Journaling – Page 2 – Under the Cedar Trees

Sitting in a Hot Car / Warm Sunday Drive

Published by Lee Under the Cedar Trees on June 8, 2025

I’m sitting in my hot car with a window down and a cheap excuse for a latte in my hand that coffee snobs would scoff at. I’ve been training with people decades ahead of me, who somehow haven’t given up on me yet despite my failures, and I’m tired in a good way, and I’m still sweating, and I’m disappointed in my weak progress but also kind of glad I haven’t quit yet, I guess. My guts are complaining, and I’ve got shitty music in my ears that most would hate but apparently some others out there, somewhere, actually like too, if the global play counts displayed are to be believed.

I don’t live in the past, but I do learn from it.

Published by Lee Under the Cedar Trees on June 7, 2025

I don’t live in my past. I don’t remember it clearly, even. Not most of it. However, that doesn’t stop me from internalizing the mistakes that were made and learning from them. Without even remembering their catalysts, I live and breathe and sweat those lessons today.

I don’t live in the past. What’s gone is gone, but, the past is a part of me today. It strongly indicates the future.

The lessons have been learned, but the action is still missing. Fear needs to be conquered next. The means must be collected. With the means and fearlessness, I can proceed.

A lesson from auto-correct today?

Published by Lee Under the Cedar Trees on June 6, 2025

Sometimes I find some hope for myself to become deserving of my life when I find myself changing auto-correct’s assumed “love” back into “live” for what feels like the hundredth time in recent months, and I realize that I communicate far more about loving than I do about living.

Two Kinds of Loneliness

Published by Lee Under the Cedar Trees on June 6, 2025

I recently saw a stranger online saying that there’s two kinds of loneliness.

She said there’s loneliness of being without someone. That’s the kind most think about or mean when they hear or use that word, and it’s certainly not a good feeling.

She went on to say that there’s another kind of loneliness…

I should go.

Published by Lee Under the Cedar Trees on June 5, 2025

I feel so guilty just for being alive.

I’m not right in the head and I think I never will be.

I just need to get this out tonight.

At Odds with the Savage

Published by Lee Under the Cedar Trees on June 3, 2025

The savage and I are at odds again today.
But, today, I’m not pacifying it. I refuse to play by its rules.
I will not coddle it, cuddle it, kiss it on its forehead today.
Today I resist. I argue. I rail against its every move.

June 3, 2025

Defect or difference: does it really matter?

Published by Lee Under the Cedar Trees on June 1, 2025

A friend a couple weeks ago helped me begin to think: “Rather than a defect causing difficulties, it’s a difference causing difficulties.”

On platonic soulmates and fear of loss

Published by Lee Under the Cedar Trees on May 18, 2025

Some friends are closer than others. Supposedly, so-called “soulmates” (people often only use that word in the context of romance and sex, but that’s not the only application of the term) can come in various forms, including friends and even family — I’ve been learning about the concept of “platonic soulmates”, where people have a very close bond with a friend for which there is zero romantic interest or sexual attraction. These are supposedly the friends you can truly be yourself around, who actually, honestly accept you; who you may have a great emotional intimacy with; who are there for you through just about anything imaginable; who help you really discover who you are, both good and bad. They bring so much benefit into your life, and with less up-and-down volatility (better word??) than can come with relationships of a romantic nature.

I can think of very few people who have come close to this throughout my life…

But I think I may have found one now, and I’m as terrified of losing it as I am grateful to have it.

Over 35 years of masking

Published by Lee Under the Cedar Trees on May 15, 2025

After over 35 years of masking, I don’t know who I am. I crafted what is probably a partially false persona to grow into and I don’t know who I would be if I had never done that. I still have a deep-rooted fear of learning something about myself that wrecks me, and I think I may be somehow terrified of finding that I’m really just someone I hate underneath everything. Or finding something that just plain hurts.

May 14 – 15, 2025

Choose to never feel this way?

Published by Lee Under the Cedar Trees on May 13, 2025

“I can choose to never feel this way ever again
With some courage and patience”

I wrote that yesterday
Seeing it now, a day later
It doesn’t mean quite the same thing anymore

24 hours can shift one’s perspective

Maybe tomorrow
It will mean something a little different again

Category: Journaling