#1 Only After Feeling First
Laying in bed at home with the sun shining through my windows behind me, cuddled in my soft violet blanket. It’s 1:40 pm.
I know this for certain most days—well, most days I know something is for certain, and that thing usually changes, not its certainty. For example, I know that I’ve lived days I love more than days I do not. That is a fact in my brain. That fact mends me, most days. And on a day like today I know that I am okay with lying in bed writing this and doing nothing more. Some days that would only upset me and I’d think Why am I not doing something more interesting with my day? or Shouldn’t I be cleaning something?— I know today I feel content with the trajectory of my day so far. I’ve shared my morning with loved ones, eaten a meal, layed on my back in the sun, I’ve been hugged, I’ve heated up and cooled off, I’ve indulged in a mystery—in a book and on the television—I’ve held my cat’s paw, and I am warm and comfortable. What a privilege it is to feel comfortable. What a privilege it is to feel. I have the pleasure of feeling and feeling and feeling so much, and letting that empower me. Letting that make me feel human and grounded and small. Small in relation to the size of the planet, that is. Because I feel so many complex emotions, and I work them out in my brain, and it gets sticky and messy. And while I’m looking down and looking in, distracted by the mess, I interrupt myself by remembering there is so much life going on around me. I’m not the only person feeling this exact “complex” feeling, thinking this intrusive thought, being hard on myself. Not so complex after all. I find it’s much easier to let go. To let it go. To surrender. Only after feeling first. And this is my superpower. In feeling small, I remember how to feel big and to grow and grow and keep growing. While I lay on my bed and write everything I’m thinking, seconds pass and I’m happy to say I’m happy right here, with the course of my day, the comfort it’s brought. It’s only 1:43pm. Wow, that’s my angel number. I just happened to look at the time in the moment that I needed to fill in the blank and there it was staring me in the face. I found those numbers staring me in the face for the first time in 2018 and I never looked for them, but still they appear and I let them speak to me because who wants to feel just human all the time? I love run-on sentences, they express my excitement or confusion. I like short, staccato sentences mostly. And I love the way a brain’s thoughts train away further and further from the point just to get back to it. Sometimes it does not. I notice often that my thoughts have their main points and then disappear into crevices of thoughts that reveal the opening end for the final thought to express itself. It happens so fast. I might just be running the fastest train in a brain ever known to earthlings. That is an exaggeration but a fun fantasy, because I can picture it. Can’t you?