The Return

The last months have been something of a ‘forgetting’. Each new day seems to blur my periphery, increase my inability to get anything done, and requires concerted effort on my part to muster energy. Maybe it is the summer heat reaching well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, allergies to ragweed and dust, or the overall emotional labor of living in my deceased father’s home and inventorying his belongings; the belongings of a hoarder. Maybe it’s the trauma that rises up from the walls like waves that crash down and leave a wake on the hours, the days, the weeks, my sleep… Maybe it’s the memories that seep out of the walls with no clarity like an oozing black tar, from every crevice and baseboard, dark and sticky and impending. It is all of the above, perhaps, but something is off kilter and I can’t quite pinpoint it.

On the way to the market with my mother for groceries I’m making a list on my phone so we don’t forget anything important like water or coffee because lists are the only way I can get anything done these days. I’m likely to forget the simplest thing if it’s not written down. I start the list and naturally water is first, so I type it in. Next, on the list: Return. I type in the word, start a new line, and then realize ‘return’ is not ‘coffee’.

Oh, you sneaky and outright Freudian slip! What ever are you saying to me?

I immediately feel a longing within me for connection to something that’s been missing. It’s part of the lingering hours in sleepless nights when all I wish for are dreams deep enough that I won’t remember a thing when I wake up in the morning. It’s a missing quality of how I perceive the world around me. An essence that’s evaporated in the heat of summer. I’m grasping daily at the few things I can depend on: coffee and a bed to return to each night in hope of a nourishing circadian cycle.

It’s lack leaves a pervasive loneliness. I’m lonely even when I’m not alone, even when I’m surrounded by some of the most important people of my life. When I’m physically alone, it’s worse. I’m paranoid, I’m ill, I’m overflowing, I cry every day. I get a puppy, I refocus my energy on her. I train her and love her and feed her and she follows me loyally filling whatever crevices in me that are not saturated by the sadness with tenderness. I worry I’m not happy enough to fill a puppy with the same unconditional love it so easily gives. I begin to complain that summer is a drain and I am a creature of the fall and winter when I can breathe and bundle because I want a reprieve from the brightness and suffusing quality of the sun; I want to feel the roots of the flesh of the earth. I want to escape the heat and suffocation of my own skin.

And that’s just it; flesh. It is porous, sensing; a perceiving organ that wraps around us, our souls interwoven with it. It is easy to forget how intelligent skin is and how powerful of a receptor it can be; the way our hair stands erect in it’s follicles when we are in a state of hyperarousal: a key element to our evolution and survival. A state that is an energetic response turned physical. It alerts us, “Hey, this place isn’t safe”, “I’m aroused”, and sets the stage for a response.

But, it’s not just skin that is our flesh; it’s the sinew, the bone, the mucosal membranes, and organs that are like clockwork with no real effort on our part to keep us alive. It is our sensing, perceiving, sentient bodies that exist in a sentient, perceiving world. This body of mine had become so saturated with my current ‘circumstance’ that I’d nearly drowned in empathetic absorption. Somehow, in the drone of this place, I’d forgotten how to self-care to the point where my spirit was lost wandering these narrowing hallways and claustrophobic rooms. The sadness of the world had become so heavy that I began to lack interest in even living; if one more thing goes wrong I don’t know I can keep this up. And these weren’t even my words, originally. I can trace them back to two separate conversations with two separate individuals, and yet, they had become my own words uttered with such sincere conviction that I felt a sense of relief: that I can choose.

If we don’t stay aware of what is our surroundings and what is our self we can get lost in the spaces where two separately named oceans are interchangeable. With water, there is no real separation so this can become extremely difficult and I’m not suggesting that we separate the oceans. To do so would work against the idea interconnectivity which is an essential concept of our existence here on Earth and within the entirety of time in the cosmos. The point is if we can’t feel and listen on a level of intimacy with ourselves that promotes our well-being we become overly affected by the outside world, which for the most part we cannot control. We need to identify the internal response to external stimuli and where this stimuli is arriving from.

Through all of this ‘lack’ I can trace my finger on the page to the reasons I hurt. I smear the picture every time I trace back from that to here and here to there and eventually the page is a burnt-black charcoal mess. One big, soft, dark cloud of pain. Suddenly, the pain is a blanket and it is the only medicine that will help me heal, because I’ve identified the poisons I can administer the remedy. I can move forward and leave it all behind on a page I can burn in the fire or hang on the wall to remind myself where I’ve been. To do this I have to correct my posture and breathe deeply. I return to my body, to my flesh, to my core.

In my core there is an exceptional place I’ve grown, built, and molded; a place I go for peace and quiet, for reflection, to refuel. I hadn’t been here in quite some time. I touch it when I dance with my eyes closed. I sing of it in lullabies. I dream of it to ground me and it is ever evolving. I erect new forms and paths within it and it grows with time. I imagine one day it may look nothing like what it looks like now.

It started first with a large, sun-dappled rock covered in a thick, soft moss. Beside it there is a stream, towering trees, and white moths flitting around me. Eventually, a waterfall dug out a pristine, blue swimming hole. Creatures come and go. Some return time and again, the interactions evolving. A red fox, a stag deer, a hovering light, a tiny mouse. Always moths. Always ferns. Soon enough, my mossy rock is the point from which I climb a tree or walk downstream, following the sound of rock knocking rock beneath water. My woods open up to a cliffside at the ocean. I walk down stone steps, across the sandy beach, into a warm clear water. Or sometimes I find a natural hot spring and a glowing sunset. But I usually begin at the mossy rock. It is my core and from there I can explore this inner terrain. Sometimes I end up in a desert or a cloud… it’s a separate reality. I can do whatever I like.

This place has been a way I find balance and remind myself what makes my skin tingle. When I return from a daydream of here, where ever I am is swathed by the magic of my inner world. This is a prompting to be present and to a healthy enchantment. If I visit this core enough, I don’t even have to try hard to feel what it brings me. Complete calm, contentment, regardless of the joy or sorrow that I feel. One deep breath and I can harness it in my flesh and move out into the world with a knowing that somewhere deep within me, in a tiny atom, is an entire other universe of safety.

We are inundated by external stimuli and the only thing we can truly begin to control are our own minds, habits, and hearts. Some times it takes training, but all the best things take some work.

I’m reminded of a friendly, little armadillo I crossed paths with in the nature preserve where we held the memorial for my father. It seemed hardly phased by the presence of myself, my partner, and his dog. It pushed around leaves by the path with no bother to our presence. It says, “Wear your spiritual armor and set clear boundaries to protect yourself; be yourself in the presence of the unknown”. I try little armored one, I do. I think I finally got the message.