wholeness
The stars are clear here, enough that we can see shades of blue to black in the backdrop behind them. Abe, Patrick, and I are lying on a picnic blanket, reaching hands up towards the sky,
The stars are clear here, enough that we can see shades of blue to black in the backdrop behind them. Abe, Patrick, and I are lying on a picnic blanket, reaching hands up towards the sky, one eye closed, flicking the stars like pinballs. We laugh, holding each others’ hands, the hilarity of a game so imaginative and childish.
Each night, the nine of us hold hands in gratitude before eating. Red wine flows. A joy at spending this time living together, picnic blankets in the field after dark and wood fire stove behind us.
Tonight, they honey roast me. A gift for my twenty-second birthday. You’re a joy to be around. You make me feel comfortable, like I could bare my soul to you. Itai says I’m the first person he calls when he needs someone. I write these compliments in my diary: “I guess I just wanted to record them because I don’t always feel those things about myself and it’s good to remember”.
We drink tea on the red striped couches. Patrick and Itai compete to recite digits of pi. Katerina draws. We separate and come together, waves of connection.
Late in the evening, a rare baring of my deeper layers. The fears that bubble beneath my awareness, so consistent they’ve become an entrenched rhythm of life. Someone’s watching me. Prickling on the back of my neck. What if he comes back? My voice begins to shake as a hatred for my own fear rises. It was years ago, I should be over it by now.
Bry looks directly at these raw pieces of myself. His eyes are clear, present. He waits for me to meet his gaze, and then: I love you. In his words are the weight: I see everything you’ve shown to us, the pieces of yourself you accept and the pieces you don’t. I see and love all of it, all of you.
A surprise tinged with sadness. I zip myself back up.
~~~
Doing this work doesn’t make your life any easier. What it does is open you to greater and greater depths. It allows you to feel; to really engage with life.
The summer I was twenty-four, I drove into the mountains with these friends. A valley. Mosquito grass. A lone tree in the dirt and sunscreen as preparation. I stripped off my sweater, bending my knees into a power stance as I turned to face my friends. Nauseous breathlessness rising through my sternum, the last dregs of resistance to the anger ready for release. Eye contact, I am held. I began to scream.
My screams oscillated from the high heady place into the deep guttural belly. My clenched fists bent elbows and I keeled over, purging my insides through sound waves into dirt. A rage that overtook my body. Eye contact with my friends as I tore through the abuse I had hidden from them. Pure force rocketing through my veins out into the world as power. My voice was deeper for days afterward, muscles in my throat released that had been concealing this truth my entire life.
~~~
The sunlight is caught in dust as it streams through windows, late morning light slanting into the room. Empty meditation cushions in a circle, Alex rotates around, saying goodbyes one by one. Real hugs, heads held and bodies cradled. I wait patiently, wanting to be last.
He turns toward me with arms outstretched, palms up, beckoning. I begin to walk toward him, steps accelerating as my heart tugs me forward. When I reach him I jump, legs around his torso, his forearms on my back. I hold the back of his head as we spin. Teary eyes as we lean back to make eye contact, then heads next to each other and more spinning. Our necks touch skin to skin and I grip the back of his head, an upwelling of grief-care.
As his chest shakes I feel an upwelling in my own. A swaying side-hug at the late night singalong. The walk around the lake and the pinata with the swiffer. Calls across time zones and the first essays he edited.
This upwelling is a grief, my own habit of armoring against the love around me. As it moves, a bone-deep safety emanates in its place. I allow myself to sink into the strength of his care, his palm on the back of my head.
~~~
Even in grief there is a contentment, a joy at its unearthing, a deep rest after the tears have flowed. I’ve learned to let these emotions move because it feels good. There is a wholeness in a face scrunched in mountaintop scream, a dry heave in the bathtub.
I’ve gone to the deep place with anger, pulled it out of my belly. I’ve popped blood vessels in my face sobbing, been held when my legs couldn’t stand. Lit candles and wrote directly from the terrors I carry. Through this, a trust built: each emotion moves when it is time to move, leaving me a gift in its place, a lesson about what I am missing.
The undercurrent of this moving of emotions has not been to build an identity around this work nor this trauma but rather to uncover the gentle comfort of the being underneath, cloaked in layers of triggers and shame. Gently invite it to expand into the space cleared, into a place of presence and peace. Openness to the care around it, to spinning hugs and tea around the fireplace.
I feel a falling sensation, a grief welling up into awe: this wasn’t inevitable. I could’ve gone my whole life insulating myself from the fears my mind constructed: don’t let him hurt you again. The awe: I’m okay, I’m here, I’m whole.
~~~
I am watching videos, my birthday three years ago today. The house with the wood fire stove, tea late into the evenings. Patrick, Sasha, Abe, Katerina, Bry. Here again, tonight.
A soul-deep warmth, the consistency of these friends through this healing work. Their love tethered not to my identities as traumatized or healing but rather to the deeper part of my soul, the being underneath. I love you when I arrive home, up the stairwell to open arms and slippers. I love you on the red striped couch, loving the core of my soul before I knew how to love her myself.
Tonight, I open Alex’s present after everyone has left. Dimmed lights in my bedroom, I am fuzzy. Bathrobe, dregs of wine still floating in my system. I flop onto my back and open the card. I read each sentence one at a time, letting it blossom and settle. It feels rich, indulgent, each sentence pregnant with care and love. He lets gratitude flow, a poet’s description of me. Tears rim my eyes. The vastness of the care around me and the resonance I can feel singing in my core, clear and true. The moment I expect the tears to fall, I grin.
From the one hundred and eighty-sixth edge