I keep dipping a toe, I’ll try a lot today and if this doesn’t work out we won’t have given too much. You see, I’m terrified of giving too much. This abandoning me got out of control and now I’ve been holding her with chains instead, afraid to let go, afraid to let her be wild, this one in me who just wants to float down any river I let her.
But we carry this wound, the one that says I didn’t keep you safe. All those times you were stolen, all those times you let him have your worth, all those times that you were hurt. We didn’t know better, we were a child, we were just repeating what we knew. We know better now and damn be the drain if we’re going to let the river ever empty again. We have to be full, we have to be whole so please don’t float somewhere unsafe.
Except, I’m not floating. I’m tethered with a rope. One called alleged safety. It’s now slipped around my arms, I cannot move and feel like I’m drowning after trying to say inflow.
I haven’t let her go all in. I haven’t let go. But I need to with every fiber of me, I need to trust we’re strong enough.
Today I lead a yoga class on this. Our mantra was “I can trust myself.” We moved through the roots, we planted them, and felt them spine up from our toes. We found them in our centers. We let the lies drip from our heads. The ones that said you have to cut off this part of you to be known, to be worth something. Mine had no worries but I felt them drizzle out like the chocolate frosting a fresh ice cream cone. They seem sweet but the caffeine in that much chocolate makes my body revolt.
Yet here I am surprised my own leading lead me right here seeing I absolutely need to trust myself.
I launched a community this week. One I felt so deep in my body, so deep in my soul. I’ve dreamed of this space for a few years now. I kept trying to make it come alive. But it sat empty for two years now. I keep adding to it, some feeble attempt. Maybe if I just keep trying a little bit something will be found. Yet I find it’s that same thing, tethering when I need flow. The community flopped. No one paid and signed up. Again. My heart numbed and said what will we do now.
The day has flowed in that everything is halt because I really just needed to be here trying to unknot this tie I put around my throat.
Of all the things I keep desiring I reach for the one next to it because this one, this writing feels too big for me to have. Surely, I, the dyslexic one who’s terrible at structure, who hated English and reading growing up cannot produce something someone will actually want to read. Yet here I am feeling, this is what I want, this is what I dream of, traveling to experience, to speak, to share my story. I cannot read much currently because I have more coming out than wants to be taken in.
I don’t want to emotionally regulate anyone again. I don’t want to be a service provider again. I’m not particularly detail-oriented but my mind sees things peculiarly. It’s with that I want to go float in.
So, I’m here today, with my digital pen. Trying my best to honor what’s within and say yes my dear, we’re working on letting the knot go and stepping into becoming exactly who you’ve always wanted to be, those words you heard from your third-grade teacher who said “remember me when you’re a famous writer one day.” I was dumbfounded by her. “Me the one in a remedial reading group?” All my teachers always said, “you have so many profound things to say it just doesn’t make sense.” My structure was always off. One sat down with me and showed me how a bit. But it just never clicked, like details I’ll never notice, the one of what color anything actually was your hair, your shoe, it doesn’t matter the detail because all I’ll ever see is your soul and the joy or pain you’re in.
I’m here to see, not the details of imperfections, not the places that need bettering, but the places that are full of profound beauty the ones that make us stop and drop our jaw because it’s there I really believe all life exists. Right there in that gape, in the pause of our breath, and the pure pleasure everything comes to at that moment.
I want to live there, so I’m doing my best today to let go. To surrender, release the rope and find more moments of the gaping jaw wide open, stunned, amazed, completely whole.