This morning I woke with a smile on my face for no particular reason. The sun was up and bright, shining through the little crack in the wooden blinds finding its way right to the place on my face where my eyes call home. The light was warm and waking. Things have neither been particularly good nor bad… It wasn’t an extraordinary morning. Nothing miraculous had happened. Life wasn’t suddenly perfect. It was simply enough. I’ve just settled in the place of presence. The moment of right here and right now. And for the first time in a very long time… enough felt abundant.
Four years ago I stumbled across Be Here Now by Ram
Dass at exactly the moment I needed it. I was exhausted from treading water,
convinced I was failing at everything that mattered, even considering walking
away from the life I'd built. The book didn't change my life overnight. It
simply asked me one question:
Can you be here?
Life was the same mundane routine every day. Wake up, wake children, ready them for
school, take them to school, try to sell my classes through my little art
teaching business, USUALY an ungodly amount of laundry… feeling defeated with
house cleaning, grocery getting and meal prepping. I also knew the heartbreak of yearning. I specialize in seeing the potential in
others. It's my creative superpower. I see possibility long before I see proof.
I’m also a diehard empath… which allows me to feel into situations and
understand them from the inside out. I
wish I had known that I could extend that same sort of grace to myself.
The me from four years ago believed that walking on
eggshells and bracing for whatever walked through the door at 4:30pm was
unconditional love. I didn’t quite
understand that unconditional love WAS NOT taking on an incredible amount of
stress, grief, anxiety… with a side of control and verbal and emotional
abuse.
I remember one day in particular… an important conversation
needed to take place… the man wouldn’t answer calls or text messages throughout
the day… and near the time he was to arrive home, my heart was beating erratically
and my stomach was in such knots that I thought I was going to throw up. He walked through the door with a scowl on
his face, so I spent the rest of my evening moving into opposite rooms from
him. Eventually, my stomach pain became
an ulcer. My erratic heartbeat never found
a diagnosis until about 3 weeks after he had moved out. It just stopped
happening.
Honestly, that girl 4 years ago thought that she was WITH
the love of her life and things would eventually become more balanced. What I didn’t understand was that when you
partner with someone who has to have ultimate control of every situation as a
coping mechanism, and once you allow that control, it never returns to
you. Once control becomes the language
of a relationship, one person begins speaking it fluently while the other
slowly forgets the sound of their own voice.
But enters, “Be Here Now,” and my thought process began to
shift slightly. The lesson that stuck
with me the most was the story of experimentation with mind altering drugs… and
then the realization that mind altering can come from meditation and presence
without other stimulation.
Be present.
Observe THIS moment.
How does it feel in your body?
What can you love in this present reality? Right here, right now?
And then, just like the universe does… a dear friend sent me
a meditation track from Baba Ram Dass… It’s titled, “Sit Around the Fire,” by
Jon Hopkins, unknowing of my discovery of Be Here Now.
I knew I was an “ember” …I felt it…. The loss of my voice
and making myself small turned my warm, expansive fire into a smoldering ember.
I’ve spent the last 4 years fanning that ember into
flames. I landed my dream job. I’ve managed to be stable and secure on my
own. I’m healing that which is inside of
me that has held me back from my own full potential. AND, I became very aware of allowing others
to be responsible for their own growth… for many previous years I sat back and
stayed quiet… allowing myself to be treated awfully because my empathetic heart
knew where the source of this came about.
Just because someone has a crappy childhood does not give
them the right to control and demean others, which includes yours truly.
What I struggle with now is letting go the past versions of
me… the versions that shrank, stumbled, thought that any or all of it was
okay. In those moments, I become my own
abuser… I frequently have thoughts about being such a “stupid girl.” I have to stop and remind myself that I don’t
deserve that… not from anyone… including the present version of me that made it
through.
When these thoughts come up, I try to run to a mirror and
speak directly to myself at least three things I think are the most amazing
about the girl in the mirror.
I make sure that I am focused on both of my reflection’s
eyes. I take a few deep breaths. I speak something that I know to be true, “You
are beautiful!” I sit with it for a
moment to make sure my body doesn’t flinch.
If it does, I repeat it to myself until it doesn’t. “I am love.”
“I can do anything I set my mind to!”
