April: Month of Epiphanies

Spring is naturally a time for growth, the return of roots and fresh blossoms. A time when the barren winter landscape slowly dons its green summer sundress and the birds return north to reclaim their arboreal homes.

I've grown suddenly aware of the effect of six months of freeze... for me a temporal pause in my own evolution, a reckless abandonment of my identity and escape into a trial version of myself... like a Mardi Gras mask I wore six weeks too long or a Halloween costume that I forgot to put back into the closet.

At first I thought it was myself I didn't recognize in the mirror. Now I'm thinking otherwise.

Tonight I had an incredibly important conversation with someone who has been like a grafted tree attached to me since I was yet in the flush of early youth, a slip of a teenage girl tentatively walking seaside along those island shores... someone who is unmistakably an integral part of me. Someone I love dearly. For me, family. Someone whose infinite love for me in return I don't feel I have fully acknowledged during this period of exploration mentioned above... I should not have taken that for granted, but I am sure that I did. And that hurts too... but in a way that is necessary. Good, even. I need to feel this brand of regret, this particular shame associated with facing my actions and choices and not really... liking much of what I see.

These past few days I have been agonizing over things, many things... thinking that I was surrounded by people I didn't recognize, people I really didn't know in truth. People whose actions shocked me, hurt my feelings... and yet... now... maybe it's actually the opposite of that. Maybe it's me that they don't fully know. Maybe I'm not the person they think I am.

He said to me that it wasn't me who had changed. That it wasn't me who was unrecognizable. That I am still the same, still the one he loves as his own blood. Still bonded at the soul to him for what dreams may come.

That nothing I can do will make him question that fact.

(We're family, after all.)

That I'm not the same person with him that I am around this other environment, this other circle I have so deeply ingrained myself within, a world that brings to surface different aspects of myself.

I have known this in some locked-away page of my inner dialog for a while now, known something like a whisper in the dark before I fell asleep, something I couldn't quite make out in the night's blackness. But it was there. I know it was there.

In my desperation to forget the painful reality of home, the blurred lines between sadness and anger and resentment and confusion and paralyzing fear, I've flung myself headlong into a bizarre alternate dimension where everybody has something to hide... something to forget.

We're really just a cliche country-western song lyric. Drowning our sorrows. Numbing the hurt. Dancing and spinning so fast we hardly remember our bearings... except... really aren't we just drilling a deeper hole? Has any of us truly moved past that original sin? The root problem?

It seems not.

The only anti-venom to poison in this case is love...

...and how I managed to keep it, I'll never know. These are the people who stick, like barnacles attached to the hull of a ship even as it's sinking. These are the people who grab their instruments and serenade the doomed passengers even as they refuse to abandon the doomed vessel. And these are the angels of mercy who are still here to help me piece myself back together now that I finally hear the S.O.S. signal on the intercom.

I don't know what I am that I deserve this blind love. I don't.

And so much is changing in my life - like Mary Poppins I'm riding the wind as it changes directions, grabbing my umbrella and flying into the horizon, the next phase of my life.

I just realized tonight also that I owe a debt of gratitude to another someone in particular for first striking the flint that lit the candle by which I now read my life's hieroglyphs. He was perhaps the only person in whom I truly saw reflected the reality of now, saw not only the 'me' of today in his eyes but the 'me' of yesterday, figuratively speaking. And it certainly was unexpected, this clarity. And maybe I'll never get the chance to tell him about it, to thank him for it. Because I didn't like the fact that the two reflections were so polar, so dichotomous... I don't think I was alone in my disappointment. Which was an awakening, a moment in which the two universes were jarred just enough to slightly shift on their axes... and then I knew. 'The curtain rolled back'... something had to change. Somewhere in that mysterious no-man's land between new and old lies a balance of the two, a soul whose path has given rise to priceless lessons in life and some minute bit of wisdom, understanding, peace.

And it's not about apologizing... I know that. It's not about pitying myself or hating myself or cursing the gods for my stupidity or flinging myself onto the flames of the funeral pyre... those are all still just selfish actions that focus on me, and me alone. And that's exactly what I must turn away from... I don't know how the hell I am going to rectify certain scenarios or relationships... some things are still so raw I don't even know how to approach the wound without risking gangrene. And dear god I don't want to amputate. And I need serious help along the way... the family tree is withered and weather-beaten to say the least. We're all suffering. Some of us silently, some not. Like the tides, we always return to the same place in our rhythmic pull toward one another.

What I can do, however, is take care of myself. 'Get myself out of the way,' as Liz Gilbert writes, that others can be the focus of healing and love.

Time to grab the garden shears and prune away the weeds so that sunlight can reach the seedlings below, that there can again be a revival of growth. Strip it down to the basics. Take the first steps along the path to atonement... because it's long and uphill and littered with obstacles and surprises and temptations. My life has become a series of Chaucer tales.

I don't know where to start, and I know it's going to be damn difficult to keep myself from overcompensating, overwhelming my loved ones with apologies rammed down throats, overly verbalized pleas for forgiveness.

Ironic, really... a couple days ago I decided that I was going to try and stop talking so much. Decided I needed to listen more thoughtfully, listen like I did before, back when I was more of a vessel for helping others, providing audience to fears and tears that weren't my own. And you know what? Yesterday that became a literal reality for me. Today is my second day with a serious (and painful) case of laryngitis. Truly, I have no voice. Speaking in this state is almost out of the question, physically at least.

It's truly all connected, isn't it?

When life sends a message... it really sends a message.

[And I'm listening... I'm listening...]