46. neverwhere

Tonight I must return to the heart of this practice: writing without an agenda.

Because tonight, I don’t know how I feel or what I want to say. I only know that I made myself this promise, and I intend to keep it. 

I’m tired, but not ready to sleep. It now seems that however the day goes, however much it holds in terms of intensity, busyness, conversation or connection, I don’t feel complete until I come here and visit the page. 

In a way, that’s a good thing, perhaps, because it means I’ve established a practice. On the other hand, I’m not trying to create another obligation for myself. I was (am) trying to create a refuge, a place of honesty and transparency where I can reveal my secrets. Except, I don’t know what my secrets are, so I write to reveal them to myself. 

Dear Self, 

I am tired. Physically, that makes sense, as it’s day 2 of my cycle and I’m bleeding heavily. What I hoped would be a day of rest was derailed a bit by River coming home from school at 11am with a tummy bug. He pooped his pants twice at school before they called so I’d bring him another change of clothes. I don’t know what the school was thinking, but if I pooped my pants twice by 11am, I’d want to come home, so that’s what we did. 

I’m grumpy. There’s no particular reason for the grumpiness, except a general sense of resentment towards life for being incessantly challenging lately. Not just for me, but for everyone. I’m resentful on behalf of the collective. 

I’m pensive. Thinking of the clients I sat this week, and the wide range of ways that we are trying to hold it together amidst a world unraveling and falling apart, I notice myself grateful that I’m not in the United States, but also aware that this physical distance from its unfoldings only holds part of the psychic tension at bay. 

I’m perplexed. As I digest readings from Jungian scholars about the shadow, and the importance of self-knowledge in the pursuit of wholeness, I think about the ICE raids, attacks on civil and human rights of trans kin, and the amount of chaos and destruction spilling out in all directions - human to human, human to Earth, Earth to human… and I contemplate the ecology of the psyche, in which this propensity for harm and undoing is an integral part. 

I’m lonely. Yet all day, I’ve been in constant communication, meetings, child-tending and mental focus. For the past few hours, I felt agitated and like bedtime couldn’t come soon enough. I just wanted some quiet and solitude, but as soon as it arrived, I checked my email, seeking something I used to look for in social media, just a little splash of dopamine and validation, but it’s a quiet night. My inbox is a place of solitude. I felt sad, and like my creative efforts are futile. 

I’m tender. Tomorrow is my Dad’s 77th birthday. He died 14 years ago when I was 24. As I washed the dinner dishes tonight, I felt the ache of grief swell up within me, a rogue wave in a usually placid sea. It was followed by a sting of bitterness, almost jealousy, for all the years of relationship we didn’t get to have in human form. I said his name at dinner out loud like a prayer, but it lands with my boys as an abstract, and with my husband as a familiar ache for the loss of his own father, and only with me as an echo of all the love and meaning it holds in my heart. 

I’m crying. It doesn’t feel especially attached to any of this, just tears of allowing the many shades of emotion which have visited me today. I know they are visitors, and since I am lonely, then the only thing to do is invite them in and offer them something to drink. But I’m not feeling especially hospitable, so instead of giving them seats of honor and a cup of tea, I just open the door, acknowledge them with a raised eyebrow and a silent vibration of “oh… you again?” then turn on my heel, leaving the door open behind me. They can make themselves at home, I guess. They’ll find their way out when they’re ready. 

I’m hopeful. No, that’s not quite right. I’m faithful. That is, I’m full of faith - the substance of things hoped for, yet unseen - because I am feeling half empty of the rest, I suppose. Faith is the best thing to fill what seems like empty space. What is the faith in, exactly? I shrug and motion halfheartedly to the vacant air beside me, my hand doing a little flourish in the dark that says “just… all of this, whatever it is.” 

I’m resolute. Somehow, even with all of these feelings swirling, a deeper layer of my awareness is unperturbed. I’ve felt all these feelings before. They come, and they go. I pause for a long moment. The analytical part of my brain is searching for a tidy ending; It wants the moral of the story. 

I’m spiteful. Too bad, left brain. You can’t have it tonight. We’re tired, grumpy, pensive, perplexed, lonely, tender, crying, hopeful, and resolute. We contain multitudes. We won’t be tidied into a summary to create convenience and self-satisfaction. 

But it’s unfinished! cries the left brain. There is more! You have good feelings, too. There are celebrations and accomplishments and gratitudes and pleasures and you could make this so much nicer and less boring and negative and poop-faced.

I’m uncertain. What am I doing this for, again? What, exactly, is the point? Where am I going?

I sit down next to a fence post in a open field of my mind. On the distant Eastern horizon, I see a mountain range. To the South, my back, a great plain of grass leads towards a river I can sense but not see or hear. To the West, I can only feel the path lead into darkness, a descending hill and a place of shadows. In front of me, where my gaze rests, a wall of trees obscures a path I know is there, which leads straight into the heart of the Northern woodland. It is night, and the sky is an inky blue-purple blanket dotted with stars. I am the only human around, and it does not matter which path I take, for I will not encounter anyone upon it. It’s cold, but I am very tired, so I pull my heavy canvas jacket around myself, burrowing my face into the navy fleece scarf around my neck. It has rainbow plaid accents, and that alone makes me smile as I tuck my face in like a sleeping owl. There’s no point in walking anywhere tonight, I tell myself, and a sense of relief washes over me. I hear an owl call from one of the trees, and I smile again, more richly this time, laughing to myself at the humor of the universe. Here, there, in, out, up, down...  we are again, Self. There’s nowhere else to be. 

I'm surrendering. I give up the effort, yield to what is, curl into a ball against the fence post in the neverwhere of my mind, and will myself to go to sleep.