Re-birth
My body feels as though I’ve already left The Bad Place. Everything in alignment. Everything falling into place. I am enjoying living with it and in it again. It has already started to feel much lighter. Instead of taking my lunch break on Thursday, I went to the stationery store and hunted for a specific kind of pen (for my notebook) before heading to the office.
My last day was meant to be on my birthday next month, but because I still have some leaves to clear, I get to leave earlier. A whole week earlier. If it works out, I can meditate on the morning of the 7th (a Friday) with the sangha and take a long nap into the weekend.
I have been struck with an unapologetically happy face, which I can’t help but exaggerate and use to annoy the miserable people who will be left at the office. “What?” I ask, grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Must I hide how happy I am? I can’t! I love this.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve gifted myself with an exit from a place I had begun to despise. I have been here before. The edge of dread and an inch from joy, is a lovely place to be. Whenever I find myself here, I remember it to be lovelier than it is. That feeling of freedom, and any related feeling, is truly a marvelous, precious gift.
I also like the idea of becoming the person I most want to be on my birthday. A Second Chance. Or at least the attempt for one. Have I felt some minor success in being that person I wanted to be? I’d say yes, I had begun to. Then, I would hit a wall. Or find a person that felt and acted like a wall. And I would lose my focus or balance, or concentration and have to start over again.
Every time I had to put my heart back together from a heartache or heart trouble, to make sense of myself and my body, I would try to find something that was “normal” or “stable” enough to lean it against. I thought that was the right way to come back to myself. Compromise with a person, or a job. A situation, or a hobby.
To normalcy. But these compromises, never helped push me forward along the path, of what I envision, which includes my wholeness.
The normalcy always felt like a betrayal to the slightly strange person I have known I was meant to be. Maybe, this time, as I embrace myself fully. In the light, and in the shadows. And all in-between. The becoming will just happen. I will, get weirder and wilder.