Tiny Pockets of Perfect

Little precious moment of complete and utter luminosity in my day.

Small things but grand, full of beauty and quiet happiness.

An hour before work with my favorite person in the world having coffee.

Getting a car downtown to meet the family I nanny for and the baby falling asleep in the carrier, I sat and watched the children playing and was warm and snuggled up in a corner and basically got to be still for an hour and a half.

Oh.

I suppose that is not everyone’s cup of tea, but for someone like me, who often moves fast, slowing down is a grand luxury.

Going slow on my scooter and missing the rain that happened.

Although the streets were slick when I went into my internship, they had dried by the time I left and I got home safe and dry.

The best leftovers from a dinner I made last night for my best friend.

Delicious and it reminded me of our time together.

Time that is precious and valuable to me.

Human connection.

Love.

Having a client consult cancel on me and having a full hour to do homework reading and the best, the text is really interesting.

I was a little concerned when I saw that I had to read a 184 pages of a book for just that one class for my next weekend of classes, but the book is quite compelling and I knocked out 58 pages in the hour that I had with no client.

A really good session with another client to end my evening.

And now.

Some Yo Yo Ma playing Beethoven.

I’ll take it.

And tomorrow is Friday.

Oh sure.

It’s still a full day, but it’s payday, which is nice, not that I’m spending any money on anything right now, I am trying to squirrel away for a new car next month, but it’s still nice and I worked over time for the family and when that happens I get it in cash instead of taxed, which is a nice bonus.

So I’ll use that for my “fun” money for the next week.

I’ll work 9 hours tomorrow at work and then take two clients afterward.

But then the weekend.

Yes, I will have group supervision on Saturday and I will also have to sit through an additional hour of supervision since my solo supervisor was away on vacation, but it will feel like a day off, this Saturday.

A day to get in a yoga class, to go do the deal, to not be too pressured to perform.

Group supervision really is just marking time and I don’t have to get highly present for it.

Solo supervision is another thing entirely and that will feel like work, but it will be just an hour.

Then.

Maybe a manicure, maybe a coffee in a cafe, maybe some stickers.

Heh.

I do like my stickers and I discovered a small stash of stickers from Paris this morning when I was doing my Morning Pages.

I had thought I was all out.

It was nice to find a few more.

I have tons of notebooks still from Paris, but yes, the sticker supply is fast dwindling.

I will need to re-up soon.

I am such a girl sometimes, but I’m alright with indulging my inner child, she didn’t get much indulgence growing up and sometimes, hahahahaahaha, I’m writing this sentence and out of the corner of my eye I note my fashionable bunny slippers, I need to indulge her.

Hence stickers and um, ha, bunny slippers.

I did not have slippers growing up.

Hell.

I didn’t have slippers as an adult for a very long time, but man, when I finally indulged, happiness!

Especially now that the seasons are fully turning and it’s getting chilly out there.

I was a touch overdressed on my scooter today, thinking it was going to be colder than it was, but the days grow short, the nights grow long, and the temperatures have dropped.

And now the rain.

A touch of melancholy.

A soft stirring of sadness.

And I remember that I am allowed to hold more than one or two or three emotions.

I can hold many.

Even the painful ones that hide in the pretty ones.

Tender and sad and soft and sweet and let myself have them so they don’t stay stuck.

I can get stuck sometimes and the words don’t come out right and I feel tongue-tied.

All of that too.

Even in the starred days, in the ways that light affects me and the pulling at my heart as it wanders far above in the night sky.

Sings to me this lullaby.

Loss and sorrow and surrender and unmitigated love and struggle and joy all of it.

Perfect in my imperfections, still making mistakes and growing.

Pain, the touch stone of spiritual growth, I remind myself.

The way that I can see all the loveliness and feel all the joy because I have experienced the other side and have something to compare it to.

I made myself sad without meaning too.

And left adrift in my melancholy I will listen again to the sound of the cello, winsome and low against the piano and the story it tells me slides inside my heart and falls like the soft rain outside my door onto my face.

I am not always good at this.

Being human.

But I am always, oh so very.

Very.

Human.

Which is perhaps.

The most perfect of all.

Perhaps.

Growing Up

Moving on.

Letting go of the things that don’t serve me.

Letting go of ways and means of being that I have been.

Shedding.

Fuck.

It feels really good.

I had to have a little hand holding tonight as I took some suggestions regarding my personal life and relationships.

“No body treats you like that,” he said to me, “and I will not stand here and let you be treated like that, now unfriend.”

