Through the window, I catch barely visible streaks of orange as they coat the sky. We grab our bikes, new to us, from the freshly painted garage. A cluster of pink clouds call us toward the horizon as we peddle down the driveway.
It’s almost November, but the air won’t let go of summer. It’s comforting — the warmth swallowing my body whole as we ride through the neighborhood. We turn onto a stretch of the main road that veers West, pointing straight at the Pacific.
Picking up speed as we descend to sea level, the ocean breeze hits my cheeks, my hair, my eyes. I’m suspended in sensation — the stale warmth of the day flecked with wintery nodes of the sea. Blood orange colors my vision as the sun dips toward the horizon.
For a few moments, I’m enveloped in the here and now. I’m in only this body. Only this space and this time. Only here and nowhere else. I drink it in, knowing that it won’t stretch beyond the confines of this experience. I hold it in both hands, willing this presence to stay for a few moments longer.
The past month has been characterized by paralysis; a desire to move forward accompanied by a stubborn stuckness. A keen sense of uncertainty in my personal life mounted on the grief of communities that travel across oceans.
I’m frozen by indecision. By the change that shakes the bedrock and kicks up dust. By the fear of saying the wrong thing, or saying nothing at all. By not knowing how to get away from this feeling that’s both strange and familiar.
I look to those in my life with eyes that plead: Can someone please direct me to the nearest exit? I seemed to have lost my way.
They look back at me and say, you are not yourself.
But I am myself. Confusion is myself, too. Grief is myself, too. Shakiness is myself, too. Certainly not my favorite version of myself, but myself nonetheless.
In writing this, I can notice all the ways that I’ve been fighting — my circumstances and my selves. I can acknowledge my tendency to push against my reality, attempting to stretch it into a place of ease. I can surrender to the fact that dragging ourselves through the mud, before we’re ready, is fruitless. Fighting our shakiness leaves us no more steady.
Sitting with others in therapy, it’s abundantly clear. We don’t want to spend time in the mud. The sticky uncertainty of it all is exasperating. The discomfort and our desire to just get out will show up every time. It would be simpler to throw up our hands. Sighing — this is just too hard — to no one in particular.
But the mud is where things grow. The mud is where new life unfurls — where versions of ourselves go to be born. The mud is the beginning of becoming.
I googled ‘What good are mud baths?’ and the internet reported the following benefits: Improves circulation, draws out impurities, relaxes aches and pains, and softens skin.
My edits for the proverbial mud: Improves the circulation and evolution of our identity, draws out what no longer serves us, pushes us to practice being with our aches and pains, and softens us to the uncertainty of it all.
The work is in the surrender. In allowing ourselves to take root. In accepting that our shakiness won’t evaporate, that steadiness can really only be found in stillness.
Our time in the mud is also an invitation to take good care. In the midst of this low, I’m thinking about capacity. I’m getting curious about what I have space for and what simply doesn’t fit right now. I find myself reaching, out of necessity, for habits that bring my feet closer to the ground (meditation, breathwork, walking, alone time) and temporarily benching those that don’t.
And in the depths of our stuckness, we have a choice.
We can wrangle with uncertainty and riot again ourselves.
Or we can attempt to sit with what is, trusting that when the time is right, we will be able to move forward again. We can burrow into the coolness of the earth and honor our kaleidoscope of selves. We can reframe this season as one of recalibration. We can take a bike ride, accepting the invitation to be here now. Not as an escape, but as a deepening of our experience.
And when we do inch out of the mud and back toward our bodies, it will be because we waited. Because it was time.
As I grab my bike again, the full moon rises in front of me. Low and bright yellow; the kind of glow that can’t be replicated anywhere else. The kind of scene you catch only for a moment, but think of for days.
I cling to the moment a little longer, allowing myself to be wrapped up in serenity. And the comforting notion that everything will, irrevocably, work out.
Rather than pushing against my reality, I simply exist in it. Only in this body. Only in this moment. Only as this version of me.
I holler like a teenager as our tires slice through the night. Windswept and free, we ride home.
Until next time,
Amy
Literary, insightful, and intelligent per always
So so beautiful 💗