6/18/2021

My mind tossed and turned well before my body did. I prayed to my angels, God, spirit guides, ancestors to shine my light on me — my distinct, supportive, nurturing light.

Still, my mind continued to travel. At some point, I opened my eyes and looked down to my shivering body, wondering why I felt so cold. I pulled the larger blanket back over me as I failed to resist pulling my phone out to check the time, check my messages, check anything, really. Anything to distract myself. It was 4:00am.

This is significant, I thought. I usually sleep through the night, barring the occasional game with the air conditioner — the right temperature is everything. But tonight, I knew both my mind and body were not resting.

Thoughts of inadequacy, uncertainty, loneliness, filled my mind and, more emphatically, my heart as tears began to stream down the side of my face and onto my pillow. I held back my vocalizations, partly because I didn't want to disturb those in slumber in neighboring rooms, but also because I did not want to submit to the feeling of weakness these tears represented. Still, though, I cried. I dared to allow myself to release, softly panting intermittently. Images of my public persona arose in my mind and I found it hard to believe I was ever so confident and convicted. It seemed sustainable then, too.

Where did that version of me go?

Because at this point, I felt like somewhat of a shell of the person I used to be. My stature has always symbolized confidence, expression, boldness, brightness; but for the past weeks, months, I'd found myself more comfortable with the internal world than the external. Historically, I'd felt solid in my internal world. That's largely because I'd seen life as predictable. Relationships were predictable, work was common and ordinary. Truly, I'd pretty much always known what to expect and what my reactions to external stimuli had meant. Life, still with its requisite twists and turns, was a pretty tidy box. This particular morning, though, as I allowed the skin around my eyes to absorb my tears, my worlds were looking hazy.

As I reflect, I realize that over the past year and change, I'd transitioned from a mostly external creature to a mostly internal one. I wasn't used to it and people around me were not used to it, or maybe that was just my perception. And that's the thing with being an internal creature, life is made up of assumptions, of conditionals, of possibilities — rarely is it made from an objective, tangible truth.

The internal creature feels more comfort inside the mind — inside the belly, the soft, cavernous space where dreams can be created, ruminated on, and extinguished all before they see the light of a conscious day. It can be a beautiful space to be in, to live in. But we live in an external world. A world founded on performance, appearance, and comparison. We live in a world where our essence must always be on display for us to appear of value to any second or third party.

That's a lot of pressure, I began to realize.

I switched on the bedside lamp and the room shifted from a blue-grey tint to a soft orange. I pulled out my journal to write whatever came to heart. As my pen glided effortlessly across the paper, I began to come to terms with the me of the present moment. Tears, again, began to fill my eyes, and, again, my brain tried to withhold the language accompanying my mental and emotional disarray. Beyond the physical tears themselves, I found that particular cognitive defense mechanism to be intriguing. I was observing myself in a different way and saw self-inhibition in its active, primal environment. So I continued to write, to try and unstick the parts of my mind so fused with the desire to remain the same.

And then I recognized the ailment. Change. Transformation. Becoming.

A third, but no less impactful, wave of tears rose from my stomach and stopped just short of my eyelids. The clock chimed. It was 5:00am.

I had experienced the recognition of my death. That is, an ego death. It'd been percolating for some time, once in a while alerting me to the ways in which my otherwise strong personality was fading. A quick memory recall and I can see that this ego-transformation was harrowing to my sometimes naked, cold, alone spirit. I'd felt naked, cold, and alone because my experience of life was changing, apparently at the hands of a force more formidable than mine. The puzzle pieces of my own existential puzzlement began to assemble themselves.

I was being called to shift the ways I interact with the world. The external world. I had always been one to prance through the plains of externalization and expression without a hinge. I'd pay just enough attention to my inner realm, my consciousness, to live out my dreams. And I suppose the attention I gave my inner consciousness was consequential, though my outer reality felt more real, because that inner consciousness was only a means to an end.

But I suppose as the times changed, so did I and so did the depth of my inner world. It deepened and expanded more rapidly and with more grace and power than I could keep up with. My inner realm channeled spirits that called me to the water, that brought rainy seasons around my physical locations whenever I was nearby, that brought more tears to my eyes in one year than I remember experiencing in years past combined.

The inner world was calling for my softness — my surrender. My old methods of constant pushing and doing were no longer effective. My process and practice of expression had shifted.

Soft pants escaped my lips in more cohesive rhythm. My heartbeat billowed throughout my still body. The wetness of the tears on my cheeks grabbed and clung to the warm air from the ceiling fan like hungering amphibians and their insect prey. In the floating depths of my inner ocean, I could sense a treasure box, a special message awaiting me. Observe, attach yourself to nothing at this time. Travel through, taking your lessons, connecting with other souls. Don't let it stick.

The rain outside began to pour, what seemed like, right into my room, onto my face, intermingling familiarly with the tears slowly ceasing their cascade; I couldn't differentiate the rain's sound from the hum of the fan over my head. By then, I was feeling emotionally calmer, thankful for the time between the pages of my journal. I felt tender and raw and very welcome to a loving physical embrace. So I curled up and gave myself liberty to fold. I took in a deep breath and switched my sensory perception to the yarn-made blanket resting lightly, warmly, on my shoulders. I saw that as a sign of being held and accepted it.