Heartbroke……but happy.
It’s been a few weeks since I last wrote and lots has happened since then. Surgery, physical healing, a move into my new flat and a wonderful weekend away on the south coast. I am blessed. It was as if my body was healing itself prior to me moving, making sure that my physical self was where it needed to be, ready for the spiritual, mental and emotional journey I’m about to embark on. Some ailments were dealt with that I had been putting off. My surgery date came through perfectly timed for me to be at my mum’s, looked after with lots of love and care whilst I recovered. Looking back, it’s as if the Universe made everything fall into place ready for me to head out on my own.
And here I am. Sunburnt, fully healed and ready to go. Well, almost. Adapting to a completely new scenario is in itself healing. It involves showing up for yourself and making things work, it’s stepping out of your comfort zone (in which I have been since my return to the UK some 17 months ago) and understanding that it’s all on me now. I will start from 0, I will give shape to this new beginning. I will try to be proactive but also be kind to myself and take it as fast or as slow as my body and mind allow. I am not a robot and this is not a race. I have to remind myself of that many times during any given day. It’s important to note, that ‘productivity’ isn’t my aim here. It’s listening to my body, my heart, my mind and taking it from there. It's about trying to keep my energy up through eating and resting well, and keeping fit when I can. It’s exciting, and my impatient side is already wanting to be at the finish line. Calm down. Calm down. Each day is a challenge. Just get through each day my boy. Just get through each day.
Today I was reflecting on how I headed out to Colombia without nearly a penny, with big ideas, a bottomless pit of energy and not much clue of where I would end up. 11 years and 100 days later I would return, my search for the various things that were missing was over, only for a new search to begin. The search for myself. Here now, with a much more simple outlook, I am once again ready to begin my search, this time inward, not outward. My insatiable appetite for love and meaning drove me to make some big mistakes when I left the UK, but also along the way those ‘mistakes’ led to my biggest successes. I am now not looking for something ‘out there’ to fill the void. I now understand that love and meaning and purpose will come to me, not through doing, but by simply tuning into my body.
So, 14 years after I set out on a trip around South America that would change my life, I embark on another trip. The end result is a mystery, but I feel happy in the knowledge that if I was able to have the life I did when I was a literal piece of Swiss cheese, with holes in me here and there, then what could be on the horizon should I be finally able to heal those wounds?
Anyways. That was a reflection today, and, for that, I feel happy.
A weekend in beautiful Swanage I knew was on the horizon, but it wasn’t in my thoughts until I was in the van on the way down there, bike on roof, ready to have a craic. What a wonderful, wonderful weekend. I feel blessed to have seen such beautiful coast and countryside, by bike and by foot. I feel replenished after our breakfast and afternoon swims in the sea. Paradise. Cleansing. Blessed to have friends like I do, again, it was exactly what my body and soul needed before embarking on this next phase. It brought back joy and happiness into my heart. It’s made me remember what it’s like to be alive again. It’s been a while.
Underneath it all, broken but mending piece by small piece with each day that passes, is my heart. Numb. That’s what I feel. A numbness, like a locomotive whose essence is about moving with such energy and force the whole world ignites as it rushes along its tracks. Stopped now. Still. Staring blankly, dreaming and thinking of what it was like to embody energy and light and love.
The grief comes in waves, like the aftermath of a tsunami, the aftershocks ripple through, each time with less force, each time bringing in less water and destruction. Nothing though, nothing takes away from what is gone. The jug that held the tsunami, well, it’s just not that full anymore.
I’ve heard over the past few weeks that ‘time is a healer’. From my experience time is an adapter. Times allows us to build mechanisms through which we can deal with the hand that life has dealt us. Healing? No, not for me. Time, in my mind’s eye – to take inspiration from the Jurassic Coast which I visited this weekend just gone – is the layer upon layer of sediment, that builds up over an old sea monster, gradually concealing the magnificence or the pain in which it met its final moments. Layer upon layer, as time moves on, the body becomes a skeleton. The skeleton becomes an outline. The outline disappears, only to be found years and years later, perfectly intact, though only exposed because of someone’s purposeful digging.
Time will conceal, it will hide, but what was there never really disappears, unless you dig, and excavate and unearth and uncover. Whereas the body of what was there may have changed – it’s still there, making you wonder how you ever forgot.
Actively healing is the digging. The purposeful work that’s in front. Time, time has shown me that tears may stop, but grief may lie hidden deep, deep inside for years and years, silently influencing, burdening, even changing.
Time, however, is a key component. It allows for purposeful digging. For change. For transformation. For learning. For everything. The palaeontologist painstakingly unearths the infinitely scary T-Rex, day by day, month by month, bone by bone. Once done, he/she marvels at its magnificence, in awe of what it was and with chest-busting pride of the effort it took to re-live what used to be.
A couple of years ago I was given a rather large fossil. Very large, in fact (the femur of a large prehistoric mammal) and me and my boys spent weeks in preparing it.
Chipping away, day by day, working through the layers, removing the dirt, uncovering the true beauty of what once was.
Thank you for being here with me. I love you all.
J
