferable...and you allow yourself to feel it... in silence, a solas.

Haunted by the loneliness...it has reached a new pinnacle in my life. The world feels cold and unjust. I do not relate to it. My emotions continue to cycle through their own pattern so distant from the expected norm. I am uncertain whether I lack some critical component or whether I possess an additional wall ...that is keeping me from "belonging."

It is a frightening thought...to consider I may never belong. I may spend the rest of my life being held hostage by the irrational anxieties...that stem from living without purpose. There are so many tangents of emotion always running amuck inside of me...and no guidance to focus the energy. It scares me to think I won't ever figure out how to channel this chaos into productivity. And I will waste my life trying to fit into other people's norms…yet always coming short of “good enough”…and constantly apologizing but resenting what I am surrounded by.

I don't want to keep pretending I am content with my circumstances. I don't want to wait for my moment of peace. Something must change.

Easy/Lucky/Free

I may not be alone but I see nobody along side of me as I walk down these streets. In the dark of the night.

They all deserted me hours ago... I had pleaded with them to stay longer...fearing i wouldn't survive this loneliness...but my efforts had not been enough to keep them. As the sun began to set and my own shadow slowly disappeared....I felt the flame of hope flickering away. Silently I wept. I begged for salvation. for my spirits are delicate you see. I am a fragile being.

Just a few hours ago I was surrounded by people....indulging in the social high that comes from being the life of a party...so engaged in conversation that the mind hasn't a chance to contemplate. the guests, the venue, the love was undeniably grand. It was a comforting scene...it always is.

I took my seat as the best man began his toast. I had been in good spirits all afternoon. I had no apparent reason, no obvious trigger to fall into another dizzy spell of anxiety. But in that moment as I took my seat at a table full of strangers ... I suddenly became so unbearably aware of the love all around me. Everyone was madly in love. And I know no such thing. It was as if I had been struck without warning... a painful blow to the heart...I was truly alone...and I felt it.

But it was not the time to face these realities...I was at a wedding after all! So I cleared my throat in an attempt to keep the tears at bay...and I put on my "so happy right now, my life is perfect, i love everything"  face.  I know it's fake but hell, sometimes you have to be...for the world is ruthless and full of judgment. It sees you in all the wrong lights at all the wrong times.

With that in mind, I have concluded it is far easier to be perceived as a one-dimensional carefree ditz than to have your layers of truth be unraveled....and run the risk of having your weaknesses be exploited. It is for this very reason that I chattered away for 20 minutes about how comfortable my stilettos were even while walking in the sand.  I would rather be misjudged as that girl than have anyone know it has actually been anything but easy walking in these shoes of mine. To keep the image alive (no matter how distorted) means I must continue the charades...It's forced and it's fraud...but it's essential to staying afloat.

And though unfortunate, it is a real fact of life. Because the world will only know you by the words that you speak and by the things that you do. If you are lucky enough, every once in a lifetime, someone may come along and know you for the truth that you feel....and love you regardless. with an open heart, free of judgment. It is a treasured rarity, a remarkable bond....that brings you hope ... and gives you meaning. and amidst a forest full of fakes, its purity shines through...like a breath of fresh air... to love is to liberate.

Vivere e Amare
ElyVas

Brainwashed Brilliance

It seems I lost all hope for greater things somewhere during my twenty-years spent getting "formally" educated. The truth is I haven't learned shit from textbooks. I've got letters after my name that stand for bull-shit-more-dumb .

From the very first day of school....you get placed inside a box. You are told exactly "what to think".... without any training in "how to think."  You are told what is "right" and what is "wrong". If you deviate from these norms - you get labeled a "rule breaker", a "bad seed", a "delinquent." Those are some harsh words to swallow at any age...let alone at a young age.

At some point in life, everyone learns that people's age does not directly correlate with their level of maturity. Before you figure out that nobody actually knows shit in life...you are left to believe what "adults" tell you. You take their words as the truth. And if the words you repeatedly hear are negative...it becomes a real problem. It's expensive undoing all the damage from your childhood ... (especially when most psychiatrists don't even take insurance).

The worst part is that by the time you develop your own opinions...and begin to question what others are saying...it's almost too late. Some Type A anal retentive control freak had labeled you a "disciplinary-dilemma" or "lacking initiative" or even worse "a C-minus student"....what exactly is C-minus anyway? like what the fuck does C-minus indicate???  "Dear (ten-years old) Tommy, you don't qualify for a C...b/c you aren't even "average", but just a smidge below-average. Perhaps you should just cut your losses and give up on this whole school situation."

