How do I keep doing this? Three years in a row is a thing, right? I was fine until I wasn’t. Too many late-night drum circles, too much wine, and today I crash. When I was sixteen or so my dad said something to me that I still haven’t learned, and I remind myself of it on days like this. “You don’t need to have your whole life figured out in the next 24 hours.” Why do I think I do? It’s always on the days I have reached the edge. Because I’m barely hanging on and want something solid to hold. Because the unknown is so astonishingly uncomfortable. Breathtaking. Alive. Magical. And overwhelming. Sometimes it’s so heavy. Disorienting. Four months in, and it’s the first time I’ve felt lonely, the first I’ve felt lost. Not lost exactly, but that existential angst is here. Nothing has changed from yesterday and the day before when I was thinking this is the most present I’ve ever felt….life is enchanting. Nothing has changed except my mind. “Can I stay with myself without panicking?” Guess we’re finding out.
Last year was five nights in the yurt in 117 degree heat. It took me two weeks alone in the desert before I hit it this year. Maybe that means I’m getting better at sitting with myself. I know it’s just today. It’s passing. A night of sleep and some pasta will make everything better in the morning. A run too. In shoes…the desert might have won the one battle no one else could…getting me to wear them. I have so many wounds from the rocks and sand…barefoot running sandals aren’t cutting it here.
I’ve reached a layer where there’s no more distraction between myself and my internal world. In theory, this is where real clarity comes from. But good God, is it uncomfortable. I’m learning to be with myself when I’m not in motion. When I’m not producing, consuming or proving anything. When I’m just being. Unbuffered. Me. My demons, my gifts, my doubts, my dreams, my past, all of it. Do we need to be alone to alchemize all this? How do normal people do it? I know I’m not supposed to say that…assuming I’m abnormal and other people have it figured out…dangerous thinking. But I don’t see anyone else out here in the desert sitting with themselves, just tourists passing through, so I’m inclined to think I’m not exactly swimming in peers. Maybe they are in their houses in the desert, wondering where I am…just like I’m here wondering where they are.
This is the flip side of the coin…there is a price for being able to live this freely, this follow your heart, this go find yourself, go to the desert life (always this is said in my head, in Kristin Scott Thomas’ voice from The English Patient). There is no escape from the uncomfortable. There is no work to go to. There is no shopping, no café, no television. I can’t even online shop because I have nowhere to ship anything. I did order books because a person has to live, but they took 3 weeks, cash for the order on delivery, and I’m pretty sure they’re not publishing house sanctioned books…no page numbers and if you open them too wide the pages fall out.
Feels like what’s happening to me today. I’ve gone too wide for too long, and my pages are falling out. But isn’t that part of what I’m trying to do? Unlearn who the world told me to be. So don’t I need pages to fall out? And if we’ve read them, do we really need to keep them?
“I want to know if you can sit with yourself”….why do I feel such a need to do this? I’m not sure it’s even conscious. It just happens…but that must mean it’s something I crave. So maybe let’s stop the judging. Let’s be kind. How about that? You are doing a brave, hard thing, without a roadmap, without guidance (though maybe that’s not entirely true….I might just need to listen more closely to myself, to whatever is guiding me). I don’t need to know today what I’m doing. Maybe I just need to be kind to myself today. Maybe we start there every day.
What does the little version of me want today? A nap. A movie. To stop trying so hard. To stop gripping so tightly. To stop being so present with myself like it’s a school assignment, to give myself a little grace. Maybe it’s ok to just enjoy myself. Is that an option? Maybe that’s enough.
In case anyone thinks this is all roses, it’s not. It’s so hard some days. So confusing. So angsty. So exhausting some days. I keep telling myself tomorrow is another day…fresh, unwritten. A page that hasn’t fallen out yet.
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