All Hallow's Eve

All Hallow's Eve is the Wiccan equivalent of New Year's Eve. It symbolizes Divinity as it enters the reincarnation process, and thus, urges Wiccans to undergo their own reincarnation process in which they shall start life anew.

It seems that I'm always trying to leave my past behind. Good or bad, I want a fresh start. And yet, I revel in the fact that my past creeps back into my life now and then. Ever since I moved back to San Diego, things have become all too familiar, and yet, I've experienced a whirlwind of change, imperceptible to everyone but me.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, a guy I was dating at the time told me to not "become LA" - I had no idea what that meant at the time. But having become LA, slowly over time, that came came to mean being more self-centered, less compassionate, a little more impatient, and a little less genuine. I became all of this and more. That became who I am, and I saw no problem with it - not in the slightest.

Eventually, work and school took its tolls on me and I broke down. I begged to move home and relished the day that I could leave LA and move back to my hometown of San Diego, vowing to work on who I wanted to become. I had no idea how much of my identity stayed in LA - with my friends, my career, and the apartment I called home.

Nothing changed. I never worked on becoming more spiritual, my music, or even trying to define my philosophies on life. Instead, I wasted the days away keeping busy with dating and socializing.

In a grand gesture, embodying the exact lifestyle I vowed running away from, I broke my foot. And with it, came the idea that I had found LA in San Diego, because I had created it for myself despite my new environment.

In the days after that, I spent time successfully deluding myself - telling myself that everything I did and everything I thought was alright because no matter what I did or didn't do, I couldn't control the way life was meant to be for me. Nothing could change and resistance was futile.

Eventually, I noticed some changes. Things that could not be denied no matter how I wanted to rationalize things. First were my emotions. They were so alive, and I couldn't control them any longer. I cried nearly every other day. And if I didn't cry, I choked back sorrows I didn't know I could not swallow. Whether it was watching a love scene in a movie or waking up to seeing a woman give birth on TV, I cried and I felt - and I felt things that I did not know I could feel. It was beautiful.

The second thing was that even though I have a problem with lying to others, I stopped being good at lying to myself. No matter how I flipped it around, I always saw my situations as they really were. And even if I tried to rationalize it, I understood the truths there were at the root.

All in all, I stopped being able to hide from my emotions and my thoughts. If I was in awe, I was completely amazed. And if I felt hurt, the pain would pulse out of my heart, through my neck and into my throat. And that feeling would stay there in my throat as if someone were choking me or the pain was too terrible to hold back. Slowly, I realized that LA's grip on me had begun to wane and my journey to become more human, more compassionate, had been trudging on, one day at a time.

And so, on All Hallow's Eve, if this is to be my chance at "reincarnation" - at redefining myself - then I hope that, somehow, I can finally learn to let myself just be.