The Year You Meet Yourself Again
Not resolutions, but revelations; not ambition, but alignment.
You are being chosen by something.
Outside your window, it is knocking on the glass.
There is something pitted in your belly, like a stone. From the moment you awake, you know.
It sits heavy, unnameable, pulling at the edges of your awareness.
An edge you'd rather not stand on is drawing you toward it.
The right language, the expression, the healing, the quality, you may not need now, but you will need soon, is choosing you.
If you follow one clear instruction and dissolve yourself in it, you'll receive what it's trying to give you, gifts - countless gifts, dear one, waiting to find their way to you. But not before some discomfort and disquieting unknowns.
Not the discomfort that comes with reaching for something, looking out into the horizon without end. This is about the discomfort of sinking down into something, and that something is this very moment in your life. Present circumstances, present experience, the edge. This is the place you know you need to get to if you want to live.
My sense of self has been waning lately. The roads of my mind are diverging, and I feel foggy and without reference. The more I put down, the less I pick up. The place I am in feels lonely and unfamiliar in many ways. It's been lonely mostly because who and what I thought I was, the trajectory, the directives haven't been reliable sources of wellbeing, and I'm left without the traditional, societal map. My thoughts, the energy I let my body live inside, were making me sick in many ways. Experiencing burnout, dissatisfaction, and disinterest. Far away. Dry and unsatiated. My decision to listen now means that I am changing almost everything I was abandoning myself to routinely. The discomfort is sharp, but it feels purposeful, like peeling away layers that no longer serve me. My overstimulating and abuse of my body and attention. What I have been allowing to take from me.
Over the last few months I have been slowly giving up a number of things. Recently, coffee and sugar. Red meat. I'm following an aryvedic diet for the next six months, maybe forever, since I feel my body finding a deep anchoring I'm not sure I've ever experienced. I have to eat slowly, and sit quietly before and after every meal. Digest my food, my life. Over a year has passed since I last drank alcohol. It's time for me to leave social media, and I will figure out how to post with help. Ultimately, what is being removed is anything that causes a spike or a crash. A high speed. Being distant from myself and those I love. The bird, the tree, the sky. As everything slows down, I'm catching up to myself and some deep well of grief that has yet to show itself fully.
The loneliness a lot of us experience comes from being outsiders. Phones are everywhere, and people are lost in them. Maintaining a conversation while we go in and out of our devices. While I am still far from mastering my own relationship with phones or people I love, I am making great strides in preserving something sacred. Making sure that something truly imperative does not die- our intimacy, our hearts.
A part of me feels lonely in sobriety, a part of me feels liberated. In the absence of the noise, I can hear something softer calling, asking me to stay here, with myself, deepen, listen. What a loud sound it was, and how quiet and ordinary it can all seem now. After being covered over with tremendous activity, a sturdiness emerges. This loneliness, I am discovering, is not emptiness —it’s spaciousness, creating room for the gifts waiting to come through. However, I feel alone because I feel out of place in my life and in myself. My loneliness has grown as I have soberly realized I cannot return easily to the states I once called home. It's lonely because I must learn a language and a landscape all by myself. Fresh from birth, alone in a quiet room.
Who knew that listening to a single sound, a single tree, and a single breath would be so challenging? Who knew that my life would carry me up only to gently place me in front of a mirror and ask me to take a serious look at myself? Life whittled everything down to ask me where I was going all this time. I didn't know I would learn the meaning of serenity, home, safety, belonging, and worth from a window in a chair. Who knew it would initially feel like pain and void, and then gradually turn into steady joy. Who knew I had wandered so far.
In this New Year, I want to remind you that sometimes it’s not about blazing a new path, but rather kneeling down on the one you’re on and asking yourself if there is anything you have been denying its truth. There may be places in your life that hurt, that you would rather not keep hurting in, and if you are willing to relinquish the loud or quiet harm you are inflicting. In saying this, I am not berating anyone for their habits, for their love of coffee or sugar, but rather to say, experiment with your life and with the energies you move in. Look outside the customs of your daily life and see if maybe there is a part of yourself that wishes to be born anew. In other words, everyday is new, wild, and whispering in your ear, and courage sometimes involves letting go of who you thought was you, and embracing someone else underneath. It is okay for life to be lonely and raw, unfamiliar and newly discovered. Neither is it predictable nor is it even definable. You are free to explore an entirely new, unformed version of yourself and tell no one about it.
It is okay to close the door, light a candle, and forget what you were doing. There is no harm in being lost and new for a while, and in saying yes to some opaque voice of knowing that you can sense is choosing you. If you begin to question everything and listen, your new skin will soon appear.
I love you,