“I am kind!” “I am seen.”
A thought that has recently come up in this version of
myself that is healing… I’ve always alleged that I wanted to be seen.
I think, today, it’s not about being seen… more about being
witnessed.
Someone can glance at a painting while walking through a
gallery. Or...they can stand in front of it long enough to notice the
brushstrokes, the places the artist changed their mind, the layers hidden
beneath the finished surface.
That's the difference between being seen and being
witnessed.
I don’t believe I’ve ever been witnessed. I think that my willingness to spend my time
with avoidant people… lovers and friends... is the reason for this. Nearly every major relationship in my life
has been between me and someone who does not or cannot make room in their life
for me. Relationships stay on the
surface.
Recently, I had the opportunity to be a part of a short-term
relationship with a man that didn’t spend much time talking about the
weather. He always started conversations
with me wanting to know how I was doing, what was my day like, cool things I
observed in any experience… Our conversations were deep and curious. I feel like I actually got to know myself a
lot more in the short four and a half months of time. Every interaction with him was powerful and
meaningful. Which was quite intriguing,
because I knew in the beginning it wouldn’t last long. I battled everything inside me to not become
attached.
My favorite part of this entire experience is the fact that
I don’t have to heal from it. While one
moment was a bit tricky to navigate, everything else was easy… loving…
exceptional.
I felt like a grown-up doing grown-up stuff at the ending of
this phase of the relationship. We have
agreed to remain friends as he journeys off to other places that his heart was
calling him to.
While sitting on my front porch, as he relayed his plans to
leave and how our adventures would end… neither sadness nor anger, disbelief or
confusion were present. Rather, a wave
of excitement and joy came over my body that I struggled to hide.
For months, knowing that this experience would be short
lived, I tried my damnedest to not fall head over heels in love with this
man. I failed miserably. And, my friends, I must report – it wasn’t
that crazy feeling of, “I’d die without you,” that often gets portrayed in cinema. It was more a quiet knowing that each of us
were allowed to be who we are and just let the magic play out when we finally
reconvened after our outings in this world.
It was like the Universe, doing what it does best, sending
me a kind of love that I did not know existed.
Right into my lap… everything I’ve always wished that love was.
He showed up the night before he left with flowers and
chocolate… just like our very first date.
Then rode off into the wilderness on his new adventure.
I’ve been sitting with my initial reaction over the last few
weeks. Excitement?
Yes. Some call me delusional,
and frankly, I don’t give a damn. Before
the crazy split of my marriage, I had this wild dream… I was running through
all of these rooms that were connected.
The man I was running with looked different in each room, but so did
I. The only thing that remained the same
was his eyes and his smile. But the
final room brought me back to this recurring dream that I used to have when I
was a pre-teen/ teenager. I walked down
this gorgeous marble and gold staircase and at the bottom, walking up was this
man’s silhouette that resembled Michael Hutchence (yes, the lead singer from INXS.) He didn’t just see me. He knew me, in all my forms. I knew him, in all his forms. We were witnesses to each other.
This most recent relationship feels like the jet fuel I
needed to propel me into outer space, the place where I look back at Earth with
a new understanding, a different perspective and willingness to venture outside
of the ideas I had about my own destiny… destination.
I was never going anywhere ruminating on a relationship that
broke my back and my spirit.
And for this change in perspective and experience through
this recent relationship, I will forever be grateful.
I do not know what is around the corner for me. What I do know is that for no good reason, my
heart feels expansive and excited. What
I do know is that whatever is coming towards me feels ancient, familiar, and
known on a soul level. And when I get done
with the next many months of nothing but playing in my own sandbox…. I am
willing to predict that the kind of love I have ALWAYS desired and ALWAYS
deserved will be there for me. Whether from myself or another. I know what it is like… I don’t have to
imagine it anymore.
This morning, the sun found me before I opened my eyes.
It wasn’t trying to wake me.
It was simply reminding me that light has always known where
to find me.
Maybe, love works that way too.
Not the frantic kind.
Not the kind that asks us to become smaller.
The kind that witnesses us.
The kind that leaves us more ourselves than it found us.
Today, for no particular reason at all…
I woke up smiling.
Godspeed Wayne!