Anyway....all these labels do more harm than good. They discourage kids from trying. They foster unwarranted hopelessness .... which may persist and become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think it's a shame that we are told what our own potential is before we are old enough to decide for ourselves. We get assessed on how obedient we are ... how well we follow directions ... and how we perform on exams made for classrooms. When the real world is not a classroom. The kid who got straight As is not any better trained for the real world than the kid with C-minus running down his report card.

The majority of our lives are spent filtering through the nonsense of daily life .... while maintaining some sanity and awareness for what the fuck our purpose is. It is not spent filling in bubbles on a scantron or regurgitating facts on an oral exam.  It becomes a challenge to determine which skills will translate into real-world success.  And it becomes an even bigger challenge when a kid is positively reinforced for actions that will do him no good later in life. That kid will become delusional about his own capabilities....and will probably end up having a meltdown when his boss tells him something he has never heard before: "you are not good enough". Oh honey, you were never good enough...but don't jump a cliff over it....life goes on.

It is the tenth day of the tenth month ....one of my favorite nights of the year has finally arrived. kol tuv darlings.

ElyVas

Heir to a Hennessy

I received a letter in the mail this week. It was addressed to: Ella "belle" Vasconcelos. Though it had no return address... I knew who had sent it. Only a few people have ever called me "ella" and only one person has ever called me "ella belle".

My sophomore year in college...sometime in November....I fell into a "misanthropic blues" period during which time i abandoned all my sorority sisters, broke up with my boyfriend, stopped attending ticket parties....and rediscovered the color black. From partying with kappa delta to philosophizing about franz kafka...it was the classic renunciation of a lifestyle that had gone from promising liberation to breeding loneliness. the freedom it once symbolized now felt like self-imposed imprisonment. It was the inevitable epilogue to a life spent searching for anarchy. i stood for nothing and it ate me up inside. i was struggling to evolve as my social scene remained resistant, stagnant.

I'm still unsure what precipitated it? Perhaps I had taken one-too-many philosophy courses or perhaps I had had one-too-many frat-party-hookups (without a call back the next morning...without any sense of security). Nothing sparks unrest quite as strongly as the sense of rejection.  And I felt rejected on another level...it was unbearable. I was "done with all the bullshit." I needed more from my "one life, one chance" than just the mundane routine of collegiate life. I considered seeing a life-coach/therapist/spiritual-healer/ghost-whisperer....just someone-with-answers....but seeing any of those people would involve listening to my own (faux-valley-girl) voice....i had had enough of my own voice. I was sick and tired of listening to the same redundant problems. I needed clarity about things that went beyond which dress to wear to the next formal. I needed to feel more self-worth than what comes from knowing you are dating the hottest guy in SAE....I needed enlightenment from a higher power.

Point of all this is to explain who on gods-green-earth sent me a letter .... and whaaaat did it say! Well, during my short-stint as an altruistic "morality-snob"...I spent most evenings at a homeless shelter shooting-the-shit with recovering alcoholics/ex-junkies who were now subsisting off nasty soup and cheesy mantras recited at their AA meetings. They were surviving on the possibility that tomorrow would bring better things...they were hanging onto the last sliver of hope. From one moment to the next. It was a depressing environment and yet it was magnetic. It appealed to some strange curiosity I couldn't ignore.

This is where I met Kellen.....born in Marennes but shipped to a New England boarding school as a teen .... "and the rest is not worth reliving" as he would say. It took me a while to understand that Kellen was not just any European import. His legal name was Richard de Mun Hennessy, III.

Kellen was in fact a Hennessy by birthright and an alcoholic by choice. I had the privilege  (and pleasure) to get to know Kellen as the man outside his fortune and outside his disease. as the man who had successfully picked up the pieces that he shattered violently during his two-decades-long reckless oblivion. Unfortunately kellen passed away last week. from complications of his long-standing liver damage. inside the envelope addressed to EllaBelle, there were two sheets of paper. one was a heartfelt handwritten letter from Kellen. The other was a copy of his living-will.

my eyelids are feeling so heavy and my eyes are filling up with tears of exhaustion. I have to get to bed. until next time .

EllaBelle