The Aftermath
~ Note that real feelings can begin with depression. Reframe “weaker” feelings as a sign of progress. – The Pocket Enneagram
My husband and I are shipwrecked in the hammock with no energy to save ourselves.
It’s so hot and we’re so tired that we have to drop our extra baggage, drift aimlessly through the morning, and conserve our resources to stay afloat.
I don’t want a life jacket tossed to me, like I don’t want somebody else’s answers to my questions, which is why I resist churches and gurus. I’m trying to navigate a personal journey with no map. I’m only interested now in what my soul and psyche want.
After four days of fun and sun at Floydfest (our town’s yearly world music festival), I feel fulfilled and blessed but also purged. My defenses are down, as if I’m coming out of a sweat lodge, altered and full of prayer. I have a dream to interpret, a theme to unravel, and a metaphor to craft.
For me, when the bottom falls out a flood of lighted insight usually follows, and I have to look hard at myself. Why did I wear that top with buttons that kept popping (causing friends to point it out)? Why did I tell an intimate story so easily to someone I hardly knew?
I’m rocking the boat, showing myself off and it all happened so fast. But I’m not necessarily feeling that I should contain myself more. I need to feel what it’s like to be exposed at the festival, on the internet, and through the written word, even though it opens up my “love me but leave me alone” Pandora’s Box of paradox.
A little girl at the festival pointed and said, “you’re a beautiful woman.” I didn’t think it was a compliment as much as a archetypal arrow hitting its psychic target. I wouldn’t have heard it fully from a man, or any adult, but a child?
My husband reflects back to me that I am not becoming invisible. He sees my inner and outer beauty. I love him for that and I hear it. But I deflect it too. When I’m tired rest doesn’t penetrate. It rolls right off like water rolls off gortex. Compliments tend to do the same. Too much pressure to live up to, and besides, ‘do we really want to be beautiful or do we just want to be seen and loved?’
These days, I’m like a person in autumn who is mourning the loss of summer because I’m not ready for winter. But I can’t enjoy the beauty of fall if I’m trying to hold on to summer. I resist aging, but I also know that it takes energy to deny who you really are in the present moment and when you do, you do so at your own peril.
A bumblebee flies by, sounding like a cell phone vibrating on a table. I don’t answer. The view from the hammock looks out onto the grass, dried and brittle from days of brutal heat. The garden looks wilted and desperate, and I know how it feels. I finally save myself when I remember I can walk and that I need to go to town to buy a new hose.
July 27th, 2010 1:10 am
I love the thought of choosing to expose yourself more fully…..to live ALL of yourself out where others can see. What a pure form of authenticity that is.
July 27th, 2010 8:18 am
overstimulated from all the festivities, must rest now… take it easy and rejuvenate.
July 27th, 2010 8:53 am
This makes me think of one of my favorite sensations, which is to be so physically exhausted, that my mind is finally quiet. I get there by running, and it seems like I am constantly re-learning how easy it is to just be happy to be alive.
July 27th, 2010 9:37 am
Exactly, Poe! I felt like an Einstein of the psyche when all these feelings started connecting. It took being exhausted and vulnerable to get to such a rich place. I felt tension as it all came up but the more I delved into it, the more tension was released.
July 27th, 2010 6:43 pm
when children say things to us we tend to take them as more honest, i think, since we don’t assume hidden agendas.
being vulnerable opens us to so much more in life. so often we protect our vulnerable selves at the expense of the richest blessings.
July 28th, 2010 8:03 am
Yes, Sky it really took me back hearing that from a child and I took it to heart, especially considering today’s youth focused culture where people of a certain age begin to be largely invisible to the young.
July 28th, 2010 9:16 pm
In South Boston on Saturday, it was 111 degrees outside, according to my car’s thermometer, when my husband and I were walking through the downtown in South Boston, after we attended a small graveside ceremony for an elderly aunt in his family. Thought I would just about swoon from the heat even though we were sitting under a canopy that had been erected for us. It was a (mercifully) brief ceremony (and the men were in suits!) This heat wave had fangs! But the dust bowl heat wave in 1936 broke heat records in some states that to this day remain unmatched. We have lost quite a few bushes in our yard that looked great back in April & May. We have not had a decent rainfall in this part of Hanover County since the end of May!
July 29th, 2010 12:11 am
[...] 9. I get so much done when I do nothing! Crashed out on the hammock, recovering after Floydfest, our town’s 4 day world music festival, I became a Jung meets Einstein genius because, for me, when the bottom falls out a flood of enlightened insight usually follows. The full awakening and confession is HERE. [...]
August 16th, 2010 8:50 am
Amazing piece of writing and soul sharing. I understand some of what you are feeling. I am there too.
A few months ago I decided to stop dying my hair and had it chopped pixie style. It took courage because I knew it would force me to understand that I’m 53…not 40, not 35, not 18. It’s been liberating and yet sometimes I just feel plain tired, mostly I feel it’s good to be me.
Hugs,
Susan