Monday 2 June 2008

Change {5 minute friday & Imperfect Prose}

Five Minute Friday



Joining Lisa Jo and Emily today for 5 minute Friday, where you write without editing or backtracking, in a 5 minute stream of consciousness that could go anywhere .

Word for today...

Change...Go...

Trembling  in front of the mirror, on my sixteenth birthday, I cut all my long blond hair off. 
Later, with a pounding heart I watched the pink and black dye rinse down the drain.
Yet, somehow I didn't feel the smallest pang for those childish blond curls the piled upon the bath rug.

Those blond curls were the vulnerable girl, the shy, quiet girl that had let herself be hurt. They had to go. 
Be cut off, shrouded in the colours of a symbolic death.

It was like clutching hold of the sharp edged stone of my childhood and throwing it into the deepest of water.
A place from which it could never be mined.

I wanted to change my life and somehow thought that meant starting from the outside in.

16 years on and my roots have slowly grown on back through, and my truth with them.

I have come to see the truth in myself, and others, however vulnerable that might be, as the only way to live in this world. 

I can't change for anyone else anymore, I can't even change to protect myself anymore. 

I have to be who I am and live it out. 

Though change still happens.
 it now expands from the inside out,
rather than retreating from the outside in.

Like ripples in a lake or rings within the trunk of a tree. 
The finger marks in a piece of wet clay turning upon the wheel;
Layer after layer somehow grows bigger, more out of me.

Encompassing more and more of life in all it's complexity, sorrow, sacredness and beauty,




 



7 comments:

  1. This is a wonderful post, Suzy. So well written.

    "Though change still happens.
    it now expands from the inside out,
    rather than retreating from the outside in."

    Beautiful. Just beautiful.

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  2. So true! Change must come from the inside out, or else it just doesn't last... it isn't permanent.

    Glad we're 5MF neighbors this week. I enjoyed what you've written.

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  3. This is powerful and empowering. So many times, people change drastically to make sure everyone around them knows they can't change them. It's like shouting, "Stop trying to make me into something I'm not" and in the process they still are making themselves into something they're not. But it's a step towards discovering who they really are. And that's what God wants us to be..who we really are. We can't be clones of someone else's idea of who we should be. In a world where everyone wants us to conform to their ideas, it's not easy finding who we really are away from all those voices....but we must. We must fight the voices and listen to the indwelling voice within. Great article.

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  4. I went through a crazy hair phase that included, also, a facial piercing. It all felt so right at the time. I look back at those photos, now, and see nothing but the pain I couldn't, at the time, name.

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