My heart tells me: Be free. Express yourself. Be transparent. The emotions have been birds that never stay aground for long. I want to report, say words of nourishment or wisdom, let you know where I am–but I have been feeling lost in some ways. I often feel scattered.
I’ll be overwhelmed thinking of things to post because I could share a host of things. To do what needs doing every day feels like a monumental task. I do celebrate it but I’m coming to accept the biggest thing I am doing every day pulling off a centipede of judgement from my shoulder. It lives in that one spot that is hard to reach and I can’t see it to grab it. I don’t even consciously feel it. I just have to remember that it is there.
I know my flow and I know what is missing in it, the progression of actions I typically make when I feel good, that makes me feel even better through accomplishment. I can say: this isn’t it.
It’s not normal. (And my trauma whispers, “I’m not normal.”) But it isn’t about beating myself up or even saying “There, there, it will get better.” We don’t know that; I suspect as much, but what we know is uncertainty, What this moment for me is about is just accepting this is the way I am living now. Perhaps as we move to another apartment in the next week and settle in with better space for work and life, I will be more comfortable. But the broader situations will still be there.
The questions will still be there. When will I return to the states and what will I be returning to? The limitations of life during a pandemic as well as life in Japan will still be there. Is my job simply to enrich the container I am living in, the dance of being in relationship as I begin living together with my boyfriend in this waiting period before it feels right to come to America again? To survive as well as possible in this unique time? No, that’s not quite it.
The adventure I expected to be on this month has been curtailed or at least edited. It has a new focus. It’s not about seeing my grandma and family in Italy (they are ok), it’s not going to see friends in other places, it’s not seeing my friends and family in the states and setting up my new place there. More in comments31w
It’s also not about growing my business and career as a writer, coach, and editor. It’s not about anything I am really doing. So what is it about?
Today I wrote and wrote, and put my current revised adventure into one word: Transparency. And so I share with you where I am: emotionally I am not quite sure, but I am in Japan and it is as good or better than anywhere else I could be. I am home in my body and it is my job now just to listen and breathe. I will report what is there (if that’s what I feel I need to do–even if it doesn’t make total sense yet. But maybe I don’t need to be connected online sometimes, so I will listen to myself there.)
Every day I pull off that centipede of judgement, shame or fear. The subtle signs of stress from the present, the reminders of a traumatic past of endless battlegrounds. I let go of doing this the right way.
Let go. Time will show me what wants to be. I’m doing it all wrong, and I accept that with a smile. Free.
