Falling and beginning again

I was writing in my head while doing the dishes. “At times, I don’t know if I am going to survive this. To get through.” I stopped scrubbing as I realised with a bit of a shock but also a laugh that I haven’t. The me that was before all this began is…Changed.

Now, I am not talking about the essence. I proclaimed that a little too forcefully recently in a friendly text exchange: “I know that at the center of my existence I am a good person, generous and kind. That much I am certain of.” It is my refrain when the world becomes doubtful. No, I am talking more about the fuzzy outer layers. Personality, if you will. Ego. Tastes and preferences. Perspectives and preconceptions. A matter of trust.

Over and over, trust. My lips are sweaty against my folded knuckles, I take a moment to breathe in and out, loudly, over that word. It has been four years, four years since my couple imploded and yet I still have trouble putting trust in a man. And to trust my choices and attractions, me who usually considers myself such a solid judge of character. To trust that I am worthy of a good man, a clear strong love. Why do my eyes tear up to write that? Because my heart was hurt this week in the trying. And how long will it be before I finally heal myself? This too, I know is up to me.

I have written about the impact of the months of imposed solitude and isolation have had on my psyche but it was premature. Just like any trauma, the after-effects are still rolling out. Often, I find myself walking through the streets, finally free to do so with hunched shoulders and lowered head, as if hiding. Sometimes, I will chide myself, “pick your head up, Heather. Stand tall, you have nothing to be ashamed of.” But I can’t always do it. Sometimes, I feel ashamed.

It has not even been a month since George Floyd was murdered. Do you remember feeling that shock in watching the video for the first time? Trying to comprehend what was happening? That moment when you understood that you were watching a man being killed? I do. That too, broke something in me. As has the incomprehensible police brutality, the unsparing hatred screaming, the relentless provocation of a man so insensitive to the world that he could propose to stage a rally in America’s most racism ravaged city on Juneteenth. Through my spirituality, I had previously come to the point where I thought that “good” and “evil” were mainly religious constructs. Now, I question that as well. To not have trust – yes that word again – in the morality of humanity? That has changed me too.

I am in a state of parenthesis. What is to be filled in between the ( and the ) I do not know.

Listen, this is not sad. This is, again, not about me really. It is just that if I feel that I am no longer the person that I once was, either four years or four weeks ago, it is just a further reminder that we are all constantly in a state of more forceful change than we realise. As in Buddhism, there are the waves that flow through our lives but we are not those surges and hollows, we are the sea. We are the sea itself. Perhaps it is helpful to remember that if we can.

I may not be entirely sure of the “who” of I am right now but I very aware, on this Summer Solstice of…of?…my aliveness. I have a voice. I have this heart that cares too much but that is what it is. If I focus, I can wonder what trust in this time would feel like…in my own body, where can I sense it? In our collective society, where can I antennae tap out something to lean into? … Again, I put my head into my hands, I massage out the “lion’s wrinkle” in-between my eyes and…the only answer that makes any sense at all is Love. It seems completely paradoxical given all that I have written above but the only thing that I can trust in when all else is broken, falling and yet beginning, is, Love.

There is nothing that burns brighter in our human existence. Yes, it feels a bit like coming home, of an evidence to think so on the longest day of a very long year. In journalism, it is a cardinal error to repeat oneself. I am entirely aware that I am doing so, constantly, in these posts. And yet if it is because I continually do so to side with Love, on that I will stand.