The drive had been peaceful, fanciful and bright. The sun shone and the music played loudly eliciting for the most part frivolity, anticipation and promise. Occasionally the ever looming tide of self doubt and disgust would find a lyric or melody that gave it permission to emerge from it’s place buried. But even that felt good. Scream it out into the silent cone of the car as it hurtles along the freeway. There it can do no harm and may somehow satiate itself.
Arriving early and self-conscious I was shown to my room. The expanse of time, this time that I had carved out for myself, that I had paid for, sought permission for, said that I needed, to write. It is all here, in front of me. Over my expectations I then trip, tumble and fall, headlong. Into confusion and sadness I slip. I fall mute. As others arrived my energy falls further, lays flat in the face of their levity, their excitement, their chattiness and enthusiasm. I can’t keep up, I am drowning. I go to bed that night hoping sleep will cleanse me but it doesn’t and when I wake up in the morning all I want to do is keep my eyes closed to the day. I can’t imagine writing anything, not like this. I can’t imagine even getting up, eating, dressing, anything. Surely the beach will heal me and so I walk to it, trying to be present, to be mindful – of my surroundings, the sounds, the smells, the feeling of the air on my skin, the sun, the birds, the clouds, everything, something. None of it works. I want to cry, I can’t cry. I want to feel better, I can’t feel better. I pick up a small smooth rock and rub it between my fingers. I feel like such a wanker and what the fuck is wrong with me? I’m here, after all. This is what I wanted, isn’t it? Don’t I get everything I want? What more could I ask for? I am such a fucking arsehole.
I return to my room and can do nothing. I lie with my head at the wrong end of the bed and put my feet on the adjacent chair – they are sandy from the beach and I don’t want to get sand in the bed, on my pillow. Lying there, I hate myself, I feel like a failure, like everything in the world is wrong. I am wrong, my life is wrong, everything I do is wrong. Simply nothing is right. Finally I can cry. I am awash with tears and a sadness that threatens to carry me away. Where would it take me I wonder, and would I be happy there?
When there is nothing left, I am empty, hollow, feeble. But I am here. I sit up and brush the sand from my feet and with my jeans still on I get under the bed covers, I lay my head on the pillow and I will myself to sleep. I can’t of course, but there is rest. Empty rest, which is better than the tangled sadness of before. There is nothing. And that is something.
I know I must eat and so I do. I eat, I weakly smile at people, I walk feeling ginger and frail, like a post operative patient. I am recuperating. But I allow it and I don’t try to paper over it. Instead I look at my friends face as she looks at me, as she tells me it’s okay, it’s everything it needs to be, she doesn’t mind she loves me still. She can allow me to be in ways I am still learning to allow myself and that is magic. That is healing. That is love.
Like this, with this understanding and this absolute non-judgment even as I threaten to displace something that is so important to her I slowly regain my strength and then finally I am able to write. When the words come I feel like myself again. I am here, alive, okay, just but that is enough. I keep writing and sit in this now moment, trying not to fret about the time I have wasted. It’s not a waste after all, because everything is useful, it all counts, it is for something, it has to be.
Like this I deliver myself to the night before. A night in which I allow myself to smile and laugh and drink and dance and sing and love and sweat and live. Like this I deliver myself from sadness all the while accompanied by it’s darkened eclipse, enjoying where I am as I await the rotation that will return it to me. I smile, I absorb the warmth of the sun I wait and I write.
