something of my own

It’s May and this is the month we were meant to be moving. I’m picturing myself in late August 2023, staggering under the weight of moving boxes down the 22 steps that connect the house to the driveway, my low back giving out in this odd way where it felt like my core just simply didn’t exist. That version of me who was imagining this version of me, nine months later and packing up the same boxes, reversing the process to trudge up the steps and move everything away. And in-between that span of time life has unfolded, bookended by these events of packing away and moving.

We’ve extended our time here at the river by another month which feels both like grace and frustration, because I just want to get on with it now. It being when I find my dream property and create my sanctuary, that old story. A story that is still being written in my heart but not yet in the 3D world. But this wasn’t actually meant to be about all that, this was meant to be about perception.

The forest is closing in around us, I forgot just how lush and thick the woods were when we first moved here in late summer. We’ve gotten used to seeing our neighbours houses towering high up above us on the steep hilltop. Now the oaks and maples are circling in, their unfurled leaves creating a green hug with us in the centre. The lilacs are in full bloom, the gardens have been a delightful surprise, not knowing that we would be treated with daffodils, irises, tulips. We have seven thick and tall peony bushes that are just going to burst into the most fragrant lavish blossoms.

The river is filling in too, drained for the winter and now being replenished. The geese have been here all along and now loons have joined, their mournful call always beckons me to stop and listen, breath held. The birds here are as plentiful as the gardens, I couldn’t begin to name them all but feel like I’m in a bird-call soundtrack at all times and love it.

I sit outside with the dogs in the early morning, they’re tethered as they must be and they have a good distance they can roam but they want most to be free. They escape frequently, springing each other off their collars or unlatching the door of the sunporch where they sleep in the midday heat (seriously they can do these things) and it’s aggravating but I can’t blame them. I too wish for them to run around like the wild animals they are, if only they wouldn’t run up to the road and bark at every passerby, circling people while mowing their lawns, refusing to come back when called.

I too want to bust out of here and feel free, I too sense this impending feeling of constriction, but in both cases, the dogs and mine, the pressure comes from the same person. Me.

I’m tethering them up or holding their leashes, and I sense I’m restricting myself in the same way.

I recognize that I am the only person standing in my way at any given time. I am the only person dictating how things should be and not just allowing them to be as they are. I am the only person checking realtor.ca a dozen times a day even though I couldn’t buy anything I found, a twisted kind of torture. Where it both plucks at my heartstrings and ripples waves of sadness and failure through me. I am the one deciding that what is isn’t enough and that there must be something more laying just outside my peripheral.

I feel divided about this, as I do most things; on one hand it feels like keeping hopes and dreams alive, always striving for that next thing that will make life feel how I always imagined it would. And on the other it feels like keeping myself in a vice of my own making because I can’t make what I want to happen, happen. If living life is on the other side of this time, then I’ve chosen for this time to be…surviving? Waiting?

I look at all the abundance nature effortlessly provides for me and curse my incessant need for more. All I want is what I’ve wanted since I let it go years ago, something of my own.

My own home, my own work, my own rhythm. My own.

I sense my drama as I sigh, deciding that this is my cross to bear. It’s my burden to carry. Burden, we’re all carrying one. And I also sense that we’re all feeling the magnitude of these burdens more these days than ever and I suspect that’s because collectively we all know the same thing.

We’re operating in a life that doesn’t support the vibrancy of life itself. We simply can’t keep doing life as we have been but what does that mean?

Yes I would love to talk about the 3D matrix and the codes of new earth that have been planted within us. I might lose some people here but it also feels like the level in which I need to speak to things on.

Because I do believe that we all share the inner wisdom that tells us that these old paradigms, this polarized, divided, us vs them, earth-pillaging, life-destroying, head down, deferring to a ‘higher authority’, way we’ve all lived for centuries ain’t cuttin’ it anymore.

And we likely agree on that and then disagree on solutions.

For me, to take the macro of what the collective and the world as a whole is feeling, and bring it to the micro level of my small and simple life, I look at where I’m playing out those destructive themes on myself.

I’ve banged my head against the wall, trying to unravel my own disillusionment, my own behaviours, patterns and beliefs to try to fix myself and stop participating in my own misery. I’ve journaled and cried and implored the Gods to help me heal these wounds, to understand myself better, to get to the other side of whatever this place is that I find myself in now.

But lately, I’ve been thinking a lot more about my own perception and how you can waste a whole lifetime in the trenches of introspective admonishment, but you can’t berate yourself into loving yourself. You can’t hate yourself and your choices into loving what is.

This calls for radical acceptance and surrender.

Also not new concepts to me, but here I am finding a different depth to them. The sweetness that accepting myself, my flaws, my life choices and mistakes, brings me. The grace that is found when I lay down my fight and surrender to life, in the here and now.

That’s presence.

I’ll use this moment to remind you that this moment is the only one you exist in. Oh man, let’s not get into quantum leaping and timeline hopping right now because right now, right now…I just want to be here.

Here in my healthy and whole body. Here thinking of a yummy after school treat for my kids. Here in the middle of the night when someone is needing me for their itchy bug bites or bloody noses. Here where my girlfriends and I gather and laugh until we almost pee our pants. Here where I stretch a little further in yoga and surprise myself at my strength. Here in the embrace of my husband who I still want to see at the end of the day after twenty six years. Here in the intense heat of a spring that suddenly burst upon us. Here in the sunshine where I listen to the waves, the birds, the breeze ruffle the tree leaves, I watch Olive’s side rise and fall as she pants in the sun. Here where I get to wonder what other homes I’ll live in, what other businesses I’ll create, what other adventures I’ll have.

Here.

I do want a home, I do want to know where our next paycheque will come from, I do want to pay our kids tuition up front and buy new wardrobes and sign everyone up for soccer and singing lessons and summer camps. I do want to express myself creatively and feel like I am walking the pathway to living the life of my dreams.

But can the peace of the very now moment overshadow the dark void of the uncertainty and wanting? That’s what I’m curious about now.

Just a year ago one of my very best friends slipped away after a very quick and intense illness. I think of her everyday. I think of her steadfastness, her solidness, her groundedness. Her long and sure hugs. That she always had everything I needed to borrow. She wasn’t these things in a ‘new age’ way, she just was herself, fully. And her life was small in that she kept her circle of friends and family tight, she was a homemaker and volunteer at her kids school, active in sports and clubs. But she had this massive impact that I wonder if she had any sense of. She is my beacon constantly, to remind myself that what is right here before me is the best of life, always. And that nothing is guaranteed and I sure as shit don't want to come to the end of it all and go, “ohhh so that was what this was all about”.

I don’t want to miss it. I don’t want to resist it. I don’t want to fight it. I want to pull myself back up from the rubble, look around my current accommodations, brush off my hands, fix a smile on my face and start packing up the boxes with zeal. I don’t know where I go next, I don’t know how the story unfolds but the story is unfolding, these are the pages, the chapters, this is the novel. This is where I belong. All happening now. And it doesn’t get better than this.