Discovering an Anchor

It all starts with a seemingly small series of nonevents. As it turned out, I was to go to the Shakespeare Festival alone to my secondary teachers conference. As no one was coming with me, I prepared myself with audiobooks, journal, cooler full of my kind of food (too much of it as usual), novel, patriarchal blessing, scriptures, and a vague idea that if I had time outside the conference and seeing plays, I would absorb into myself some kind of miraculous peace about everything. All things denoting a journey in meditation, a reevaluation of self.

My second day after the conference ended at 5pm, I found myself in my car throwing a tantrum as I am sometimes prone to do. This tantrum was monumental for being by myself, and it was because of myself I threw it. Because I could. Because I was by myself. The reason for it is silly by itself. But not so much given what became context.

I berated myself for having left my cover-up that I had carefully placed into a plastic baggie which never actually made it into my purse. "Berated" is possibly too mild. Feeling hideous and ultimately inhuman, I decided to treat myself that way. And it was a decision. For a fleeting moment I could see outside myself and what the more logical part saw could have frightened her if I hadn't whipped her back into the froth. I knew I was being vicious and ridiculous. I didn't care. I couldn't contain my feelings of loathing in thoughts or words, so I half-screamed, half-gurgled in my car. Yes, gurgled is the best word for it.

Later that night, sanity came back to me. "Okay." I said. "This, this needs to stop. This is not just on occasion, but always seething under the surface. And it needs to stop."

Then the image of this little girl, this care-free little person telling stories in her dramatic way to all who would listen, who would dance around the living room in her slip and watch the Solid Gold Dancers for dance moves, who knew she wanted to be an actress from the time she was sentient. Who felt the magic at the Shakespeare Festival and wanted nothing more than to bottle it and have it and keep it forever. This was a person I would never in a million years insult and injure the way I had myself. What had happened to her? Where did she go? I asked myself. The answer is so simple. She is still me. She is still me. We don't have to be separate, but we are. I have always felt a separation from myself. Always. In conversations on the topic, I just didn't feel like people understood the degree of the separation I felt. I don't know what happened. I don't know why I care so much about what other people think. But I have cared about that so much for so long, it seems the pattern is an impossible chasm to cross.

But it's not. I'm working. She's going to help me. We are separate but the same. Any time I need her, I remember who I am. This may not seem like a big deal to some. But not to us.

I can't express here how it feels to have her back in my life, to remember she is me. Words are never enough. But action. Action is what I am taking.

This is a waking up. A revelation.

SSDD

Another day, another date, another reason not to go out. Ever feel like Sisyphus, rolling that stupid boulder halfway up the hill every day, never progressing? Or just generally looking for a needle in a giant stack of needles? And you can say a thousand times that you give up. You're done. No more. But saying that doesn't make that boulder go away. It'll still be there when you wake up in the morning. Don't kid yourself. The only way to get away from it is to sleep and hope you dream about finally reaching the top or just finding some dynamite and blowing the damn thing up. But then you wake up.