A Run-On Life
The same to-do list from yesterday shuffles forward to today with a pang of anxiety and a pinch of embarrassment but whispering softy, “hey, don’t forget all the things you did check off yesterday,” while I stare down the clutch-sized supplement organizer that should be 4 pills lighter today but I only remembered to take the breakfast one so that gets added to the list of things I’ll try to do differently today as I float in the murky, saline space between remembering I am enough as I am and trying, trying, trying to do better today, better tomorrow, better next week, better before I see my naturopath again in February which feels so far away but will be here in the blink of a few tomorrows and when I’m not trying to remember I’m trying to learn how to put down the boulder of generational trauma my psychic says lives on my back and trying to heal from the sprained foot that crunched and twisted its way into my life on the first day of Mercury Retrograde in November and forced me to rest and to ask for help and to pay attention to all of the things my feet are gripping onto after spending the last three? five? thirty-three? years walking across a life of smooth rocks coated in algae, a natural ecosystem that holds no malice but could take me down with one wrong move and I haven’t unlearned my fear of failure enough to risk falling so I trace and feel and test each step before putting my full weight onto that foot while listening to a podcast that wants me to know that my sensitivity is a superpower and that my brain wasn’t designed for this modern world and while I don’t believe my body is keeping score, I do believe that she is holding onto everything I haven’t given her permission to put down yet and every time my RMT massages my stomach, reaching down to my psoas and rocking back and forth, I’m reminded of why they call it the soul muscle and as tears streak down the golden dunes of my cheeks I can’t help but think about how only 20% of our internal communication goes from the brain to the body and the other 80% goes from the body to the brain so I need to show my body it is safe to release and not just tell her, but the first step to showing is listening so that I can give her what she needs and not what Instagram told me she needs and my third Christmas as a 30-something-year-old widow is somehow only three weeks away and I’ve been fumbling my way through feelings of gratitude because I have a beautiful new person who surprised me with a floating birthday breakfast tray in Mexico after I told them months ago that floating breakfast in a private pool was on my bucket list but tangled and twisted around that joy is the knowing that I had to lose so much to find this love and sometimes I imagine what it would look like if the three of us had dinner together, watching the conversation flow easily between them as warm candlelight dances on their faces, two soft, tender hearts who chose the same suit of armour for their time on earth, and I wonder if the one who left this plane helped steer the one called light into my life because the more I watch and listen the less coincidences feel real and I can feel myself inching closer to the sweet, molten core of who I am but I am still afraid of being burned which feels ironic to write as a blizzard swirls outside my windows and I fantasize about being back under the Yucatan sun and question what it would take to become a snow bird now and not when I retire but the two four-legged guardians snoring softly beside me on the couch make traveling more complicated so I’ll be here this winter, slowly chipping away at the boulder on my back and the to-do list on my phone and reminding myself that of course this all feels like it never ends because when it does, it’s really the end.