How I'm Rewriting Who I Am: Part 1

Sick and still going

This year I found a new version of me. Simple. And unbelievably fucking hard to find that form of me who was so often hiding underneath an unmet need for love. A need that bucked and bent me out of shape. Out of alignment with myself. A reflection in the mirror that didn’t present my real face. A refraction, curved by space and time to a place where I no longer knew that deepest content must be built upon the joy of choosing myself first. I failed to nourish myself fully, and at the same, I did a good job with a partially stocked pantry. Past me did well to get me here. I absolutely want to acknowledge and celebrate him. It was a bumpy road. Shout out to past me! And welcome, new version of me!

I’m sick and don’t want to write. Told myself I’d hit publish daily. Still didn’t want to do it. Alex was like, “You’re not so sick that you can’t hit the keyboard”.

I’m doing this. “Habits aren’t about what you do on the good days; they’re about still doing the thing when you feel sick and tired and burnt out and just want to sip hot drinks in the shade with the grasshoppers leaping around in the overbright sunshine that has double saturated everything by bouncing of the white walls of the villa and the velvety water of the pool”, or whatever that cliche accurately proclaims.

So here I am: type, type, type. Don’t even know what I’m wanting to say. Doesn’t being sick suck? And in that isn’t there an opportunity to find comfort even in the frustration; an opportunity to find contentment even in the discomfort. The Zen teacher Henry Shukman gets me straight to it when his soft warm voice guides me to notice the innate pleasantness that always resonates in the energy in my body: I’m paraphrasing. My point is, even now, and in some perverse ways, especially now, a comfort melts in my body as I teeter on the edge of non-functionality.

Lethargy, languidness, loose muscle, soft energy. In wellness, I search for some of these qualities. Now I’m sick and I can enjoy them just as they are. This moment is exactly as it is. It is all it can be. It is this. Thisness is the quality. Now is the time. Loose, soft, here.

It’s Day Two of Ship It Week at Casa Tilo, and “I cannot ship”. Yet here I am, writing and publishing, even though I think so much of what I write is subpar. I can notice the narratives about who I am and choose to rewrite them; can choose who I want to be and start being that person.

It’s not quite that simple. Well, it is, but as with so many simple things, it sometimes takes a long swim to reach the deepest simplicity.

Part two, coming soon…