Truth unfolding

A long time ago, a few years after I came out of rehab, I was sitting on the back lawn, yellowed by winter. Totally bored. I decided that I need a career. I wanted to have something to do. I also wanted to see the world and have adventure, like people in books and movies. I did not want to make lists about going to the library, buying potatoes and remembering to phone a friend forever.

While studying I was pushing so hard. I started feeling stretched and tired and crying a lot.

In order to cope I had to ask for help. Suddenly something new entered my life. Someone opened a door and while staring at the swimming fish and the yellow Chinese tassel moving in the non-existent wind I saw myself. I saw who I was, who I no longer wanted to be and who I wanted to be. I did not really need other’s to feel sorry for me, I wanted to be someone worth admiring.

I pushed and pushed through one, two, three jobs, striving to impress. Ignoring the fearful voices in my head saying, “You can’t do this, I’m tired, I’m lonely”

I kept coming back every time I could no longer keep going, to stare at the yellow tassel and the swimming fish.

And it was great. I had so much energy. I was giving up a part of myself that I have related to forever. A sad, deep still space. I could not move forward while lingering there.

Then suddenly it all stopped making sense. I did not want to rush anymore. I felt like I travelled so fast that I lost parts of myself on the way. The empathy, the feeling, the sadness, I missed them. I wanted to rest in that quiet space again.

But I was scared, what if I lost everything? What if I started travelling backwards? All the way back to the lawn? But I was not happy. I could not remember happiness. I was just pushing and straining and trying to get there. And I no longer trusted others to instruct me. What they were saying did not ring true.

I started praying and sitting in the garden. Just feeling the yearning and wanting so badly the answer, wanting to feel ok. I felt like trying could not get me there. I have tried everything. I would sense my longing to change coupled with not knowing how to change, not knowing what to do. I started feeling empathy with myself. How could I be angry with not getting it right when I so badly want to do the right thing? But I do not know what, why and how.

I now have the career I wanted. I am building towards finding something more. When things start to get too much and I start feeling lost, which I do all the time, and angry and frustrated and ungrateful I can return to the new me. Who is really the me that was always there pushing, but now she knows she is not always supposed to know where she is going and she does not always have to feel good. As long as she has the yearning, together with the resting and the pushing, the birth will fulfil itself. In small cycles, like a flower resting on water. Following its reflection outwards.