As I look outside into this grayness, into the skies that always look that they are about to cry, I note the mystery of how leaves turn their brightest shades before dying. I find fascination in the way leaves live so boldy as they are about to die.
The weather in this Rainforest in which I live beckons melancholic memories in me, which contributes to the aged sobriety, circumspection and wisdom with which I show-up in the world today. I harness moments of memory in my inhales and like waking from a bad dream and realizing I am actually okay, I push an out breath from my gently shaking head, knowing I am safe and alive and that I have earned every new line on my face. With a gaze that makes confident eye contact with my world, I know that I am continuing to arrive and continuing to unfold into the mystery of my life.
I rode to that rite of passage on a wild, untamed horse, but damn, it was sexy. Riding Fear bareback, I wore the emblazoned uniform of a woman who pretended or thought she was saying YES to Love. OR was it to Initiation? I wonder in retrospect why I did not listen to the “NO’s” screaming from every pore in my body as I tore at full-speed cantor wind in my hair en route to that experience, as under that uniform was an unprotected little girl who knew she was heading toward the unsafe stranger with candy. Who, what was leading?
And getting off of the horse, I became a moth in front of a flame, carefully navigating my positioning to shine light on my patterned wings until I came too close and my paper-thin wings got deeply burned and peeled away. In this myopia of Pain, I felt that here was nothing worth living for and I prayed in my tears that G-d would take me away from being a living thing. The betrayal of my heart was not of heartbreak but rather of being violated with a sharp and fatal weapon that aggressively slashed across my heart and my body from side to side and in hatch-marks. This was enough pain to wish that I never breathed again.
Had it not been for my mom, thousands of miles away, whose heartbeat and panic knew that I was writhing like an earthworm out of soil on a scorching hot day, and who in response called A. who came in his angelic love and silently wrapped me and held me in his arms, I may have taken my life.
I still cannot wrap my mind around the fact that I went through that which I did. I still cannot understand the force of Evil and Darkness that allows one person to commit wreckage on another and with no empathy, regret or apology. I think about the timing and placement of the players in our lives. I consider karma and past-lives. I honor the ways of the unseen realms. I also see that terrible things happen to innocent people and even if there is past-life that we cannot see which karmically has brought actions to fruition, pain is pain and people get shit upon and that outrages me. And for me, this was deep and it soaked into every unspoken crevice in the body. And that is terrible…absolutely and patently terrible and difficult. I read what K. wrote to me: “What you went through was hard and awful and it sucked. I’m so sorry that had to happen. I want you to know and remember that you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever have to do that again.”
I do see the gifts that have come as a result of what I went through and yes, as is the case with most initiations into the darkness and into the lightness, I am stronger and wiser and more substanced than I was before. Blah blah blah. I know that lesson of spiritual speak. And it is with this knowing, that at times has me rolling my eyes out if its triteness, that I can look out my window on this dreary day while sipping hot tea, and know that my tears are now of having arrived into a place in which my insides match my outsides, and that yes, I never have to do that again. I am complete somehow, or at least much closer to feeling so. This particular story is worn on my face and woven for better or for worse into my years to come, but I am no longer in it and in some ways, it falls off of me like the burnt leaves I am watching die as they let go from their tree. I feel fiercely grateful to feel at once alive and finally on my way toward being dead, like the leaves, to this part of my past.
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