We sing songs, write stories, and openly grieve the separation of two romantic partners. But what we don’t talk about is the loss, or the conscious decision to end certain friendships, and just how much that cracks the heart right open.
I haven’t cried this much since I was a teenager, I told her. Now I can hardly prevent the tears; for every little thing they demand to be known. After years of repression, I find myself incredibly sensitive, and able to feel so much more deeply than I thought possible, than I remembered I could even access.
In a recent conversation, my godmother MJ told me, “We are so inclined to the expectations of others – and that takes away our lives…and [ultimately] they don’t even care.” She told me how being both intelligent and living in another country leads to one or another form of alienation: both in the new place of residence, as well as a more than physical distancing from everyone we’ve left behind. I had forgotten the timing of when she and Burton lived (for 5 years) in Japan. It was 3 years post WWII when they went “to clean up the mess” the U.S. had left in its wake. “It changed him,” she said. He became less and less able to abide by social rules, while at the same time deeply rooted in integrity so as not compromise his own truth, nor the universal truths he could see so much more clearly after experiencing so much more of the world. “It’s times like these that we really need him here, to be part of this conversation.” And there went my fucking tears again.
Poet Kahlil Gibran said, “The deeper that sorrow carves into our being, the more joy we can contain.”
I recently saw a chiropractor, after 8 years between appointments. He named and explained my condition: lumbar hyperlordosis, then exclaimed, wow, you have been in a lot of accidents!
And isn’t it funny how living to the fullest puts us that much closer to death?
In this process of shedding my skin. For some time now I’ve existed in this limbo state, peeling off parts, bit by bit. Scratching the itch until it bleeds, new cells not yet ready to be birthed, to experience life on this plane. I am reminded of my corn snake Estanatlehi sneaking away into her wooden tunnel during such periods when she was unable to deal with the energy and influence, the needs and projections of others. She retreated to take the time she needed, before emerging again, whole, fresh, the same yet different, larger in both aura and personality.
Crescent Phrasing 