Weightless

October 24th 2022

The soft rhythmic sound of rain tapping on the windowsill gradually filled the quiet room. We had reached the end of summer when the evenings grew so hot and clouds grew so heavy that they could not help but deluge us with rain. Today was no exception. 

When I stood to my feet, a bit of sunlight glinted off of something in the courtyard; a glass bottle, perhaps, or a child’s forgotten toy. I walked curiously to the window and looked westward, over the towering oak branches heavy with precipitation, and squinted. Sunlight had forced its way through the moisture laden atmosphere and began dancing off of every raindrop that drifted its way to the earth. I turned from the window, thoughtlessly slipped a pair of old sandals onto my feet and bounded weightlessly down the stairs, the door left ajar behind me. 

Rainwater had begun to pool as it cascaded over the corner of the roof and I found myself standing where the sidewalk met the garden bed, my feet covered with muddy water. My hair quickly flattened, water dripping onto my shoulders and soaking my shirt. I felt mascara run down my cheeks. 

I suddenly felt the urge to continue forward, away from the building and through the courtyard as muddy clay suctioned to my sandals. My steps slowed as I met the heavy, black gate and reached for the safety latch which, with a slight strain and flick of the wrist, pulled free. At the same moment, I hooked my foot between two bars and pulled the gate toward myself, supporting the weight of it, doing my best to avoid the inevitable slam it would produce if I were to let the monstrosity close on its own.

As the rain fell lightly, the pool before me created patterns unlike anything I had seen before. Each raindrop that broke the surface rippled softly and spilled over into the next. The surface was alive. My clothes clung tightly to my skin, peeling away only slightly when I moved. A chill came over me as the sun disappeared behind the clouds and the tips of my breasts poked through my shirt. I removed it and laid it on a chair beside me.

The warm water welcomed me in, like a hot cup of tea early in the morning. I waded for a moment and then leaned back, letting the water hold the weight of my body. I closed my eyes. 

A soft buzz floated above me and I peered upward through the raindrops. My eyes focused on a small insect, diving and weaving around me, settling to the water, touching it softly, and then quickly rising again. Soon it was joined by another, and then another, and before long I was surrounded by hundreds of them. Daintily yet fastidiously they floated through the air above me. I felt peace in this moment and I lay for a while, observing their movements, until the sun set behind the row of oak trees and a quiet darkness came upon us. 

…

I have since grown fond of dragonflies, and they frequently visit me in the garden or on walks in the evenings. I am reminded of the subtlety they exhibit, and the simple tendencies and behaviors displayed that night. I am often met with a pang of jealousy, for the complexity and confusion in a human life can often feel overwhelming. They remind me that there is more to this life than the difficulties we face or the troubles on the horizon. They remind me that some of the earth’s greatest and most peaceful contributors are only visible when you close your eyes and let nature reveal them to you. 

Learn more about dragonflies, their behavior and temperature control.

https://ovlc.org/dragonflies-and-damselflies/

Wildflowers

Yesterday morning I woke up to the sound of birds chirping in the branches of the maple tree outside my window. The leaves have started to turn a light shade of brown, some of them yellow, and the tree has thinned out to the point that squirrel fights and chirping birds catch my attention out of the corner of my eye. Saturdays are my most productive days, and this was no exception.

On my way home from getting groceries and running my car through the car wash, I spotted a red sedan with its hazard lights on, parked tightly against the curb on a a busy street. As cars rushed past the sedan, a young woman cautiously opened her door and slid out, into the street, and bounded up into the grass along the road. She reached in her pocket and removed a small, green package. She looked around briefly and then sprinkled the contents of the package into the mulch that lay in front of the neighborhood sign. Flower seeds.

I admire her spontaneity, her courage, her mind. In the spring, that bed of mulch may be overtaken by wildflowers, or maybe different colored zinnias; red, yellow, orange…Maybe the groundskeeper will grow tired of plucking what he assumes are weeds from the ground, and will skip the area for just long enough to allow a flower to bloom. Maybe no one maintains that area but once a year and the flowers will grow in luscious, bright bunches. Maybe nothing will grow. Maybe everything will grow. But then again, maybe nothing will grow.

“We are waves on the ocean, interacting with and affected by all the other waves that move and die and are washed up on the shore. We are each a breath, a song, a flower.”

~ Marc Hamer in Seed to Dust

When We Were Young

October 16th 2022

The young girl, not long after her fourth birthday, ran giddily through the backyard. She wore a red polo shirt and blue jeans shorts that fell just above her kneecaps, one of which bore a scab from a wipeout in the driveway two days before.

The early summer rain had produced millions of blades of vibrant green grass that softened under the weight of her small, bare feet. She danced in the delicate streams of water which burst from a small sprinkler and her shorts soon were soaked and sagged under the weight of it. She ran up and bravely planted her feet, leaned over and held her face in the water, coming up only for a breath periodically as she pranced about and returned once again.

