Cosmic Contract

Isn't it curious, how we can long for elements of earth we didn't grow up with? We can be called by the sea, knowing we should be by water, before we even see it. There is a pull of the familiar, an inherent knowing, without any concrete proof, that we're not where we belong.

I was born in a place with harsh winters, and cold parts of the year that last too long. I am uncomfortable when cold, covered, and bundled. I feel restricted by long pants on my legs and long sleeves on my arms. Trapped. I am much more myself when little material covers me. When my skin feels the environment on it. Bare feet on earth. Air on my limbs. Water on my skin. Perhaps I was meant to plop on a beach, eating a piece of fresh and sticky fruit, any given day of the year. To live a little more wild. Feral, almost.

If I could, I would pack up and move tomorrow.

I am constantly looking up as I walk, to the sky. Anything to remind of expansion, that the planet is big, and what lies beyond is bigger.

How curious, that I should find myself tethered in this life. Bound, for awhile, too and for a magical little boy, sent straight from the stars.

Perhaps that's why I have lived so many lives here. Married. Divorced. Maybe that's why I have lived so many places, after leaving my childhood home. The home that disappeared after, and would never be an option to set foot in again.

Snippets, vignettes, with different partners, different times. I have already been so many people. I've died, and been reborn again and again right here while living. Maybe, before this round on earth, my bones knew I'd be tethered, and I made an unconscious cosmic contract to live...in bits. To always be new. And each path is the right path. Every time.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

I don't regret a single life.

Perhaps, what I've been looking for...a place to land, simply doesn't exist. Words I wrote in my early twenties while living in New York pop into my head, "I move around the world to find my home, and I still can't get it right."

Maybe I'm not meant to ever land..but just to evolve, and evolve, and evolve...constant motion...like the water I seek. Constant chapters, dying, and being reborn.

.
.
.
.

Happy

4.26.2020


I am happy today. I don't feel this way often. Let me explain.

I have always inherently understood that happiness is not sustainable. It's not a place we end, but a place we land...from time to time. That we each come earth-side with our natural dispositions, and while we can adjust, and be influenced to a point, our temperature seems to be set where it's set, and we inevitably come back to land there.

I remember reading a book in my 20's that finally explained what I'd always known, which was that there are a million other things to be, rather than "happy". That is not to say I never land in "happiness", but the feeling of happiness that comes full on, that lasts the majority of the day, the whole body all-encompassing feeling of joy, just doesn't hit often.

And this is not to say that if one does not experience joy, that they must be experiencing it's opposite, for I do not exist full time in sadness, but rather, am a mix of many things.

I default in: a bit of melancholia, wistfulness, nostalgia, wonder, curiosity, and my other things I lack the vocabulary for, that make up my inner storm.

But when days like this hit, where my body is light, where I dwell lightly in it, when I have a pep in my step, a twinkle in my eye, and a smile on my face, when I have landed for a moment in happy...those days feel so good.

And I think they are extra special, because they don't come often.

Like a holiday.

I appreciate it like a holiday...


.
.
.
.
.

The Responsibility of Sensitivity

I posted the first part of this on social media, but was working on a much larger version here. It's finally done. Here you go. 

It took me years to understand my sensitivity was my language on this earth, and that there would be no stamping out my essence. It took decades to learn it was my superpower.

I get to experience this world with vibrancy. With a bottomless heart, so full of love to give that it feels too big for my body most days.

My superpower means that I say yes more than no, I am not afraid to swing big, to miss, to burn it down, and to try again. I only know limitless, and I want to feel it ALL.

It means full out, head first, and there is no room for lukewarm or half-hearted anything.

It means I am okay with jumping first.

It means I am brave as hell.

It means I am the softest warrior you'll ever meet.

And it means in this life, I'll never be half-alive.


* * * * * *

I remember reading a quote years ago that said, "If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me." I remember thinking how terrible that sounded. Only recently have I begun to understand what those words mean, and how beautiful a concept it actually is. Now I hear it and think of my sensitivity, and when I think of my sensitivity these days, a new layer to my understanding of it is emerging. One that has a few themes, like patience, and limitations, but is truly about responsibility.

The responsibility and ownership of highly sensitive feelings.

I think back on many times throughout my life where I was left waiting for a pice of the puzzle to slide into place. You see, I love hard, I make my mind up quick, and am prone to tunnel vision.

This means, when I'm in, I am in. I want what I want, and I love you/it to the bones.

This means I've often been left waiting for the other party to join me in the jump. This applies to everything from a romantic partner, to an RSVP for an event, to a career endeavor. And I am not a naturally patient person.

