This autumn I saw color for the first time. At least that's how it felt. Walking through the forest, eyes towards the sky.. I couldn't stop staring. Hues of golden light and orange flame. Red, like the blood I would have spilled for one more day with them.
Scorpio season takes everyone I love, at least that's what I said to myself. October is a hell of a month these days, and I'm not sure how I feel about it anymore. As these thoughts swirled through my head with the humid breeze, I noticed then that all of my senses were in overdrive. The sound of water rushing below as the leaves crunched beneath my feet. The echo of my solo footsteps was deafening.
This was his favorite park. The home of our most memorable family hikes. The land where he helped me heal.
I sat on a rock and stared beyond the vista. How the fuck do we get through days like this? Thinking back to all the moments I was quite sure my heart couldn't take one more beat, I guess it's something we just do. Our hearts keep beating. Our lungs keep filling with air. Life goes on. It's been two years without my dad earth-side, and losing our dog just four days before this anniversary was something I wasn't sure I could handle. But here I was.
It's not that I don't have other support systems, or a home filled with comfort and love. It's just that I wasn't ready yet.
I guess that's the thing about being human, we're never really quite ready. Whether it's losing someone you love or jumping out of an airplane, we seem to like putting a certain level of resistance between us and the moments that are about to create accelerated change. Sometimes for the better. Others not so much. But either way, we don't have much of a choice once something has been put in motion.
So we jump... or get pushed. Regardless, we're going to fall until we fly.
Something about the fine print of my soul contract must state me getting pushed, because it happens a lot. I mean, sometimes I jump. But contrary to belief, it's not because I'm not scared. I just know it'll be worth it.
I guess that's where the ego meets an old soul. Having the awareness that this is so much bigger than us, yet being as stubborn as possible when it comes down to those moments of radical trust.
Even so, I can't help but notice the beauty in the transformation. The moments of painful stillness within the void. Like when the caterpillar has completely dissolved into goo inside the chrysalis, right before it begins to take it's butterfly form.
There is so much magic in the unknown.
I began to remind myself of this, still laying on that same rock.
I must have been there for at least two hours. Listening to the chipmunks scurry along the forest floor, the birds singing as sunshine filtered in through the trees. The rock felt cool on my back and there was a familiar sweetness to the air. It's funny how your world can feel like it's crumbling down, and the sun will still rise that next morning.
I used to resent the world's inability to stand still. I would cry, mourning a moment that hasn't even passed yet.
I think there's something beautiful about that too. Being so engulfed in the present, overflowing with gratitude for the energy around you, yet there's this harrowing reminder that soon it will all be gone. It's like having each foot in a different world.
I guess that's why I've been taking a lot of walks in graveyards lately. I like to be reminded that there's more to this life than what meets the eye. It has me thinking, what if this is exactly how it's supposed to be? What if our grief is the doorway to letting more joy flow in. What if pain is the reminder that we have millions of receptors throughout our body, quite literally, at our fingertips. Each existing to offer us their own unique gift.
Vision, so that we can watch the wrinkles form around our lover's eyes as they smile. Hearing, to soothe our minds as waves crash along the beach. Balance, here as a reminder that at one time, everything felt hard at first. Taste, for memories that take us back in time to making sugar cookies with mom. Smell, a cue of hope when honeysuckle first begins to sprout in spring. Touch, because we all deserve to know what it feels like to be held.
I think that might be the point. Living. Not just being alive and doing what we're told is best, but actually feeling into everything that it is. The pleasure, the hardship, all of it.
I often catch myself saying "I didn't sign up for this." There is no way I would have agreed to come down to this life, knowing that we would be poisoning our Earth, choosing war over love, and robbing each other of those quiet, fleeting moments found only in the in between. I was not made for this. I was made for love. And happiness. And summer all year long. I was made for heaven, where we're already all together and don't need to feel the suffering of the world around us anymore.
Yet here I am.
So, maybe I am made for this. Maybe these rose colored glasses I wear are meant to be shared. Maybe there is nothing wrong with me for desiring peace as I walk barefoot in the grass in the pouring rain. Maybe my love for all things beautiful is meant to intertwine with my curiosity towards discomfort. My growing intrigue with death and the shadows we all keep. My uncontainable excitement for a blue sky on a Saturday afternoon. Maybe I did sign up for this.
I have to believe that it all means something. Not because I'd feel lost without purpose, but because I've already witnessed glimmers of this to be true. Even if there was no life after this. Even if it really was "all for nothing." I'd like to think I'd do it all the same. My only regrets are the times I felt guilty for feeling all of these things. I shouldn't be so sensitive, is what some might say. Maybe they're right. Or maybe I am simply a mirror into the parts of them that they feel too ashamed to show.
So while I am here, laughing and crying, screaming at the moon, I think I'll spend each day as if it was my first. Walking through the woods, witnessing my senses in overdrive. Because the thing that I've come to appreciate most is not the sunny days after the rain. It's the chance to feel them both. That, is the medicine I need. Like seeing color for the first time.
At least that's how it felt.
