You should read the Alchemist

Did I tell y'all that I've been reading books like my life depended on it?  Well, tonight, I'll tell you about the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.  I've always known what my dream was and that's a blessing I've always recognized.  It can also be a curse.  If I am ever to attain my dream, it will feel like I have waited forever.  I try to calm myself down by remembering that most authors released their first book well into their 30s.  I've learned not to rush my process but to trust it and well the Alchemist reinforced that for me.  Like it said, "There's just no way to hold back the river."


I know a few people that are desperately searching for their dream.  The thing with finding your dream is taking responsibility for it and I know I've posted before that we are a society that is not too big a fan of responsibility.  Once you realize where you want to go, the next step is to actually go and that can be intimidating.   What if it doesn't work?  What if works too well and you get overwhelmed?  What if you get to it and you realize you hate it?  There's a million things that could happen even though you only want one thing to happen and that is to succeed.  Sometimes I think, knowing and not knowing can be just as scary.  Either way, I believe in following dreams and I believe that you will go through hell and high water to get there.  I mean, you have to earn your stripes.  I don't want to get to my dream and feel like I didn't earn it, like I didn't work hard for it, like I don't know this craft inside and out.  When I finish this book, I want to know my purpose, my potential, my errors, my blood, sweat and tears.  I want to feel every emotion known to man or woman, and own them because that's what I need to feel complete.  Fulfilling a dream is like childbirth.  You have one foot in the door and one foot in the grave and at any moment, you're willing to die for something bigger than yourself.  Apparently, "Every search begins with beginner's luck.  And ever search ends with the victor's being severely tested."  (sounds like labor if you ask me, sh.t I remember)


I've always felt somewhat crazy because I enjoy my emotions, even the negative ones.  They remind me that I'm human and that I'm still involved in the cycle of humanity.  When I'm sad, I know I'll be happy again.  When I'm happy, I know sadness is coming.  I know that deep in my emotions lies the seeds of growth.  I am ok with the growing pains.  I don't avoid feeling terrible and I don't avoid feeling happy.  I embrace them as reminders to myself that just went it started getting dark for a caterpillar, he can see the light of the sun as a butterfly.  I don't know if other people think like that or if that train of thought means I have a rare mind but what I do know is that I have a beautiful mind.  We all do and in recognizing the beauty of it, we have to understand the different channels that run throughout it.  Pain is inevitable and having spent so much time fearing it, it never made it any easier to deal with.  Being afraid of getting my heart broken did not stop it from breaking.  Being afraid of writing this book does not stop me from writing.  Like Paulo said, "tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.  And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."  But really though, every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.  If that ain't the damn truth.  I have to say, I'm not very religious but I would be lying if I said, I didn't find God every time I sat down to write something.  I'm actually pretty convinced that God writes to you and I just happen to get a sneak peak because it's coming through my fingertips, much like the virgin Mary. Now, do you understand Virgin Fingertips?  I'm only a vessel, a little piece of borrowed flesh and breath searching for a dream handed down to me, set to be prepared for me to hand down to someone else.  That is my purpose for now, I don't know if it will change but since the third grade, it has stayed the same.


Now, you all should know by now how into astrology I am and I'm a Leo, who's a fixed fire sign represented by the Sun and the Lion.  We do not move, we do not falter, we do not fail and also, we stay a safe distance from the very things/people we love and provide for.  The planets rotate around the Sun and it gives its energy every single day to mostly ungrateful recipients.  But the Sun can never get too close and it doesn't get any dimmer.  It's purpose is to protect and sustain the life of its revolving planets and no desire must get in the way of that.  There is no one to comfort the Sun, hear its secrets, to be honest, there is nothing that anyone has that the Sun needs.  In the Alchemist the sun says, "I'm a long way from the earth - I learned how to love.  I know that if I came even a little bit close to the earth, everything there would die and the Soul of the World would no longer exist.  So we contemplate each other and we want each other and I give it life and warmth, and it gives me my reason for living."  That's exactly how I feel.  I feel like I require something no one has.  And I also know that as close as my friends have gotten to me, they are still so far, knowing only a shell of me, knowing that I want to protect them and love them all the while understanding that they cannot protect and love me back in that way, in that fashion, in that depth.  It's nobody's fault but it is a loss I have gotten accustomed to.  They will probably be up in arms like "b.tch I know you" and I will smile coyly and think to myself, "You honestly have no idea who I am because you have no idea who I was."  I will be sad for a short time but having carried on friendships for years without people knowing me doesn't make them any less significant.  I love them just the same and I understand and appreciate them for the simple fact that the little they do know about me, they love anyway.  I understood a long time ago that you can't protect anyone you're not willing to die for and I've always marveled in my own death more than my life.  My life will be in vain if my death is of no substance.  The misstep of motherhood has only enhanced that purpose of protection and unlimited giving and although I had no intentions of being a mother, I'm sure the Sun never asked for its position in the sky.


All in all, I think our dreams are handed to us and we come across plenty of things that overshadow them.  Boyfriends, girlfriends, jobs, school, temporary gratification, children, mothers, friends can all get in the way of dreams.  We find ourselves making excuses to stop following them.  I came to a roadblock a few months ago, when I posted, "would you give up your dreams for someone you saw in them?"  I thought long and hard, I tore myself apart trying to find an answer that everyone would love.  I realized that I loved someone, very much, very unexpectedly, loved them at the wrong time.  But as much as he was for my dream, he wasn't in my dream with me.  Because he couldn't love my dream as he loved me like the two were synonymous, I started to come to terms with the fact that being together would end up tearing me apart.  So I chose my dream, my first love, my only love, my unconditional love.  While it is hard to choose the intangible over the flesh and blood of a man, "You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his personal legend.  If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't true love…the love that speaks the Language of the World."  Maybe one day, we will work and I hope that he will fall in love with my dreams because that's ultimately where he will fall in love with me.


I don't know what your dreams are and I don't know if you've ever felt empty.  But whenever I've felt empty, I realize that I'm not empty at all.  I find a morsel of strength, a leftover memory that reminds me that this journey is not over, that the worst has not happened but when it does, I will be well equipped.  You won't have everything figured out.  That would just be too damn easy, but the first step, which is by far the most intimidating is to admit to yourself what your dream is.  No matter how simple it sounds to you or how simple it sounds to everyone else, you can only chase your dreams if you acknowledge them.  I'm a writer.  That's what I do, that's what I've always done.  I don't know if I do it well or if I don't but I do know that it's what I wake up every morning wanting to do.  That's my dream.  Now yours awaits you.  Go.