How long the process of healing
a flush of purpose propels us into what we think is our new front yard.
New place
New name
New job
New town
and we are in. We are all in
the way we were once all in as kids
at the lake
running down the pier and leaping into the water.
And the work feels great.
We keep marveling at ourselves, our success, our growth. Aren't we amazing? We should write a book. We are in. We are all in
the way we were mid-semester when we realize there is still more semester to go.
And the work feels purposeful.
Then something catches up with us.
A sigh.
Yes, I think its a sigh
from deep inside the lungs, down where the inferior lobe of the right lung is, the furthest away from the heart, the heart that is too full of memory, the bottom bit of lung that that needs a mindful breath in order to fill...
A sigh so deep that it catches in our eyes
without warning.
Grief. We are all in.
And the work feels hard.
For months we keep up the doing and being because if we think too hard we'll break. So we heal like a blister on the tenderest part of the body watching the scab go from fresh to green to hard as nails as new skin forms in sticky newness beneath, and we reach goals and write in our journal "Hey I'm doing so well" and when a friend stops us and asks us how we're really doing we nearly meltdown from the heat of the question and the delicateness of the answer. But we say "Oof, a little emotional, but I'm fine. I'm good." and the smile never reaches above the cheeks, which we brush off when the asker is no longer looking.
Depression is a day, a week, a month in bed. It is also a whisper that our ear hears when its just you and your snoring dog on the couch. A whisper that makes us turn our head and the action lets some truth loose inside and we think "Oh, I'm sad." And then its gone, like a wisp of a barely real thought that also lingers, over there, for quite some time.
If we're lucky, we have a voice that is our balm. A laugh from some other body and vocal cords that raise our spirits. Without knowing. A balm, an elixer, a fixer.
And just like the meditation bell, the reverberation of vibration that rings a tone to awaken the drowsy monk on her cushion, our thoughts move from inside of us to right in front of us, putting a hand out to shake, an introduction, and now a knowing.
We are no longer who we once were. And who we were, was built and shaped by mistakes of others that we believed, and followed and never questioned. Or yes, we questioned but their version made sense to our crooked understanding and to the dents in our brain-logic placed there by untruths and manipulations.
We are no longer who we once were, and we have moved through a desolation, a darkness, or maybe even just a periodic shadowed time,
a hibernation
in order to wake up
and find ourselves truly in a
New place
New name
New job
New town
and we are in. We are all in
the way a baby leaf unfurls from within an older leaf
wanting to have her say.
~amysgallritchie
