Run, Cry, Sleep

I'm deep, deep in the woods again. Circling back through uncertainty. Circling back through vulnerability. Two years of intense change, of emotional rollercoaster, doesn't just abruptly screetch to a halt. I remind myself that "faith is a bird that feels dawn breaking, but sings while it is still dark."

Sometimes it feels as through dawn is so far off. I feel as through the world is crumbling around me while the elusive bird Faith fritters its time away deeper in the darkness of the woods. Of course, the world isn't really crumbling around me, but to me it feels that way. I’m melodramatic, and a sensitive creature. I take things too seriously. Never the less, I can’t help but fall into the pit from time to time. Tuesday is the nadir. I can’t even get out of Rio’s school without weeping.

He’s so beautiful and sometimes I feel like I hardly know him. I’m walking down the hall after dropping him in class and my eyes begin to fill with dew.

Work, love, family. So much joy, sometimes even bliss, but not without a cost.

I drive to the trailhead of Mount Doug, intent on banishing my grief with motion, with momentum, but instead just sit there, staring into the dark forest.

Sometimes when I’m frustrated, when I’m angry with myself, I want to feel physical hurt to mask the emotional pain. I want my legs to ache, my lungs to burn. I want to punish myself. Penance. With a dash of redemption at the end, please.

“We’re not out of the woods yet….” I remember those words, written just a month ago.

I call James, and can’t get through a sentence. He tells me that I am pure love. I put the phone down, believing him, but wondering what good its doing me?

Run.

Finally, after half an hour, I slip into my running gear and jog up the trial, feeling light on my feet despite the fear in my heart. The woods are wet – Monday was the wettest December day on record on much of Vancouver Island – and the trails are so saturated with water that they seep under each footfall. I run easily through the heady smelling woods, bright with sunlight and gleaming moisture this morning.

I’m above the beach when my phone rings – I don’t normally run with it, but this morning its a life line - so I stop and answer it. Another friend calling in response to my pleas for help. So much love. And yet, I’ve never experienced such pain. I sit on a rock and weep while talking.

Further into the woods. I run through tears, up the back slope, pushing hard through the hills, feeling the comforting rush of endorphins pulsing through my veins. I splash through ankle deep streams where there once were trails, pulling the moist air into my lungs.

When I’m done I feel the comforting buzz of energy through my body, but I also feel empty. No sleep, no food, and half a dozen kilometers of hard trail. I drive home, stand in the shower and let the hot water pour over my body, and then my sister and I drive downtown for lunch.

We sit in a diner and talk about our family. We talk about our parents divorce when we were teenagers, and she reminds me of a time when were both very young and my mother threatened to leave. I remember our parents yelling about divorce throughout much of my young life, but this specific instance exists nowhere in my memory. Chantel reminds me that she and I sat on her bed with my father while my mom made preparations to leave. How could I forget that?

Ten years later my father left.

So much leaving. So much walking away.

This pain isn’t just about the hard road that I am walking, but the miles that have accumulated over the last thirty six years.

I tell Chantel about an extraordinary experience with acupuncture a few months ago when my Chinese Doctor put her hand on my chest and said, “you are safe here.”

Cry.

I can’t even get those words out. I’m sitting in a diner and I can’t even look at my little sister. Finally I get the words out and have to leave.

Is it possible that a child’s yearning for emotional safety can become the man’s?

We walk a while, and then I head to the Victoria Natural Healing Clinic to see another Chantelle, my acupuncturist. I’m here ostensibly for treatment of my back, which I wrenched a few days before, an old grievance that dates back almost twenty years. But that’s not really why I’m here. She asks how I am and it starts all over again.

She listens to me intently, really hearing me, and then invites me to lay down on my back on the table and begins her treatment.

“I’m doing a different treatment today,” she says. “I’m doing a treatment to make you stronger. So you can do what you have to do.” In the past we’ve worked to help me let go; today, its about holding together.

The first four needles go in with their buzzing warmth, and I can feel the tears again. I’m so fucking tired of tears that I fight them. She invites them. “Don’t hold any of your emotions back,” she says, her hand on my arm.

I let go.

She puts in another twenty or thirty needles – in my forehead, my neck, my arms, hands, up my sternum and in my belly, down my legs, in my ankles, my feet and my toes. I can feel the energy pulsing. Tears flowing.

Chantelle sweeps the tears aside, dabbing at them as they pool in my ears. I am suddenly calm. Music. She slips from the room. Heat. I can feel the heat lamp on my chest, my belly.

Sleep.

I am fading to silence.

I have to let go, without giving up.

There is nothing in our lives to prepare us for such a bewildering paradox. You either hold on, or you let go. Most of my life I’ve held on, held on, with a death grip, and then finally, in a spasm of defeat and relief, just let go. Gave up.

Disappear. The music evaporates. The room fades. I dissolve into nothing at all.

I am gone for some time.

“You have to be strong,” I hear Chantelle at my side. I come back from stillness.

I can feel the meridians in my body coursing with chi, with life, with love.

Strong for what?

To sit through uncertainty? Again? For how much longer? To open to vulnerability?

Its twenty four hours before the answer comes.

To be selfless.

To not leave. Work, love, family. To hold things together. To keep my promises.

I am reminded of Barry Lopez’s book Desert Notes: “I see that you are already tired. But you must stay. This is the pain of it all. You can’t keep leaving.”

I will not leave. And I won’t be pushed away. We’re going to figure things out.

What I must do is let go of my own fear, my insecurity, and be strong and courageous and give what is needed – unconditional love – in order to break the cycle of uncertainty and vulnerability.

Faith is a bird. Dawn is just around the bend in the trail.