"And in the end, we were all just humans drunk, drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The dishwasher hums.
The washing machine churns.
It’s a Saturday night and I listen to him lull her to sleep. A year ago this weekend I was in London. I was leaving Noely, Tree and Simon at
a train station as I took the journey to Hackney to end the last night, in the
wee hours of the morn, in Johanna’s kitchen with her and Amanda. Things have changed. A lot.
A year ago at this time I was on an incredible spiritual
journey. I was deeply in therapy;
I was working with a Shaman. I had
made a difficult conscious choice to change my life. At whatever cost that came. I had decided that I would be alone, for the rest of my life
if that is what it all would mean, to find the only true love that I could ever
really hold on to. Myself. A year ago today, I decided that
although I was broken, I was not unfixable. A year ago today, I decided to rewrite my story.
And so, surprisingly even to me, I did just that. I took all of my broken bits, beautiful
moments, tragedy and confusion and pieced myself together again, one stitch at
a time. Had I met him any sooner,
I would’ve blindly walked passed him.
I wasn’t ready. Not for
him. Most certainly not for her. I
was only beginning to grasp the concept of letting go of all that which I could
not control. I was only beginning
to grasp that this, all of this, was about so much more if I could only allow
myself to see it.
To seek peace – at whatever cost seems like a strange
concept really. Shouldn’t it just
be a natural state? For many
perhaps. Not for me. It had never been my way. I always thought too much, felt too
much, saw too much. The majority
of my life had been spent trying to save other people all of the while feeling
completely selfish in doing what I wanted. To clarify, some may have felt shorted by me, however I
could never find a way to express that it was just that others needed me more. Until I guess the moment arose that I
realized perhaps I needed me more.
I dreamt of London last night and it wasn’t until I sat down
to write tonight that I realized the timing. A year ago today I was in the flurry of a soulful
hurricane. Myself, everyone around
me igniting. Everything I touched
kept leading others and myself on a path.
In no grammatical eloquence I can only say it this way – it was the
trippiest time of my fucking life.
The Universe was this orb following me. Pushing me.
Putting me on airplanes, and in circumstances that tested everything
about myself that I was supposed to learn and show others. It was a release and absorption all at
once. The noise of it all was
deafening.
It would be a lie to say that I haven’t been distracted a
bit over the past many months. Of
all of that. The intensity. The spirituality. I have him now. And her now, and my focus has
shifted. But it’s brought about
challenge. Another journey. Another path.
Tonight however I am consumed with that time. The urge to remember that it is about
so much more. I hold things within myself again, like I used to. My back aches for no reason because I
don’t know how to release. I don’t
know how to express love and confusion.
I don’t know how to show gratitude with all that I have but to
acknowledge and embrace how far I have come. I don’t know. How
do you hold on to who you have become and release the only thing you have ever
known about yourself? If that even
makes sense.
Each night, when I go to sleep, and each morning when I
wake, I feel peace. For both I do
with a boy who has decided to hop on my crazy train and embrace the fact that I
talk to the Universe, drink too much wine, have more plans than we could ever
have time for, buy way too much shit for his daughter than necessary, have long
philosophical talks with most of my ex’s and dance randomly in my kitchen. For that, I would trade nothing.
However tonight, I wish he knew me a year ago. Although he was to meet me only a couple
short months later, I wish he knew me, as lights burnt out as I walked passed
them, as I sought comfort in the stories of strangers, as all of this was
unfolding, the finding of me so that I could finally know him. And maybe
tonight, I miss me a bit, because she hides sometimes in the shadows of the
now…but she is there, fire in her belly, passport in hand….ready…and perhaps
the her of then is my clarity of now.
I don’t know. I’m still
learning.
A year ago tomorrow Amanda and I rode in a cab to
Heathrow. She said to me, “You’re
a really beautiful person you know, I wish you believed it….” I cried and said,
“I wish I did too.” Perhaps now, I believe it a bit more. All of these things that I’ve done. All of these things that I have
seen. They are a story within a
story. Perhaps even tonight is too
and a decade from now it will be told in a different way, in a different
version, with different people around.
But tonight, embodied by a year ago, I am wrapped in the blanked of my
now and it is worthy of acknowledgment.
Thanks for listening.