This means, I've spent a lot of time in my life feeling like someone else held the cards. As I'd wait for them to make up their mind, or what felt like to "choose me", I've often feel helpless, swimming in a sea of giant feelings. I've asked myself why my fate often feels in the hands of the other party, and why this theme had recurred through my life.

Only recently have I had a revelation about this, and that is the one of responsibility.

I am built to know my heart.
I am built to jump quick.
I am not afraid to feel intensely.
This makes me brave. 
It's unfair to grant someone power over me.
Nobody gets to govern me, but me.

Maybe I want, love, and long at a higher frequency than most, but nobody asked to be the captain of my ship, and if I turn myself over to someone / something beyond my control who never asked for it, that's unfair. That's a pressure they've never asked for, and most likely are unaware of.

My responsibility for my sensitivity boils down to this: fully owning the depths at which I swim, and going there willingly, unharnessed, regardless of what the other side should ever choose.

Here I am. 

I vibrate intensely, deeply, fully, and you can swim here with me -
should you choose to.

I will never be afraid. I will risk. I'm okay with jumping first.
I'd rather try and not get what I desire than never know.
I'd go to the ends of the earth, right now, today, easily, for my heart.

And, "if equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me."
No regrets on offering up my lovely bones, entire.
I'm okay with loving more.

Always.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.

The growing ghost

I'm struggling, sweating. It used to be easy to carry him, but now I can only do it for a finite amount of time. It's getting shorter, and shorter.

"Stop for a second", I tell him. "I want to remember this forever. What it was like right before you turned four." But he's gone, in a flash, running past me.

We're making ramps for our cars out of dirt. "Don't worry, mom. We can wash our hands at home." Since when does he tell me not to worry, and hatch the plan?

I think of when I placed my hand on his brand-new 7 lb body, on his chest to comfort him. "He calmed down when his mom came in", the doctors said. "I'm a MOM", I thought. I try to recall it, but I've already forgotten...

"Hold me mom", I carry him home. He's half my size now, and this is where I struggle...but knowing I'm on borrowed time, I push through. He turns into me, putting both arms around my neck, head nestling in. I try to memorize exactly this moment...they are getting fewer.

But it can't be captured, it is ethereal, a living loss, a growing ghost. Intangible, and can't be kept.

I try to remember what it felt like when he was a baby. I've already forgotten...



3.10.2020


.
.
.
.

“That’s not how my story is supposed to go.”

“That’s not how my story is supposed to go.” 

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve said that. I’d have a whole bunch of nickels.

Now it’s been so long since I’ve thought that, I can’t believe there was a time when I concerned myself with any “supposed to’s.”

Over time, I’ve shaken off all the old stories. I belong to no titles, I have outgrown all molds. The biggest surprises that have come my way have made my life big. To not know what’s coming keeps it expanding...

Anything and everything is possible. It’s all happened. It’s yet to happen. I used to long to have answers, and want them to fit neatly in a box. This isn’t to say I don’t find new bones on which to pin new dreams, but when I find myself doing so, I check myself. 

No expectations = no limitations.

Now, the unknown is what keeps me going. What’s next? I have no idea, thank god. All is possible.

.

.

.

.

Turn back dull earth, and find thy center out

A plane flies over, against a little patch of blue in an otherwise gray sky. Ohhhh, I breathe while watching. "That looks like freedom." I am instantly aware of my feet on the ground, and how heavy they feel. For as long as I can remember, I have had a desire to be off the earth, and in the sky. Always aware of the restriction of gravity, and being bound.

It's simply one of those days, you see. Where I feel a bit unsteady, untethered, looking for a touchstone, but not really knowing what that means, today.

I think of 2011, when I discovered the Camino de Santiago. I knew I had been called, and I knew one day I would make my pilgrimage. I keep thinking about that now, as I spend each day walking. Pushing myself to go farther, to take new routes. Experiencing my home on foot the way I normally don't. The way I do if I'm in another place, the way I do in NYC, but haven't here. I wonder to myself, "why?"

Perhaps, for now, this is my Camino. This is my pilgrimage. Perhaps this is the time I learn how to be grateful on foot.

I walk. I press on, beginning the pilgrimage to my restless heart.




.
.
.

Mask

I am walking, and I find that I am smiling...for some reason. I think it is just being outside, in the sun, breathing in fresh air. It invigorates.

I think about the mask workshop I took in NYC, and how there was a woman in the class who was always smiling. "No one is that happy", I thought to myself.

I've been thinking about that workshop lately. It was 2012, and that was the first time I died.

My grandpa had just passed away, I couldn't get home fast enough. I wanted to crawl out of my skin.

