I live my life through the words I write
Observe how parts of you
shift,
ascend and recede like the tide,
introducing a new side of you
to yourself
every day.
Passions peak and wane
to our pleasure or dismay.
Try not to make meaning
of the waves,
for when at last you do,
they will already be gone,
leaving you in the still, shallow water
gently caressing your ankles.
Walk in the direction opposite
to the voice in your head
if that voice
does not belong to you.
Starting with short, clean,
clear-polished slates,
twice or thrice
daily lotioning,
keeping mind and body
meaningfully occupied,
together
can grow
a new path through the forest.
I had a safe space.
I invited people in.
I realized
my decision was premature
too late.
My safe space dissolved
into an empty void
for months,
tainted by the destruction
I had invited in,
in naivete.
A piece of me broke away.
Remembering
if I made it once
I can make it again
and this time,
add an extra padlock on the door.
No one expects an invitation
so I disregard any felt obligation
to extend one.
Reclaiming safety
for my soul.
I started a new page in the notebook
with a title at the top:
‘What are some things that I feel CONFIDENT in about myself?’
I started a page on the left,
assuming I would need the spread of both left and right pages
like an open book,
to display my confident knowings
for surely, once I started listing,
pages would fill before my eyes.
My list consists of four bullet points,
consuming a quarter of one page.
The rest of the page-spread remains blank.
I cannot think of more to add.
Adding this to the docket of items
to discuss
at my next therapy session.
As the saying goes,
the past is the past
but at the same time
past can come into the present
if further examination
will help you to process
what did or did not
happen
and who you are now
for it.
My therapist
encouraged me to practice making decisions
faster
and based on my instincts.
Not every decision needs to be
weighed and analyzed
for hours
before reaching a conclusion –
a novel concept
for my brain to comprehend.
I took her advice;
I could hear her voice in my head
gently pushing me
out of my head
and into my body.
Warm air, sunshine-soaked sky
lured me to be outside
and move,
while listening.
I want to walk through the park,
I want to explore a new trail,
I want to recreate a small sliver of wild
I chase and revel in elsewhere.
I laugh at myself
as I walk along the trail
at this series of decisions
being the most impulsive I have been
in months.
When did I become so scared of living?
I have been gone for a while
living in the shadows, the darkness,
and finding comfort there,
familiarity,
safety.
I can see the light
but it scares me.
The shadows are quiet,
impose no pressure to speak or do,
their cold embrace enveloping me
until we warm.
I’m liking it here, in the dark.
It feels familiar
for I am often here
though not for long periods of time.
There are bursts of sunlight
that beam through the clouds
interrupting my accumulation of days.
The sun tries to tell me
that really, I’m OK
because I can see the sun
and be happy for a while;
I don’t qualify for a new label.
So when the clouds roll over again
I start back at day one.
And I ask myself the age-old question:
on some level, have I always been this way?
And then I ask the question:
am I trying to make something out of nothing,
this earnesty to classify
and put myself in a box per criteria,
or is this just a simple part
of the human experience?
This time,
I am staying in the darkness for a long time.
Longer than any time before.
I feel scared of everything
all at the same time,
all the time.
Paralyzed.
I have either lost myself
or changed –
I know not which it is.
And I don’t have the energy
to do
what they tell me I should do.
I don’t want to deny the darkness
in an attempt to feel better;
I want to stay here.
Eventually I will let someone down
and I can only blame the darkness
for so many things
because after all,
shouldn’t I be strong enough to fight it off?
But then
someone on the outside
saw me, and saw the shadows.
She acknowledged,
she validated,
and she nudged me towards a new source of light.
I have been gone for a while
and I’m not back yet
but maybe,
someday,
eventually.
Trees, forests, water
and time away from home
pulled my heart to the north,
to Waskesiu.
For years
I have heard, from people countless,
of Waskesiu being included in their summer plans
and each spoke of the place
with such fondness
that it made me want to stay away.
I did not want to find joy
in the same place as so many others
for fear that doing so
would render me ‘common’, ‘basic’,
or ‘just the same as everyone else’.
I fiercely believed
I needed to be different;
I needed to find a different place
to nourish myself
so I could stand apart from the crowd.
My mind told my heart
I was not allowed to go there;
I would not be happy in being the same.
With shifting priorities and family structures
this year, Waskesiu made sense
and yet,
I remained determined to spend the time
in a way that afterwards
when I shared my story
it would land outside what I assumed to be
the ‘typical’ experience.
We rented a cabin,
we brought our five-and-a-half month-old puppy,
we cooked our own food,
we hiked kilometers of trails.
We encountered hundreds of people
and dozens of dogs
and as I observed my surroundings
I saw people
laughing and talking and playing together,
running, reading, chasing after each other,
enjoying time alone,
in family gatherings spanning generations.
My eyes scanned the beaches
painted with rainbows of towels, umbrellas and bathing suits,
picnic tables holding families and food,
and hiking trails leading the way
deep into the forests
otherwise unseen from the main roads.
As I watched these hundreds of people
each in their own way
connecting with nature,
I felt my need for competition,
my need to be different,
my fear of fitting in,
fade away.
Instead, I began to think about
how many people
every summer
come to places like this
to be amongst the trees, on the sand, in the water,
away from home –
somehow
hundreds, if not thousands,
of people find some degree of reprieve and restoration
in coming here.
The unique becomes the universal.
I began to understand
the scenes before my eyes
illustrated a commonality
connecting us to our humanity –
that being in nature,
feeling the sun on our skin,
squeezing sand between our toes,
breathing in the pine of the forest
and living amongst the wilderness
are perhaps inherent needs
to us as human beings.
Perhaps it’s a need for me to wholly embrace,
rather than hold at an arm’s distance
in fear of this collective commonality,
what I need to nourish my soul.
Sameness is not always the enemy.
As I age
I have come to know grief
between each of the five letters
and beyond the formality of a definition.
I assume we all do.
Grief has its own personality,
an ability to consume your chest,
your muscles, your bones,
embodying the deepest of pains
as you sit submerged
below the water’s surface.
Grief has its own agenda,
prioritizing its need for attention
above your own,
announcing itself loudly
interrupting anything and everything else,
bringing your world to a stop.
Grief ebbs and flows
but never really leaves us
instead
it changes alongside and within us
forcibly holding our hands,
refusing to let go.
Grief has become a familiar sensation
in my body;
I hardly know how to live without it
and, call it irony,
grieve for the past where we had only
met briefly, in passing,
gifting me time to live in naivety.
In my head
I know I am strong
and I can endure,
but in my heart
sometimes
it hurts
beyond what seems to be my capacity.
I know, now,
it’s in those moments
I need to love myself more
than I instinctively consider necessary.
As I walk hand-in-hand with grief
I’m coming to understand
grief encourages recognition
of what we hold the most dear
and in a way,
even in the briefest of moments,
grief can be beautiful.
Even in the briefest of moments.
Dawning Words 