This Is Not a Love Story.
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I wish it were easy to sit here and allow my fingertips to tell the story of my heart in this moment, but the truth is, it feels like I’m swimming through molasses.
Words that used to flow, that I could see written in the sky of my imagination, no longer appear, and I sit here staring at the screen, coming up with a million ways to distract myself from the task at hand: to write. To create. To express. To share.
To give myself permission to hear my voice speak aloud the thoughts that I have been turning over like precious stones for months.
Sigh.
Instead, the pain that has found its way under my left wing tightens, and so does my breath.
The discomfort that weaves its way down my spine spasms and I am reminded that I am a human on this earth in human form, and that learning how to heal is not linear — there is no straight line or how-to, and it is rarely simple and even more rarely, easy; it is, however, the only thing I can do.
I take a deep breath and I let it out; the out-breath isn’t a whisper, but a mix of purr and a roar– it is a flutter of who I am meant to be, caught in a pause in my path.
The three lives that keep me going each day know that today is a day of difficulty, one in a string of a few — the sky is heavy and so am I, and so they have gathered and nap around me in support and solidarity.
I do not know it all, or have the answers or even know which direction to take myself; if you ask me where I am going or what I am doing, I will take yet another deep breath and purrroar it out a little louder, for the place in-between, where we heal, does not have a timeline or a compass or even a clock.
It is a foreign yet familiar land; it is a place to touch down and be held, and it is a place that can be marked by the absence of words.
The in-between is not a transition to rush through or numb myself from — just as in my practice of Yoga, where I slow down the movement from one posture to the next, feeling my muscles sing and burn and vibrate; in life off the mat, I notice the pause at the end of the exhale before the inhale begins, and the quiet that exists there.
There is rest, yes — hours frittered away as my bank account dwindles down and I know to trust and keep breathing. There is the dismantling of everything that was built on the foundation that I set for myself in another life, the one before this one.
Each dark corner, each light-filled pocket, must be inspected. The questions are many and the answers come right away, like waves into shore:
Is this me? Does this make my heart race? Am I in integrity with myself? Am I in integrity with Spirit? Is this the truth and if it isn’t, can I hold a space big enough for the truth to be just that and still look at myself in the eyes and forgive myself?
Sometimes the answer is a resounding Yes, and others, an exhausted no. But in this life — this short, sweet, painful, joy-filled life — there is only one choice to make, and that is the one to move forward.
One foot must step in front of the other — to catch my breath, I will take a moment, and when it’s time, I will take another step forward.
The weight I place onto my shoulders is enormous compared to the one I feel from the world around me; I do not fall lightly into convention or the norm, whatever that is anymore. There is no white picket fence, no shining jewel on my finger, and no babe in my belly.
There is no forecast of this to come, instead, there is this, just as it is for all of us: the path ahead, the one I must forge for myself.
One hand holds kindness and compassion, the other hand is placed on the center of my chest and holds my heart; and this is how I arm myself to move through the jungle before me.
All of the things I thought I would be, I am not; instead, I am me. I am not the Me of magazines or storybooks or movies — unless we are talking about the indie ones, then possibly — but the kind that writes her own book.
I am the kind that builds my own home with my own two hands and through the listening of my throbbing, beating heart, through failing and hurting and praying and forgiving, I am the kind that may well be alone until the end of time — but the promise is this: I will have lived my life fully, and I will have lived my life not in the expectation of what it should be, but in the glory of what it is.
And so maybe this is a love story; a song I found from the pain I feel, and as the words fall like diamonds from my lips, I can feel myself soar higher.
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