I picture myself in front of the class, both hidden and exposed by the wearing of this mask, trying my hardest to send out my heart. My energy, right from that spot smack in the center of my chest, out and over the sea, to a loved one who had just left, as the assignment required.

Stretching. Expansion.

I look up as I walk, I'm always looking up, to see what's above, what messages are in the sky. My constant, to remind me that life is still big.

I think about the time I stood on a Hawaiian beach, observing a father teaching his toddler how to surf, my writing of this observation, and the realization that there are so many ways in which to live life, and parent a child. This child of the waves teaching me a lesson in expansion in that instant.

It has never left me.

There is a new corner of the world, just every few miles.

Endless possibility at our feet.

I keep walking.

.
.
.
.

March 26, 2020

“Guide me to, guide me from, guide me home”, I said to the stars. 

Like a cosmic prayer, it came to me one night. 

I’d made a habit of consulting the stars nightly before bed. 

Mid February, before the world fell apart, I wrote of “expansion, and being bound.” These words, this juxtaposition, now a prophecy. A foretelling.

My lessons are coming in hot. Lessons in distance and closeness, in tribe and solitude. 

I called them into being. The stars delivered.

The world shrunk and grew in an instant. So did my home, and my heart. 

I am filled to the brim with more than I can alchemize into words just yet. 

What a beginning to this new earth...the next chapter...

Not a soul with the answer. 

And that’s strangely comforting.

.

.

.

.

Thirtysomething things I've learned in thirtysomething years

I did more than thirtysomething things...I could keep going. Maybe I'll just add to the list here and there, but here you go:

The unthinkable will happen.

It pays to say yes rather than no to adventures and opportunity.
 
You can’t help who you’re attracted to, and who you're not. Neither are to be forced.

Your perceived weaknesses are most likely your super powers.

You don’t know what kind of parent you’ll be until you are one.

You can’t possibly know how to parent your child until you meet, and get to know them.

Time will speed up the older you get.

You will look back on just about every phase with nostalgia, even the rough stuff.

You probably don’t know how good you have it.

People would never guess how bad you’ve had it.

We are all just souls, more alike than not, 
experiencing life in whatever body we happened to be born in.

It takes a long time to learn to love selflessly.

What you feel shame over is probably your greatest story to share and inspire others with.

Everyone is connected.

Everything is connected.

Birth and death are parts of the same whole.

Some things feel cosmic, biblical, and cannot be explained

The universe is full of love notes, and when you tune in, you’ll feel the world has been tailored just for you.

There are too many “coincidences” to not questions sometimes if you are, in fact, in “The Truman Show”.

Gratitude is everything.

Friends are important, chose them wisely.

Don’t give too much of yourself to those who don’t deserve it.

It is impossible and nonsensical to judge another, you simply cannot know what it’s like to experience life from their point of view.

You will have dreams that will come true.

Life will be full of curveballs, and the surprises will be some of the best things to happen.

You will survive that which you’re sure you can’t, should you chose to.

Your feelings will get hurt, and your heart will get broken, and there will never be an age where you’re immune.

You can’t love someone enough for the both of you.

Not everyone will want to do the hard work it takes to sustain a relationship, a friendship, or want to grow...those are not your people, if you’re a seeker.

You’ll experience yourself differently than the outside world perceives, and their perception has little to do with you.

Consult others for opinions at your own discretion, but in the end, only you steer your ship, and know where it needs to go.

If you feel stifled, or have a hard time expressing yourself, pay attention...go where breathing comes easy.

Human connection is vital.

We are all eachother’s teachers.

When it comes to religion, let people believe whatever they need to leave to get through life, but never let someone tell you their way is you are way too if it doesn’t ring true for you.

There is never just one possibility, or outcome, there are many.
At first that will overwhelm, but in the end, it is your freedom.

Soulmates can take many forms; lovers, friends, family, and animals.
 
Give yourself grace for doing whatever you knew how to do, until you learned to do better.

Each baby arrives earth-side absolutely perfect.
You’re supposed to be here, right at this moment, however you are.
 
You can’t imagine how quickly things turn.

Life is a series of goodbyes.

This too shall pass - the good and the bad.
Nothing lasts.
Not one thing.

Awaken II

In the midst of social distancing, I experienced an incredible closeness. Sometimes people come into your life in the most sudden, and unexpected ways, leaving you forever changed, and there is no going back to before, from a crash course in life, and love.

He's on his way back to France. I'm sure you're curious about this story, but it's mine to keep. I will never claim to know what the future holds, where the path may lead, or why ours crossed, but to him I am so grateful. Magic is real. He brought me back to life.