BAM.

I sent a message and let go of the results.

I changed.

Like that.

It has taken years to get to this point and to let go, of this old idea that I somehow need to give you more than me, that I am not enough, that I have to buy your love, respect, or that I need to give you something for you to be my friend, lover, partner.

Nope.

I am enough and I deserve to be treated well.

I stood up for myself.

Not by myself, though, I had to have some hand holding.

I had gotten the suggestion this evening and it matched up with how I was feeling, even though I was afraid to take the action required, I knew, deep within me, that it was the thing to do.

And.

I realized that I can’t do it alone.

I needed his help.

“Wait, can I just do this now, with you here, I don’t know if I can do it when I get home,” I said.  I mean.  I knew I would, but I knew it would be easier for me to do it with my person there sitting across the table, warm, supporting, holding me through the process of letting go and moving on.

There is no there there.

“I expect to get blow back from this,” I said as I sent out the message and then took the next suggestion and cleaned some house.

“Doesn’t matter, you did your part, you cleaned your side of the street, how the other person responds doesn’t matter,” he said.

He took my hands and held them as I shed a few tears, took a deep breath and did the next action in front of me.

The relief of standing up for myself, asking for what I want, and really I do not have any expectations that the want will be met at all, none, nada, in fact, and that somehow made it easier and harder at the same time.

But let go I did.

And I realized I just made a huge amount of room for what will work in my life, for friendships, relationships, jobs, school, for letting in the love and going where the love is and being happier in my person and with myself.

Such stunning relief.

Let go.

Move on.

With love.

With unconditional regard for others and what they need to do to grow and be.

It’s not my business.

 

My business.

Is.

Me.

 

What works best, how will I grow, how may I serve, what does that look like.

I left my person with such deep gratitude and love.

I have grown so much since working with him and I have such respect for the work.

It awes me.

And I change.

It is good.

It is so good.

I am so excited for what this year is going to bring.

The travel I get to do.

I’m planning a trip to Puerto Rico.

Another to Anchorage.

One to Portland.

And.

Of course.

Burning Man.

Yes.

I know.

I am working full-time and going to school full time and I will be interning.

How the hell am I going to pull it off?

I don’t know.

But get pulled off it will.

I am thinking that I may camp somewhere new this year, my dear friend from my first camp that split off and started his own invited me to camp with them this year.

Go where the love is.

Go where I am wanted and appreciated.

And.

Don’t go to work.

I have worked every year.

I have paid my dues.

Maybe.

Just maybe go this year and don’t work, oh, I know, I’ll help out, wherever I am camped, that is what I do, but on my terms and not tied to anyone, not tied to a scheduled, not leashed to a job.

Just a camp.

Just a spot to put up my tent and be.

Just me.

Just the playa.

Just Burning Man.

That’s such a lovely thought.

A goal.

My year is already so littered with love and goodness, travel, art, school, friends, getting to be in San Francisco, getting my practicum placement, getting to be an intern, getting to start helping clients and accruing the hours toward my license.

And it’s just the beginning of February.

And.

It is just the beginning.

This thirteenth year of being in recovery is going to blow the top off.

I can feel it.

I am expanding.

My heart growing.

I am shedding old skin and stepping out new.

It feels extraordinary and freeing and magical.

Alive.

And let me not forget.

I am also going to Paris in May.

I mean.

My life is extraordinary.

I am so grateful I keep showing up, suiting up, doing the damn deal, living by spiritual principles.

I’m not a saint.

I’m going to fuck up.

But that too is a gift and an opportunity to grow more.

All this growth.

I am graced to get to do it.

It can be a struggle.

Or it can be a surrender.

Today.

It was melting surrender, a washing away, a saying goodbye, a letting go, with the rain sluicing down the gutters and the fog prowling on soft cat feet, as I listened to Bon Entendeur streaming from my headphones as the N-Judah barreled its way down towards Ocean Beach, I looked at my reflection across the way in the mirrored window of the train.

I smiled.

So much joy.

Such simple shifts.

And boom.

A giant leap forward in my life and in my recovery.

I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Seriously.

It’s going to be fucking amazing.

AMAZING.

Sweet, Soft, Surrender

I mean.

I could have struggled with it all today.

But.

I just gave up.

Got up.

Went the fuck to yoga.

My brain was jacked up this morning, sometimes I wonder if it ever really sleeps.

The constant plotting.

However.

I am grateful I got up.

