cycles

also known as: altering my relationship with time

“I was feeling out of control so I decided to scale back on the social media and make time for me.”

“Camille, I feel like we had this same conversation two months ago.”

“You know what? I think we did.”

With love and grace, she began to tell me of a recent lesson she learned about the way the Souther Paiute peoples tell time. “The believe time is a circle: seasons, moon cycles, all of it. It’s one cycle. It’s different from how we think of time as a line.”

This was the moment when my dear friend helped me recognize that I’m in an ongoing. It goes like this: work » trigger » traumatized » break. Something inside me clicked as it realized she didn’t blame me for being on social media. She simply observed how the violences of this world done in plain site are a constant trigger. I used to blame myself for burnout and use that blame to create shame-narratives to “inspire” me to do better. I’m so used to having this specific lens, I haven’t widened my scope to see the bigger picture. The world —with its powers and principalities— is so violent and it continues to hold us in this perpetual cycle of violence.