It is cheaper to travel across the country than it is to pay my rent for a month in Oakland. That is real. So I’m in motion. Traveling through states I’ve longed for in the hopes that a next right step might become clear.
Yesterday I drove over 600 miles. By the 2nd hour I’d already taken a 5 Hour Energy. I was exhausted. Not by driving. Not by emotion as expected. There were no tears as I pulled out. Only a hollow knowing that it was the thing to do. Only a hollow disappointment that I couldn’t allow myself to feel more held and steady in that place.
I was exhausted because for the past two months I have not slept. Not a single full night. Instead there were too many hours of internet tv, too many dawns almost greeted, too many nightmares that shook the hope for a restful sleep. My sleep has always had a rhythm. There has always been a few weeks out of the year that I knew it would not greet me. Usually one week at a time. This moment of sleeplessness has been exceptional.
There are many reasons for it. Namely a job that is no longer mine. A job that spoke to my purpose and destroyed it at the same time. A job where I worked for the community and felt so exquisitely alone. There is much to say about that. About the ways that is familiar to me. About the ways I grew and flourished and decayed. About betrayal, the way I found a calling, and stress hives that stayed for half a year. In the end it was not my choice to leave. Not really. Though sometimes grace intercedes when you cannot do it for yourself.
Yesterday I drove and considered the ways this life could have gone. My body buzzed with multiple doses of caffeine, something I usually avoid all together. I drove and sang and still did not cry. And sometimes the corners of my mouth would pull up involuntarily into something like a smile. A smile closer to crazed smirk. Product of caffeine induced mania. My chest thumped too quickly and rest stop patrons gave me side eye when I mumbled aloud to myself at the vending machine.
In my car I thought addiction, madness, grief. All of which could have killed me but didn’t. But hasn’t. I thought of how my Mother’s body must have buzzed for the years that Speed coursed through it. I wondered if that buzz gave her the same hint of happy. I wondered if I could continue to fault her for it. I thought of my high school self and her secret diagnosis. How she didn’t sleep most of Junior year. How that is still one of the most productive and inspired years of my life. I pondered the brilliance of mania brought by substance, brought by soul. I wondered what was so different. I wondered when it could be allowed to be a gift.
I thought death and anniversary. How this will be 8 years since he left. I thought ritual and longing and close calls. I remembered how his death almost killed me too. Remembered how a lover once told me that having a relationship with me meant dating his ghost. And I wondered if his ghost would ever leave me. I wondered if I wanted it too. I wondered if anyone would ever love that shadow side alongside me.
Yesterday dusk came at 3:30pm and it did not get light again. It was part storm and part season. It will get darker still before it brightens. But it will brighten again. Short days will stretch into a new spring. I will be pulled forward into a new calling. One that does not cost so much.
But today I am called to hurt with no qualifier. With no hope for a brighter day. Not because I’ve forgotten it will come. But because despair deserves some dignity too. Some room to breathe and exist and decide to dissolve on its own. Today the road is gray and slick. And I am being asked to integrate shadow and self. Asked to name my struggle and let it sit a while. Let it travel beside me as a guide and not a threat.
I am asked to trust that I can survive my own wholeness
No comments:
Post a Comment