listening to a meditation about coming home to myself and feeling my insides running, running away, attempting to run towards, feeling a not-right-ness that feels never-ending even though my senses know this will pass. This will pass and I will return to ease, return to trust, return to remembering that my body and this moment are safe places to inhale, and exhale within. But for now, no, no, even with the mental fortitude I carry, this moment, or me within this moment, is carrying too much rush, too much too much-ness. I do not trust that all will be well in the future even though I am telling myself all will be well, and the thing that's even more beyond my reach – that there is a way to sense into all being well in this very moment. No, no, it's not enough, I'm not enough, there's too much to do, there's too many things to check. Oh me oh my, I'm the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. I'm the chicken with their head cut off. Please make it stop. Please make time stop. Please make this body stop. But yes, yes, please I would like to be in the magic and mystery and oddness that is Wonderland. Yes, yes, please, I would like to let my body be eased by a head/ego gone for a holiday while I run free.
Rush rush rush, go go go even when my body has yet to move an inch.
The word 'patience' shows up. Finally. A pause of remembering. Oh yeah, can I do that? Can I remember to be patient with myself in these moments of simultaneous sky-is-definitely-falling and I-must-do-all-the-things-with-all-the-tabs-and-apps-open-checking-repeatedly-checking-checking-checking-to-minimize-the-impact-of-the-falling-sky-parts? Or maybe it's not "can I?" but "will I?" Will I choose to remember that this radio station of "it's all too much and I won't be enough to match the too much and I need to never-endingly attempt to beat the too much in this race of never enough" – Will I choose to remember that that radio station is one of a multitude of options to listen to?
Oh yes, I might and then I realize I've been scanning the radio, with that way of automatic momentary pauses at each station as the scanner continues to move on to the next one. Somehow it skips back over to the "it's all too much" station again and again and again.
What seems to help at a deeper level is when I remember the last stanzas of a poem I wrote awhile ago –
I will give you the key.
I will give myself the key.
The chains and the basement are still here and we can do this dance for as long as is called for.
I will unchain you again and again and again, never ending, I will unchain you.
We can do this dance for as long as is called for.
I've got all the time in the world for you, for myself, for whatever process or experience whichever freaked out part of me needs to move through.
Call it stubbornness, stick-to-it-ness, patience, fortitude – or maybe simply call it love. I'll be here doing this dance alongside you, alongside the fears, the anxieties, the weariness, the grief, the sad. I will remind you again and again and again, never ending, I will remind you. It is ok. Even when it's not. Walk, hobble, roll yourself into the fresh air of this new day. See that the sun has in fact risen again. And that beautiful growing crescent moon will rise again as well soon after. We'll dance and stall out and dance again in these cycles, scanning through radio stations for the sticky ones, the beloved ones that bring us ease and the beloved ones that bring us fear. And we'll keep going. Until we don't. And then that'll be its own dance, too. But for now, here we are, here we are, here I am, here you are. Here is this remembering. Yeah, let's call it love.