I was thinking that I might not make it to yoga this morning or today at all, considering how late I was up last night and then, I might feel bad and bash myself for staying up late.

It didn’t happen that way at all.

Instead I just rolled over, got up, drank some iced coffee, made my bed, said the stuff, asked for the willingness to show up to the mat, the day, my noon get together and read with my lady person, and then to have a good day, to show up for my recovery, where ever and however that looked like.

And then I went to yoga.

Happy to be there, getting into it, letting my body be there, watching my thoughts drift in and out, the specious way some want to stick and have me obsess over them, and the ease with which I was able to let things go once I was in my body and in my breath.

It was a good class and some times, most times, I show up with expectations.

Today marked four months of showing up for the mat.

Not always real happy about it when I’m on my way there, but always happy when I leave.

Sometimes there is a hope for some sort of breakthrough with my body and how it moves.

But often times.

It is that I am seeking something else.

A drift in the senses and loosened in my body, the spirit enters and I am gone into this other place.

I can become a spiritual seeker of experience.

Yesterday it happened and it was during the final sitting meditation and it was mostly just being so awesomely in my body and in my person, I felt on fire, the heat in my body rising up through the palms of my hands and in my chest and heart, lifting out of me and burning bright, hot, incandescent.

Flash bombed into the present, rocketed forward, set afire and cast upon the sea to burn like a candle in a cup at low tide on a full mooned night.

Today I had a vision.

I swear I only had iced coffee before class.

Really.

Anyway.

I felt love and sensed that there was a shift, something moving in me, something changing, that I was moving forward towards this great ball of sun, this ineffable, unavoidable collision with someone.

I had the awareness of meteors streaking past.

Men and dating and relationships.

One of the comets had little black framed glasses and I remember turning in the vision for a moment, watching him streak away from me.

I realized it was here.

This thing, this love, this moment, hurtling through space and there was nothing to do, nowhere go, so big, so vast, so all encompassing this experience that I could not avoid it.

“Look up, look out, look right in front of you, it is there,” I heard this calm, centered, even and candid voice, I looked in and out and there again, the ball of sun, this gigantic star of light and fire and heat and I had nothing to do but take care of myself.

It will happen when you least expect it, when you’re not looking for it.

I realized.

I don’t have to look.

I don’t have to struggle.

It is there and all I have to do is keep doing the deal for myself and love myself and like the warm sun on my face I would arrive exactly where I was supposed to be with whomever I was supposed to be there with.

No need to worry.

No cause for anxiety.

A sweet, soft surrender, the smooth satiny nacre of the shell I found on the walk I had this afternoon at the beach, the touch of it so seductive I kept my thumb there where the rough shell had been chipped away to reveal the pearlescent core underneath, an utterance of joy on my mouth, the cold wash of the water over my feet, the wind in my curls and the sun on my face.

Nothing wrong.

All is good.

Contentment layered over me wrapped me up in downy soft feathers of light and I drifted down the beach like the curls of foam pushed by the waves.

I was bathed in light today.

Warmth.

Summer.

Sunshine.

I am brown and honey gold and slightly freckled.

And quite pink with my curly bouquet of new hair color, which would amuse me with it’s bright scintillating magenta out of the corner of my eye, stopping to wave a a little girl toddling down toward the sea with her shovel, her face a goggle with curiosity at the sight of my corona of pink curls splashing about my happy face.

I smiled.

She smiled back at me.

There was the soft goodbye, the meander down the beach, the couple holding hands and bent over gathering shells and rocks from the incoming tide.

There was the sweet missive, the opening of heart, the ending of silence, the negotiation of sunlight in my soul and letting go of a soft sorrow I had not even realized was lying on my heart.

My laughter in the back yard as I talked with my person and got some suggestions and then using them and they worked!

The remonstrances of my heart melted away and the day was new and bright.

I sat on the back porch and ate my lunch, bare feet up on the wrought iron patio chair, eyes closed, the great red fire rose of sun blossoming on the insides of my eyelids.

Just here.

Love.

Always here.

Love.

Just look up.

Look out.

Waiting for you.

Walking toward you.

Inescapable joy.

And.

Freedom.

Release from sorrow and the quiet, sure knowing that as I hurtle toward that unknown destiny, love carries me through everything I need to experience to get me to exactly where I am supposed to be.

I suppose some might call that Fate.

Or.

Superstition.

Some might argue that I have no free will.

I, rather will say.

It is just faith.

Love.

Grace.

Love.

It is just love.

Love.

Aways there.

Always that.

Always.

Love.