ABOVE GROUND.
My eyes are so heavy. I’ve had strange muscle pain, and I’m spotting. Am I supposed to get my period? No. I’m either dying, or my body is recalibrating to a new normal.
I am coming down from 2020. A year for which I had big goals and big plans and a big love wrapped around me. I dove headfirst into the year with a peculiar longing in my back pocket – keeping me in line and pushing me forward. I fell deep in love, turned 30, and said farewell to my friends and family and moved from Wisconsin to New Mexico.
I felt the heavy symptoms of isolation and I fought my own needs. My grandmother died a month after I moved away, my cat went missing for a week, I had covid and got lucky. My relationship imploded the day before Thanksgiving with tears and love and pain, and we still managed to cook a really great meal together.
I denied my anticipation for so long.
I denied myself of more than just the feeling of anticipation. But in turn, I tried. I tried so hard, in every way possible. And then I began to lose myself in trying.
So I stopped trying. I packed my things. I found an RV to rent in Austin, and I spent most of my savings to get to where I am. I’m above ground, connected to the earth by rubber – and it’s true, life continues on all around me.
My world has an orange glow to it now, caused both by the sun and the tinted windows on this custom built,1985 RV. As I bathe in these warm hues, I am breathing in time – in all of it’s long minutes and short hours.
Sometimes I can even make it stop entirely.
Leaving Albuquerque was one of the most excruciating combinations of sorrow and strength I have ever encountered.
The moon was hovering over the city as I headed East. Like the tide, I wanted to run back to it, wrap myself around the home I had built and the love I found comfort in. But mostly, I wanted to go back to a different time, when everything felt okay. When I could hug my friends and family. Or hop on a plane to say one last goodbye.
But above all I simply want to feel good again.
The moon hovered on the horizon for what felt like centuries. The gradients of the sky around me went from wintery pinks and purples in my rear view mirror – to golden black silhouettes of mountains in front of me, matching the bittersweet sensation of leaving.
The sun did eventually rise, and the moon dipped behind the earth and out of view.
I found solace in knowing the salt water that flows through me, flowed through my mother, and her mother, and all those who came before them. There’s a lot to wonder when it comes to our connection to water, and why it does what it does to us as humans. The duality of give and take, ebb and flow. I had this sensation of relief and pain pour over me all at once as I drove – taking me back and forth, rocking me into calm.
TWELVE hours AFTER I LEFT ALBUQUERQUE, I arrived IN AUSTIN.
And it is here I remain. I wake up hungry, but too tired to make breakfast right away. I let the cats outside and watch them explore their new surroundings. I listen to music that reminds me of everything that lead me here. I continue to cry and I continue to miss what was. I work from my cozy compartment of a home, and I embrace the sensation of the cold floor on my hot skin, warmed from the powerful space heater running all night. It is in these moments that I accept that I am two parts that make up one being, forever feeling the duality of existence.
I have a new concept of time – which has been an allowance for me to heal and to become whole again. I have learned to withstand long minutes and short hours, and it’s with a sense of fullness that I watch this year wane and close. The new year that approaches has become not just a symbol of hope for myself, but for all of us, for so many reasons.
It is in these moments that I can peel back the veil, and see what I have been longing for the entire time.
