Meditating
January 20, 2021
People asked if I meditated and I was vexed, incredulous, wanting to ask how that would solve anything but then I would think and say- No, I don’t know how to quiet my mind, I wish my mind would just blink off.
Only recently I’ve been able to find space to be present to who I was and I remember that I had my own way of meditating. I would meditate when I walked Harold around Sausalito, appreciating him, appreciating the air, hills, oaks, appreciating my life, how beautiful it was.
I would meditate when I would look at Jamie, see and feel him there in our life together. I would meditate when I drove him to the airport and feel him in the seat beside me, squeeze his leg and hold his hand, and think about how I hated that he had to go but I needed to focus on getting myself through the next few days and I would be picking him up again, he would be home again.
I would meditate as I snuck up on him standing in the kitchen and I’d lift him up and carry him around the apartment as far as I could. Thinking - this one is all mine and how lucky I am. Remembering lifting him I can feel him smiling. I would meditate as I would smell him, taking him in.
I’ve been spending a lot of time alone. People think we need other people to patch us together, help us heal, it’s human nature to fix. But some things cannot be fixed. I tried joining the world as much as I could but often I only felt more and more like a ghost. There are triggers lurking in everything. The world for me is a minefield. Everything once familiar now foreign and threatening.
As people we do need other people, but we can only work on ourselves. Throw away what doesn’t serve us and protect what is most important. I cannot be fixed but I must find my way to carry this, to carry Jamie and Harold and us. I’ve been digging deep to transport myself to the life I loved, and find Jamie carrying me there.
The minefield can’t be cleared, I need to balance myself so I can better navigate it. We each need to make space to be present to our self, to those we love and what is truly important. For others, we hold space for what we cannot know or understand and appreciate their journey.
