Near the end of a month when I felt indescribably foreign to myself, when engaging with my own life and with others felt like a mountainous task, when cloudy grey wisps clung like ivy to more moments than not, I wrote this. There’s no method to the order or rhythm of the words; they’re simply the ones that squeezed out of the pen. In journaling through the fog, I found my way out. Sharing in case someone else might find some ease in the words my body gave me.
Breathe deeply ten times. You have time for this.
I can focus my attention in this moment.
I can allow my attention to rest.
I can be quiet, now, and still.
I can listen to the sounds around me without self-reflection. I can simply take it in.
I am presence and awareness.
I can allow the actions and reactions of others to exist without my needing to change them.
I can experience the richness, texture, tastes, colors of a single moment without rushing to the next.
I need not grasp or cling.
I can sit with the unpleasant and unfixable.
I am presence and awareness.
I can be here without running away.
I can be here.
I can feel this. All of this. I don’t need to skip it.
It feels too large. But I have the capacity for this in me. I will allow it.
I am presence and awareness.
I have the capacity for this.
i have the capacity for this.
I can expand for this.
I can hold myself up.
I am presence and awareness.
The fog cleared. I fell into my couch this weekend, curled up with a blanket, book, and cup of hot tea. Rain fell. My partner cooked dinner in the kitchen. I wept for the relief of returning to myself, for the exhale after weeks of inexplicable held breath, for the grace of feeling at home in my body, my home, my life again.
I don’t know why I left myself. It was awful. I know I could not reason my way back. Here are the practices that helped me return:
Journaling. Eliminating nearly all social media from my phone. Spending screenless time outside in the sun. Eliminating numbing agents: what are yours? What do you find yourself diving into in order to NOT be in your life? Eating wholesome, healthy foods from the earth every day. Breaking a sweat. Listening to instrumental music. The things we know. They still work.
A little at a time. Stubbornly moving inward.