At some point in life - a person’s mind might lose its way. I suppose I can only really speak from this personal human experience… contrary to an empathy’s side of things.
In the pit of my existence, I knew I was losing my mind. It held on by a thread and it was about to leave me honestly for dead if I weren’t to take some sort of radical responsibility to call it back in.
Confusion to say the least, like a thirsty root to the water, I went running to find refuge on the river. Still populated by a degree of confusion, I could always find a piece of myself underneath her surface. Nightly I would bathe, rinse and stare at the stars with a sense of my homecoming billowing around my cells; it was me, outside of…me.
How to drink this Ecstatically Wild Spirit back in? I was jealous of Her… of Me.
I couldn’t understand how I let something so precious go? I was angry, enraged. I loved her so much. She was the Velvet Falls, the quiet Canyon, the echo on the Middle Fork’s cathedral walls.
The smoke ripped through as I awoke on a smokey morning and my body asked me to leave. So I listened. I called my mom the next morning on my way to Anchorage, Alaska without warning.
On the road down the ALCAN highway, she was still outside of me but this time, I was alone with her.
Still in the zone of pandemic, I was ordered to make it through Canada in 72 hours. We giggled, rolled down the windows and hit cruise while jumping in glacial lakes along the way.
Once in Alaska she sat me down and put me to work. I tried to escape her friendship as soon as things got hard again. Hard in the sense that I was being asked to un/authenticate myself in order to conform to the ways of a mainstream society and public school teaching.
She didn’t like it. She left me again and would only reunite when I went outside to free-dive in the ocean which also turned into scuba diving (turns out she wasn’t leaving the water). I’d be remised if I didn’t share her twisted sense of enjoyment in our 330AM weight room sessions too…she loves the smell of Iron and again the taste of salt (sweat here).
Every time I leave the ocean or any type of wild water, an emptiness creeps over me. I linger on the taste of my salty skin, dreaded locks, and puffed lips until the next day when the feeling has diffused and I am left with that familiar hole and cracked skin.
As I sit in an empty classroom, at the end of the school day, I reflect and cherish the break throughs that were won with the students yet pound my head into the brick wall with knowing how much more I could provide granted I could co-teach into the wild in collaboration with my greatest guides.
In radical responsibility for my body, mind and soul, I have accepted the fact that it is not somebody that will ever fill the Homo sapien hole. I know where to find her, I’ve known it since day one.
I find her in the feeling of where I am. I feel different inside. I no longer feel jealous, I no longer feel side by side. It is as though she caresses each individual cell. Picture this, a body as a sea of stars, with no light.
When we are in alignment, that light turns on.
My mind has lost its way, and this has felt like death inside. I am here but I am not. The gnawing feeling above my navel is terrifying. So when I choose to leave, when I choose to “quit,” when I have to say no or suddenly go. This is nothing personal.
I cannot stomach that familiar feeling and have to respond because I have experienced the latter when I do not.
I love her too much to abandon her again, her light attracts not all and I have accepted that (well sort of). There are some out there in this world that can be blinded by your light so may intentionally fight to put you out or people out there that are curious and may suffocate you because they want a piece of it. For me, it has been in carefully attracting those that have a deep relationship with their own beautiful mind and respectfully co-exist with you in space.
Having waves of feelings of connectedness with myself again after years of abandonment gives me hope.
Having taught in a variety of settings Kindergarten through Seniors I hate to share, but can track when a child begins to lose their own. I was recently requested to take on a long-term sub for a 6th grade class. Hell bent on mentoring these 28 children to recognize what lights them up was my mission; this work is not easy when you are fighting a system.
My mind is gaining traction yet threatens to leave me if I succumb to the steadied pay and systemic backwards way of misaligned expectations and lowered standards.
At some point in life - a person’s mind might lose its way. This is okay. Take the time you need to intentionally call that spirit back. Search. Move. Communicate. Cry. Work. Workout. Get outside. Volunteer. Play with kids. Have a conversation with an elder. Try, and try again. Be slow to trust, but trust again. Wait to date. Read. Get sober. Whatever it takes but do not accept that you don’t belong.
This is not easy but nor is watching a loved one drink themselves out because it is too hard, starve themselves, cut themselves, belittle themselves, belittle/abuse others.
Maybe this is what Mahatma Gandhi meant when he said, “Be the change you wish to see in the World.”
Find your feeling and work as though your life depends on it.
Because it does.
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