staying clean and feeling alone
I’m feeling alone, very alone. It reminds me of childhood; feeling different, separate, and scared. But now at 49 years old, I have some experience with this so that during these times I’m feeling just as terrified as when I was 10 years old, but I am able to accept it. I am able to be with the terror and experience it with my ‘observer self’; so that it’s the two of us who feel the pain.
It’s living in my gut, this fear, and in the lower part of my Heart. It’s tense and anxious and my muscles are tight and my insides all wrapped into an impossible knot. And yet with a soft song of the birds, or the gentle voice of a friend, or even the memory of a time when there was peace or when I received the touch of unconditional love, it is then that I am able to witness the impossible. And the knot unravels slowly at first, building up speed, until in a moment I notice that I am free.
Then all will be well. It’s receding now; I can breathe better. I am settling into the gravity of my contact with the earth. I notice a song playing, from when I was a teenager. It speaks of cold winter thoughts and the empty space within me. Steve Miller’s “Wintertime”. It’s cold memory. But it’s also real today. It’s all a miracle. It’s a marvel to think of the wonder of life. Now a happier southern sounding sing-along plays and I’m almost happy. And yet the knots don’t want to give way and they stubbornly hold on to their grip.
I want to call someone, but no one may answer. I want someone to fix me right now, forever, so that I can finally ‘get it’. But for some reason right now, I don’t want to hide or run further away. I want to be…what is…right now. I've put all my life into just this one day, and right now is a moment that I won’t throw away just because it hurts.
More and more I want to live with these downs and ups. Sometimes, I cherish when I live in this pain, and then rise to the top, and then fall even further in darkness. Especially when it all ends with peace and I can say goodnight to my life, “it’s been a good day”; and fall into sleep.
But for now the knot is looser. It’s a nice place to be. A middle ground with both the peace and the pain.