.
.
.

I watched him walk away, trying to memorize it. Burning the image into my brain, not wanting to forget. As I drove away, I was not yet able to turn on the radio, or hear any music. Not yet ready to fill myself with anything other than what I was feeling. Never having had a goodbye like that, one that was so sad, because my heart is so incredibly full. 

What's next? I ask myself. Now? But it's not an empty question. I feel as though I've been loved right back to life. 

Sometimes people just belong. They just fit. And life, and home expands. And breathing is easy. 

.

.

.

.

.

Awaken

Once upon a time...

...there was a girl who, for more than two and a half years, kept her heart under lock and key. With high built walls, and a certainty she was irreparably broken.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't connect. She felt out-of-body, without access to her own heart.

Wrong pieces of the puzzle, every time. She resigned herself to the fact a part of her had closed, and no matter who knocked, it was impossible to answer.

But then.

Something unexplainable happened. Something clicked. Switched. She was comfortable. She was vulnerable. She felt. And it was all okay. She fell in sync with him, with ease. And she began to awaken.

Like Sleeping Beauty after the kiss, 
like the earth after the rain, 
she reignited. 

She could feel her heart again, and her heart could feel.
Natural. Equal. It simply...was.

Re-inspired. As a woman, as an artist. Given fresh eyes in which to see her city, her life, and her current path. Laid out before her like riches, she goes forward.

Open, and able to feel, once again.

No matter where the path leads, she is grateful to him, for his gift to her.

As it turns out, magic is very, very real.

.
.
.

Expansion, and being bound

I am looking at the moon, and thinking both of expansion, and being bound.

I forget. I so often forget that I am a Russian nesting doll, with so many lifetimes inside of me. I've lived in other cities, I've had a big life. Teardrops are here, and on the streets of New York.

How do you ever properly close a chapter? This one has been long. The one where I am a single mom. I've been a single mom, on my own for so long now, I can't imagine what it wouldn't be like.

This is the one where I own my own my own little condo. The space that I call home for myself, and my boy. This little space of the world. This tiny square of earth...how can it feel so small, and so vast?

I think of when I was in elementary, and I was so aware of the weight of my being and the space I took up. If I stood in the corner of my room, that is all I would occupy in the world. But I felt so much bigger than what I realized I was restricted to.

I think of how ancient I was, when I was new. I think of my boy, and wonder how he experiences his being, and wonder if he is aware of his vastness or his restriction.

I am many lives packed neatly into one, wondering how you ever say goodby, or move forward, propelled into the unknown again and again...

.
.
.
.
.

The year of everything

There are those years where eternity is crammed into just 365 days.

Life on fast forward. One giant event after another. A year where you land in a completely different space than when you started...figuratively and literally.

With a shiny new decade about to begin...

(the energy is palpable, isn't it? It's electric. It's sparking. I can see it, thundering behind a wooden door that can barely contain it. The brightness seeping out the cracks at the bottom, and all around. It's about to burst!)

...I am reflecting on how completely my end and beginning of 2019 were. Everything I learned can be summed up in three words:

I AM CAPABLE.

This spring, and just a few posts back, I published one titled burn. Where I talked about precipice, and how I had only felt on the verge like that just one other time. When suddenly I knew my life was about to take a redirect, and change, entire. I was right once again. A couple months later my dream day job came knocking, and the opportunity presented itself to become a homeowner for the first time. Needles to say, both transformed the current state of my world.

I get to enter this new decade with so much new:

As a working mom
As a mom with a preschooler
Without friendships I didn't expect
With friendships I didn't expect
In a brand new living space that feels like heaven
As a homeowner
Without the same car
Without my old furniture
Without fighting legally for my son
Without anxiety and PTSD...or at least with hardly any left...
With true in-my-bones and in-my-soul contentment
With a changed body, one that no longer experiences the beauty of breastfeeding, but now belongs to me, altered just for me
As an associate artist with one of my favorite theatre companies
Side passion projections about to be announced, and come to fruition
With giant dreams
With a limitless sky
With new optimism
Strengthened by knowledge
Senses buzzing once more

I have so much god damn gratitude. I couldn't wrap my head around what that meant for so long. Trauma left me longing for just the bare minimum. If I learned to want just the bare minimum, wasn't that...sad? Devastating? Didn't that shrink me, my dreams, all I once hoped for and strived towards?

No. It simply means appreciating the little moments along the way up, through the journey of my rising. The small parts build the foundation. Tiny miracles are always around, in the form of coincidence, of chance encounters, of omens. Looking back, even through the destruction there was beauty.

