But, I'm Still Alive.

Babes, I have been thinking so much about you,  all of this, and how I am supposed to be. What living again looks like, what is a betrayal to you, to us. What is a betrayal to me now that I really do have to live this time here on my own. I have been consumed with doing my best, doing this 'right'. I'm  trying to make the best possible choices, when so much of the time I just want to be reckless and crazy.

Babes, give me your permission to live. 

C dislocated his pinky finger and was telling me how after he had it fixed at the hospital he was gidy from the adrenaline. I live in that state most of the time right now. This intense high. It flooded his body for a short time to protect him from the full pain of his pink finger injury. Well this injury a little more vast, and that same high I have come to be very well acquainted with. It causes many sleepless night, restless days, but it also has made me feel ridiculously alive. Everything is more intense, the good is more intense too, this high is something else; the vibrancy of life palpable. I laugh a lot. I smile often, I feel so at home on my mat right now, the more complicated and deep the practice the better. It has made my sequencing creative and new. I see beauty in the mundane and feel connected to an endless energy source, most of the time.

But when that fades, and it does I experience the lowest lows. Crying myself to sleep, trying to get it together to teach classes through a broken heart. Temper tantrums behind closed doors, and screaming in my car. Days where I am so exhausted I can't focus, I am unproductive, scattered, and lonely.

The thing is, it is all intense.

Nothing is dull that is for sure. I have never felt more alive. There is very little of a routine, there are very few predictables, or knowns in my life right now, and in that I am forced to live squarely in the moment. I didn’t have a choice in this, I have been thrown into something so far out of my comfort zone all I can do is live moment-to-moment. But it has tough me a lot about what it means to be alive. 

I can feel myself wanting to retreat, to hide away trying to protect my heart. I wondered how this loss would play out in me, past the obvious. What would the deeper damage be? What would I internalize and then cling to as a way to create security. I know feeling in control is a false sense of security, clearly we are never really in control. Knowing that, in the way I do, makes it hard to create a container that feels really safe. The idea of certainty is just a game we play in our heads, at any time anything can shift, at any time it can all be taken away, fall apart or change. Most people can pretend they are in control, we did.  But I know differently now and it has left me scared and untethered.

So for me now, learning to trust again is terrifying. Learning to let others get close is scary, and I want to cling so tightly to the people who I already love.

I know what it means to lose something irreplaceable, causing part of me to live so openly, freely, wildly. But then there is this other part that is terrified. This part pushes me to be closed off, to be cold. Let's be honest I had this in me before. You worked hard to get in. Like to really be on the inside, but once you were there, you had my heart. Once you were in, you were in, but getting in isn't afforded to many. Babes, you taught me what it meant to love. I felt this crazy intense love for you after the accident, the purest love I have ever felt. It lasted about 2 weeks and was something I have never experienced before. Like what I imagine a mom feels when she holds her baby right after birth. This indescribable connection. I was overwhelmed by the love I felt for you, from you. Thank you for that. 

So now babes I play in this scary place. Where everything is so intense and messy and I am unsure of every step. I used to just follow my heart, it was so clear for me. But now the complexity of it all makes me second guess everything.

Can I really handle a life this big, this real, this raw and honest?

Most people don't know this kind of alive. Maybe it is some sort of gift I get for the pain I suffer. Like a consolation prize. You lost your beloved and all you thought your life would be, but you have been given access to what it means to actually live in the moment, to feel what most people never even know is possible. It’s a scary place, but here I am. So babes, I am reorganizing. I really want to live, I'm just scared.