I Have To Be What Never Was

Sometimes an experience, a person, or a place enters your life that allows you to breathe again.   You’ve been asking questions, seeking answers, even relying on others to offer them to you without realizing it’s not your place to ask.

I’ve dealt with things in the past few years that have left me unsure.  They’ve left me so unsure that I’m not even sure what I’m unsure of.  And that isn’t meant as a joke.   As you may know, this year was supposed to be a year of answers, and in many ways it was, and continues to be.  One answer that came to me quickly and clearly was that I need to write.   What’s amazing about words is that, while many ingest them as a creation, they are just as important, maybe even more therapeutic, when they are used as a means to purge.

This year, I’ve used my words to express my confusion at losing a friend to suicide, I’ve used them to try to explain how it feels to lose a child to miscarriage.  I’ve used my words to – hopefully – make people laugh.  I’ve used them to express my love, I’ve used them to describe the pride I have in my daughter.  I’ve worked on my book, so I’ve used my words to create.  But none of these words answered questions that I can’t begin to answer or even identify.

The biggest questions, the important ones, shouldn’t be asked.  You shouldn’t seek someone to tell you what you’re looking for.  If someone claims to have the answers you’re looking for, they are likely seeking attention, or money.  I don’t even think it’s fair to look for the answers, to rely on anything outside to guide or influence, though I will admit I have tried.  But, I do think it is important to allow answers, feelings, energies to stumble upon you.

And that’s where my morning took me today.  Lately, I have been open to experiencing anything that I perceive as being positive, no matter how ‘out of my comfort zone’ it may be.  I visited someone’s house today.  Someone I had never met.  The mom in me texted my husband with the name and address of my new friend, in case I didn’t return home and he started getting packages containing my severed toes  (is that the New Yorker in me?).  But there was something about the ease with which I decided to meet this woman, in her home, while knowing very little about her, that made me feel safe.

I don’t want to describe this place.  I don’t want to describe this woman.  I just want to share that this place and this person exist.  I don’t know what answers I will get from visiting her, I don’t know if anyone else will walk into that home and feel how I did.  I don’t want to show you what her yard contained.  I don’t want to tell of the paint colors or the shape of the rooms.  I feel like doing that would be to take everyone else away from their place, from the energy that they need to feel around them.  It would be selfish of me to force my own feelings on someone else.  I can say, however, that I didn’t want to leave.  I will tell you that I plan on returning, and soaking in every ounce of positive energy, clarity, creativity and warmth that is offered on that plot of earth.

I feel like the words that came from her mouth made me smile over and over.  The original purpose of my visit was lost, and eventually found again, but seemed to come back as just a small component of the big picture.   A tiny bubble in a huge, overflowing bubble bath.

I’m not sure what questions will be answered.  I’m not sure anything will.  Maybe I will find that whatever was so uncertain lately will simply fizzle away.  Perhaps questions will be replaced with a flow that allows insignificant problems to roll by.  It’s possible that spending time there will encourage me to finish my book.  Or maybe it will cover me with a light draping that helps me float through the stuffy darkness and breathe.  Whatever happens from here, I know that I will be what never was.