Only I steer this ship. I am finding I have loved every part of my life that led me here, and I will continue to. Was it always there? Whispering to me all along? The undercurrent of energy saying this was all meant to be...unfolding exactly as it should...?

I've never related more to the tale of The Phoenix as I have this year. This was the year I earned my wings. I proudly stepped into the ancestral line of warrior women that have paved the way before me, and will come after me. Confidently, and unapologetically.

This was my time to become...and I finally became.

For over two years, my senses dulled. I could only see black. Now, I'm rushing toward the light, for I've finally broken...into blossom...


"Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom."

A Blessing by James Wright 


.

.

.

A new introduction.

Welcome! 

My name is Deena Marie Manzanares. Because I think it's far more interesting to know who people are, rather than what they do, let's start there. I am a highly sensitive person who often felt my heart was made of glass, my nervous system the outside, not meant for a world so harsh. Over the years, I learned to harness life's alchemy to redirect my perceived weakness into my superpower. I am the softest warrior you'll ever meet. 

I am a single mother to my son. I saw him in a vision years before he was even a possibility. Birth was the moment of my life. Housing the bones and soul of another is completely life-altering, and put all my priorities in just the right places. He is the greatest love I've ever known. 

I'm an actor, model, and tv host. Theatre, and storytelling are sacred to me. As an actor and as an audience member, I am able to dissipate into the whole. Relating to story reminds us we are not alone. 

I am a member of Actors Equity Association, and represented by Talent Management group. I am Brand Ambassador for local business Got Beauty. I am associate artist with the Sting and Honey theatre company. I am a tv host for ABC4. 

Over the years I created a large social media following after an extremely popular YouTube channel(s). 

I am a shapeshifting poet. My heart comes in many forms. My words, my poetry, my art, my exchanges with you. 

I'm in progress. I am a giant heartbeat. I am learning. I am sharing it with you here...

He's three.

Lumbering down a never-ending hallway in a body I no longer recognized, I desperately sought relief. Leaning against the wall each time a contraction hit, I could do nothing but ride the wave of the worst physical pain I'd experienced in my life so far. It would end as if it had never happened. Then repeat.

It wasn't until I was finally admitted and we could call my parents that I let myself cry. It was real.

This was it. The day when all of the things I'd been the most scared of in the world, would happen. In one day. Less than.

It's blurry. Feverish. Dreamlike. The sound of the monitors. A heart. An ocean. Over, and over.

Suddenly, you were on your way. Four days late, and now ready to make your entrance, you did things on your own time, and in your own way from the start. The doctor, "should I run?" As the nurses said you were coming, now. I couldn't feel you, but I asked for a mirror, and I got to watch your entrance. It was by far the moment of my life. Words fail. A record 1 minute 36 second birth. Four simple pushes, I was laying back, and you were in the air...descending onto my chest.

You seemed huge, your hair was black, and neither of those things were what I'd envisioned. As you laid on me for the first time, I wondered who in the world this was that had just come earth-side.

Hours went by and I had no clue. It's all so hazy. You were so beautiful. Your dimples the fist big surprise.

When you came home after that first week in the hospital, I remember waking up each morning with butterflies in my stomach. Actual butterflies. Even though I'd seen you all through the night, there was something magic about starting a new day with you in it.

Every single thing about you, and my motherhood experience every day since, has been nothing like I thought, or ever could have seen coming.

I have fought for you, and alongside you, every step from the minute you arrived. One day I hope to rest.

At three, you have talents, and a vocabulary far beyond your years. You have brought things with you that only could have been accumulated from having been here many lifetimes, and you are ancient in your newness.

You have remained foreign to me, yet you're inexplicably mine. We are bound together, meant to be, and I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it.

Blonde, light, pure, sparkling, life-force, who's bones and soul I housed. You taught me that death and birth are two halves of the same whole, and of the devastating permanence to each.

I died the day you came to me, and I will never be the same. I was reborn, a giant heartbeat. Inside out, as if my nervous system now on the outside. I am stronger, and more fragile, and exhausted, yet more energetic, and full of opposites that all exist in me at the same time.

You sifted my priorities, entire. I could almost see them shuffle, and settle into the right spots, like sand. You gave me clarity, new vision, changed time, and taught me a deep appreciation for my body.

You recently asked me where we are before we are born. I replied, "the stars, the clouds." This week we talked about when you were in my tummy. You asked, "were you in the clouds with me? Or were you waiting for me?" Tears filled my eyes, as they do at this moment. "Both. Of this, I am certain, my love."

Happy Birthday to my Charlie, love of my whole life.

.
.
.
.