For Jessica
I'm clearly rusty at this thing, writing. Six weeks have slipped by since my last post. Maybe because life is so deliciously full these days, full of new routines and faces, new challenges and adventures. Four drafts sit in my queue, full of Jamaican underwater adventures, Kure Beach landscapes, and a meditation on the word savor. As time has passed, I've been forced to confront that maybe I can't move on to these posts until I give you the rest of the story from 2014.
This is the other half. It is not so calm and fairly dark.
This week ice stole over Raleigh, slowed things down, pulled me inside myself.
It's funny the stories we tell about ourselves. The parts we edit out. The words that we send into oblivion as quickly as our fingers type them out.
My whole life, my story never held the words that I've learned to embrace this last year, words that prick at each of our senses: raw, anemic, restless, static, paralysis, chafed, lost.
Anxious.
Anxiety is particularly wicked because, unlike fear which lives in the present, it tunnels into your mind from the future. Boring like an insidious worm, leaving caverns slimed with Jurassic era tar.
1 in 4 women struggle to make it out of these dark places, twice as many women as men. Many of us manage to cope, to survive, to keep our eyes pointed forward while we frantically peddle our legs in place. We stay alive, but we are so, so tired.
I was so, so tired.
On a weekday night in April, my aunt Meg calmed a panic-attack stricken babbling me, saying It is helpful to remember that what we experience in our external world is a manifestation of our internal world.
Look with your eyes, shine the Light there.
And, in my case, take the biggest, baddest magnifying glass you can find deep in your hope chest and light 'em up. Burn it away.
Sitting in the flames of acknowledging, processing, and eliminating that junk was - is - painful. But I so prefer the bright pain of the burn to the exhaustion of the never-ending sludge run. And so grateful for the people who have held me, flames and all.
Last year I finally let go of chasing things that made me feel present and instead became present. I've popped up from my worm hole aflame and found myself in awe of all the torches in the distance.
I see you, friend, here and now. And if you need me, I'll sit and burn with you for a bit.
