following my last actual entry (before the poem), i had four days where i didn’t feel like a raw nerve. i just felt normal. not euphoric, not crushable. not mood swingy, just normal. ordinary. the colors of the tree leaves were the colors of the tree leaves and they were nice, but they weren’t the kind of nice that sent me crying over the wonder of the world. and that was a relief. that was a very huge honest to god relief. because there are moments you know you’re not okay. and some of them are very pretty. shiny. magical. glorious. and not okay. like delirious. like feverish. like the kind of thing where everything you see has an aura or a halo and it’s really pretty and you really need to lie down before you collapse.

even when things were magical in that raw, exposed nerve place, i always knew it could switch at any moment and that it would be drastic. there was no median. just whizzing this way or whizzing the other way.

so, honestly, when i found myself feeling kind of normal, it was precious to me. for, even if the highs were not as high, the downs were not so low. they felt normal. i found myself responding to difficult things and painful things in a way that felt commensurate with the situation. yes, there was grief going on. yes, one of my most precious relationships seems to have ended without a single word exchanged. and yes, that is painful. and sometimes i felt moved to cry about that. but it felt like a healthy kind of crying. just the process that needs to happen to grieve, get over it, heal, and move on. i wasn’t crying at every police officer or newspaper headline or every momentary uncertainty. i felt normal.

wendy (the woman i’ve been building dreams with) was going through her own emotions at the time and it was good to feel, for just a moment, like i was holding myself together. and like i wasn’t crazy. she has big emotions, too. it’s helpful to see that. sometimes, i think i’m crazy just because she and i process our experience emotionally so differently. and sometimes, it’s helpful for me to note, even in times of great upheavel and uncertainty, my emotions aren’t so overwhelming. that helped a lot – having a momentary role reversal. (not that wendy responds like me to difficulty or i am just like her when my emotions are more chill, but just on the basic level of: i’m not an exposed nerve right now, and in this space, wendy is having some stronger emotions come out.) it really cut out some of the most insidious self-judgment that was feeding my not-being-okay-ness.

so, i started counting the days. this healthy-feeling-ness continued for four whole days. and then i went to the mosaic project. and i got to lose count of the good days – they just kept going - as i was immersed in the great gloriousness of the napa valley redwood forest and the powerful amazing people i was getting to know up there during staff training. there was a man there with whom i had a powerful rapport. some resonance, some familiarity, some energy. we didn’t know exactly the shape of the connection but it was a given that there would be a connection, that there was a connection, and the connection was powerful, though we had known each other only very briefly. this man intensely needed some healing and it became clear that that was where our connection would begin. maybe that was what our connection was entirely for. we did amazing work together. love and touch and energy work that opened my heart and grounded me and reminded me of who i can be.

i don’t consider myself a healer. but when presented with someone engaged in a conscious and grounded physical/emotional/energetic healing process, i found i have considerable interest in being present in an embodied way, and in opening up my body to feeling, listening, sensing, noticing, perceiving, and flowing with whatever is called for in that process.

there was so much power in that experience. i got to feel my power, the simplicity and depth of it. what better way to kick me out of my distress, than to find someone else in distress and feel how powerfully i respond to that situation, to have an opportunity to remember that i am more than the moments that terrify me. that my heart has more power in it than fear. that my intuition is still capable of reading clear and true. that my hands will know where to go to find the pockets of trapped emotion, clenched memories, trauma bunched into the very flesh; and that my body will use all of its senses including the intangible ones to feel what needs to be done. and it will read true. it can.

i received a letter during this time from a woman who represents the most significant former relationship of my life. she has not wanted to have contact with me, since our relationship has ended. this has been a source of grief and sadness for me in the last couple of years. she emailed me out of the blue to tell me that she had read my diary and she was explaining to me that yes, i am crazy. i imagine that she was relating this to me on the level of information that could be liberating to me. and she was sharing it with me, as she has found a path that she believes is heading in the direction of greater enlightenment, which had revealed to her how crazy she was in her prior way of perceiving/interacting with the world. i did not know what to make of this. this letter was very painful to read. probably not for the reasons she might imagine. i have not written her back yet. i honestly do not know what to say. but, i am happy to have come to the conclusion that according to my own definitions, according to my own interests in personal growth (different from enlightenment), i am not crazy.

i am not crazy. i am not broken. i’m not okay, sometimes. this is true. this is very very true. i’ve been having a hard time in these past few months. some weeks, harder than others. the weather report in arianaland may be tornado monday, blue sky tuesday, partly cloudy wednesday, sunny and humid thursday, foggy and misty friday, hailing with a chance of blizzards saturday, and all of the above on sunday, but i’m actually doing all right.

there is a great deal more i could share about this period of time (wendy’s birthday, marcus’s return, the reemergence of another hugely important love, the children at mosaic and everything they inspire in me, the work itself, the forest, several important friendships, and my cousin’s marriage and the reasons i did not attend it, despite my delight in her finding someone she wants to build family with). maybe i will share some of these stories, eventually. but it’s late now, and i want to climb into bed, put my headphones on and continue listening to the unabridged audiobook version of ‘red dwarf’ by grant naylor. it’s very good. and then to fall asleep.

i’m in a hotel room in atlanta, here to do some work before returning to the mosaic project on sunday. and i promised myself i would write. for myself and to let you know. to let you know that i had a respite for about 2 and a half weeks from the really hard stuff. i’m sorry that i didn’t write early to let everyone know that i’m okay. i hate it when people are worrying about me. and i hated that i didn’t have the time to write. and i honestly didn. it’s only because i am in atlanta and not at the mosaic project that i have the time even to reflect deeply on what’s gone on and try to integrate it, to grok it, to understand it in fullness.

but here i am. i come to you with my hands scratched, fists clenched or hands open, fingers tender, with my face scarred or healing, with wounds open or closed, with my eyes brimming with tears or bright with wonder. i come, with laughter and with wailing. with love and despair. with strength and hypersensitivity. with tenderness and rage. curled into a tiny ball or standing solid, grounded, rooted, tall. i come.