I Don't Have It All Figured Out.

Words, As Fruit. #20

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to be present at an intimate gathering hosted by one of my favorite writers. As we’re settling in and she’s telling us what she has been up to, and how life has been lately, she takes a slight pause, slyly smiles, as if she is about to share something juicy or classified, and says, “and…I am tired.”

As I exhaled a full bodied, “yesssss”, I wanted to weep. Not a sad weep, but one of release. The kind of weep that is wept after a truth passes your lips that your heart, or mind, has been holding onto for far too long. The kind of weep that is wept when someone says what you feel but have been, yourself, reluctant to say or admit. This moment of honesty, exhale, and release allowed me to feel a sort of weightlessness for the rest of the gathering, and on the drive home I contemplated why. Why did this, a seemingly simple admittance, from someone I do not know but from afar admire, have this impact. I think it’s because I tend to look upon the lives of others, seeing the highlight reel, feeling they have it all together, all figured out, and subconsciously, or even consciously, take a tape measure to my own life and tally up all the ways in which I do not measure up. And so, when someone who appears to have achieved this, or succeeded at that, says something as simple as, “I am tired.”, it lifts a veil or levels a ground and brings into focus the reality that, regardless of this achievement, or that success, we all, on more levels than we often realize, are living, feeling, and finding our way through.

I am currently in my introspective era. From the outside looking in it might appear as a quiet era, a little reclusive even. But, from the inside, reflecting out, it’s quite chatty around these parts. I’ve got a lot of questions for myself. Questioning things I’ve understood myself to know but haven’t stopped and permitted myself to wonder, explore and ask, “is this still true?”

Years ago I recall a conversation with my mother and she asked if I’d taken time to sit and catch up with myself because in the course of the year prior, a lot had changed, in me and around me, and she wondered if I had stopped and taken account of how all the changes had impacted me. I had not, and it’s taken me years to understand that stopping to document and notice changes in and around me is an integral part of my growth and maturity. It’s also an essential part of maintaining my relationship with myself. Maintaining a healthy relationship with myself. One where I’m open and honest, feeling and vulnerable.

I would like to be able to share here all that I have learned or have discovered about me thus far, but to be honest I’m still sifting and finding my way through my thoughts, perceptions and even misconceptions about myself. I will however share these words I wrote some time ago. A stream of questions, many of which would come to me in the moments of sleep and awake, some I have explored and answered, some still sit waiting patiently for me to address. Some are neither wanting or needing an answer, instead they are requesting space for contemplation, and permission for consideration.

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i have questions for you. you, the witness, the reader, the curious one. and these questions are not to cause doubt or confusion, but because i want for you to know intimately of the things that carry you, anchor you; hold you steady, and set you free.

what calls to you? what whispers your name between sleep and awake? what comes caressing the links between your thoughts chains?

what quiets the noise and makes medicine of the aches? what lays down at night and rests beside you? what wakes and waits for you in rests’ meeting place?

what moves you like the earth when it quakes? what presses upon your heart’s strings and plays enchanting melodies? what ethereal sensation or feeling meets you in the quiet and pours its knowings?

in the midst of chaos, heartache, sadness and grief, what delivers you peace? what catches your breath and coaxes you into breathing deep?

on the days when you have found yourself lost and wandering, moving further and further away from your own mind and from yourself, what embraces you, carried you, and returns you back to your own shores?

what brings you to your knees? not in defeat but in genuflection to flow, alignment and ease? what refuses to leave your side, even after you have pushed, and pushed, and pushed it away?

what doors request to be opened, even after you have shut hem closed?

what whispers to your heart at twilight, asking for you to listen, please.