Her imagination took her places unimaginable for me now, but I do imagine she was content and fearless and quite lionhearted in those days, and her love for the water and the grass and the earth never faltered.

“I imagine, therefore I belong and am free.”

~Emily Dickinson

What My Momma Said

October 15th 2022

One of the hardest parts about losing someone you love is re-learning how to comfort yourself without the support of someone else.

When babies are born, it is impossible to self-soothe during moments of distress, hunger or pain. Their brains have simply not developed enough to understand how simple actions can impact how they feel in the moment. By the time they are six months, it is common for babies to have developed self-soothing techniques like sucking on a thumb or finger or rubbing a soft blanket on their face. Without these techniques, a child would never learn to sleep through the night. The difficulty of a parent is creating boundaries as a child grows to allow for the development of independence and comforting skills.

We can see how this issue resurfaces later in life, because as soon as there is any form of attachment to another human being in a way that creates comfort during these times of distress or pain or emotional turmoil, we start to develop habits of turning towards a person because we know that we feel safe and we feel comforted when they help us to navigate these difficult times. I am not saying that a relationship should never have aspects of support or comfort as these ARE important in building a healthy foundation. Rather, in a relationship one should never lose themself so much that if the other person were to leave, they would be lost in a world where they cannot comfort themself. Never rely on someone else so strongly that if you lost that person, you would have no choice but to need them again because you no longer know how to heal yourself without them.

I remember something my mom told me following one of the worst breakups of my life: the end of a four-year relationship of developing habits based in co-dependence and that influenced a loss of “self”. When this relationship ended, it was impossible for me to feel comforted, because the person who had been “comforting” and “soothing me” for the last four years was no longer in my life and I could not turn to them. Subsequently, in the years that followed, in any moment of confusion or stress or misunderstanding, my instinct was to turn back to the person who made me feel comforted. Unfortunately, that person was someone with whom I had developed unhealthy habits and who continued to have this influence on me because of the co-dependence that we had created in that relationship. I remember so clearly my mom telling me when we broke up, “I know that you want to go back to the place where you feel good, but that place is no more. You need to relearn how to comfort yourself.”

I have since learned a lot and I have matured a lot but I will admit that there are days when I feel I have not matured quite enough. No matter how good a relationship may be or how strong the connection may be or how healthy the boundaries are and the independence is that exists, I find that in times of confusion and stress, I still revert back to where I found comfort in the past. For this reason, I have had multiple failed relationships with messy endings. A new relationship simply cannot last if your own strategies for comfort and self-soothing have not been developed. You will always be stuck grasping at something that is out of reach.

Thankfully, not all stories have to end this way. The greatest aspect of maturing and growing is admitting to unhealthy coping skills and habits. You are in control of your reactions to hardship in life. You are in control of developing necessary lifelong skills rooted in independence and grace that are required for healthy relationships. You are the author of these experiences and this life and, when you’re ready, you will know that no one can take that power away from you.

“In accepting our aloneness, we accept that no one can protect us from ourselves—and that no one can live our lives for us. “Aloneness” simply means that we cannot depend on others for our joy or sorrow. We are the authors of our actions, attitudes, and experiences and not the “victims” of fate or circumstance.”

Liane Cordes on Aloneness and Quality Time

Talking to Myself

October 13th 2022

I still remember the first time I told myself an elaborate, highly detailed story and wished so desperately that I had written it down as fast as I told it. I had spent the better part of an afternoon riding a razor scooter in circles on the driveway of the house I grew up in. I told the story; speaking the words and thinking the thoughts of multiple characters simultaneously. I was twelve.

The older I got, the more I recognized this deeply engrained ache and long for storytelling. I started a personal blog in high school that I filled with angsty, depressing poems, shorts stories, music lyrics. It became a form of therapy for me. I wrote down the things that I felt and things I longed to feel. I wrote about my heartbreaks, my wins, my goals. I wrote down the things that I was not able to speak out loud, for talking to yourself is not how you make friends in high school.

I may not still be walking this earth, had I not learned how to talk to myself. Working through things in my head helped to an extent, but I never found peace in the burdens I held or the mistakes I made until I sat with myself and talked things through. When I found out my scoliosis had progressed further and required surgical intervention, my only coping mechanism was staring at myself in the mirror and, through tears, telling myself that everything will be okay. I found myself in this same place, inches from the mirror, several times in the years that followed. At my lowest of lows, I knew that it was my own self that understood best.

In Talking to Myself I explore what it means to discover the most authentic “you” in the midst of suffering. I share my perspective on chronic pain and depression, and the debilitating affects that is has on a young person’s life. I present the day-to-day of a young person in the United States living through a pandemic, the brink of recession and political unrest. I lay out my life with the hope of making someone else feel heard and understood. I am so glad you are here.

“It’s wonderful to discover my deepest feelings and values. It’s even greater to share my thoughts after they’re clear in my own mind.”

~ Liane Cordes on Self-Acceptance and Self-Knowledge