The eclipse happened/is happening. I got there while the last sliver of the moon was disappearing into the shadow and right now it is getting nearer to coming out. I was outside for an hour and a half.

I tried to follow Starhawk’s advice of letting go of what I want rid of and focusing on what I want to become. Every time I listed off something I wanted to stop doing I would end up on what I wanted it to become. Every time I listed what I wanted to become, I would end up with a bunch of things I needed to get rid of. I kept ending up on the opposite of what I was trying to reach.

Since it was only partly cloudy and the moon was getting more blocked than not, I tried to meditate. Focus on my breathing and on the current moment letting other moments take care of themselves. I didn’t get very far. I did have a clear thought of wanting to stop tossing my anchors away from me and pulling myself along and to stop trying to get others to hold onto my anchors and be able to set my anchors inside myself to provide my own stability. I also want to stop going from a dead stop to full speed to collapse, rinse, repeat. I think there is a good chance that fear has got me buried in place, getting me to dwaddle until I am running late and needing something at full speed to get me moving. I don’t feel this fear, I don’t think I can see it but I am betting I am swallowing it and not letting it rise enough to feel it. I think it is why I collapse when I stop running (in addition to being out of energy), why I keep chewing my fingernails down to nubs (it is getting to the point it is the worst it has ever been) and why I shut down and don’t eat and then gulp my food when I get around to having some, including my candy.

I want that fear to rise and be seen. I want to be able to process it and let it go even if that means feeling it and facing it. Right now I can identify a black jelly bean of aaaahhhnnnnn (anxiousness, angst, quiver, uncomfort, disturbed, ick) inside the cavity of my torso. I don’t know if I am suppose to grow that to fill me thereby feeling the fear and process it or to shrink the black jelly bean stripping stuff off of it and I work my way through the process. Right now, I am aware of it and sort of holding it in place. Focusing on it really makes me jittery.

Feeling that way and noticing the cloud cover was pretty full, I decided that I needed to move around some. I hadn’t really done more than move a little around my apartment for the last three days of collapse so I decided to go for a walk in the neighborhoods. I took a hit of water and some Arizona Ice Tea (so the caffeine would speed my body up to how I already felt) and started off. I walked a chunk around the neighborhood going a way I haven’t gone before, maybe 4 blocks out, three blocks down and back.

I was cold and waiting to warm up which wasn’t happening. An idea on how to deal with the closure of the cape I was wearing (I have pondered on that problem for years) and started to work with it. I found that when I was done working out how it might actually work and what I would have to do, I wasn’t cold anymore. The scarf wasn’t on my head and being held down and I wasn’t holding the cape closed any more. Sometimes I am amazed at how much distraction and working on things in your head can take care of body issues. And I want to stop living in my head all the time for WHY? …. Oh yeah, so I can have connection with others, life can be worth living, and I might be able to get rid of this anxiety.

I got back to my place and the clouds really cleared up so I set up my chair in a corner of the courtyard where I could still see the moon and looked. The limited view of the sky made it look completely clear. I noticed the stars near and around the moon and went inside to get my star finder chart. I am not impressed and after writing this out I plan to look up better diagrams of the sky to place the moons location. It was above Orion and between two other constellations. I used to know them all but that knowledge is very rusty now.

I am going to a Solstice gathering tomorrow. I wish it was tonight and included the eclipse. I would have appreciated having people around and even more having a ritual involved. I do not work well on my own. It is hard for me to focus and narrow things down to one thing. By my nature I find many options and lots of ideas and when I am uncomfortable I bounce from one thing to another. Following others allows me to settle and actually do something rather than undermine myself.

I did get the picture of the black jelly bean as something to work on and the idea to bring my fear forward so I can process it. There are so many things I want for myself but I first must deal with the things that are in the way of those positives manifesting themselves. It is sort of like wanting to be thinner but having the habit of overeating when upset. First comes the disconnect of overeating from being upset and dealing with being upset in a positive way and maybe even reducing the upset. Then the getting thinner can happen. Otherwise you are working against yourself and as you put in more effort, you will meet the matching resistance.

There are parts of me from previous versions I want back. I want back the ability I had to be on time and ok with it. I want back the time when I was able to take care of my fingernails and have them be nice. I want my desire to cook back. I want my dependability back. I want back my ability to be functional. I want back the fun enjoyable version of me but not if I have to sacrifice feeling connected for it. I don’t want to lose the important parts of me that I have built. I want to keep my ability to listen, my ability to apologize without needing to defend myself, my ability to see the point of view of others as clearly as I have learned, to softly confront someone so things can get worked out instead of swallowed, to be able to step aside when others hit me with their defenses and to be understanding rather than defend myself, to be able to deal with things rationally and recognize when I am caught in an emotion, to not get upset as easily as I used to, to not need the massive amounts of information I used to require, to not make others feel like they need to walk on egg shells around me, to live in my body and take pleasure out of ordinary things, to be ok with being hurt and in pain and crying maybe even appreciative of it, to be able to continue to work with my mother and father and have the good relationships with them that I have.

I have learned so much and want to keep it and continue to grow. I want to bring back some positive features that I used to have. I have been working on my foundations tearing them apart so I can build better ones. I feel that I am beginning to weave some structure for the new foundations and am building again. There are still holes that I step in and end up flat on my face, but that is to be expected.

I don’t like being required to do something such as reflect and make goals at a particular time of year like birthdays and New Year’s. It occurred to me tonight that I don’t have to set a time for this sort of thing. I can do it at the Winter Solstice this year, my birthday next, New Year’s some year afterwards, in the summer if the mood strikes me. It would be nice to have something like this in something like a yearly pattern but I don’t have to try and promise myself I will do it at X time or that I will even do it again. Things will be different a year from now and that Gina will decide what she wants to do. It may relate to this Gina, it may go somewhere completely different. We are me and I am Change.