How we cope

Some throw away their belongings, others write letters to their past selves, past lovers, to the skies. Some drink and smoke and cry, others sleep the days by. Some exercise and breathe, wanting that perfect physique. While still others sit by the waves and wish for the pain to be taken. Some hurt and claw at those around them, others scroll and scroll and scroll until no time is left within their bodies to do anything else.

What are we really here for? If so much just feels like an endurance sport. A marathon to get to the end of time, when the clock finally ticks out, and all fades away. What is it that we are here to do? Yes, it’s to create, of course it’s to love, and certainly it’s to bask within the sun. Yet, what of when all those times are done and our souls need tending and the fire within seems to no longer have what it needs to sustain its warmth? What else is there to lean into?

I knit a series of squares and rectangles back when I was in college, when I filled my days with drinking and sex and very little attention. Just play and partying and wanting that next great high to sustain and fill me enough to get through. Underneath it all was some of the most depressing and painful and lifeless currents my soul has experienced. Awake and steady within my body since the time I was small, these rivers flowed so deep, they only made it to the surface when I had just too much to drink and the true desires of a shattered soul came to the forefront. Letting my arms drip their sticky red sap over the kitchen floor. Broken glass shattered around. I’d gone too deep and didn’t have a way to swim back up, taking it out on my body, and completely out of control of my movements. The concerns of my friends barely made their way into my mind, for so much was covered beneath that thick wall of alcohol. Torturous to see, excruciating to feel. How could a pain that runs so deep be hidden for so long? How could the medications and prescriptions and drugs from the doctors not fix me? How could no one around me do anything? A small child within a world of rushing, hiding, pretending, how could any spirit be supported within this? How could any love be built to thrive? How could any of us see the way through?

Now I smoke a cigarette here and there, I cope in my own ways, I write, I dream, I sit by the lake and ask for the pain to be taken, yet always, throughout it all, I bring the essence of healing, for even if I am hurting deeper and fuller and wider than I have ever hurt before, I know that I can plant even just a single seed, a single breath, a single moment of awareness and peace and love, and maybe just maybe one day this seed will grow into a beautiful oak or flower or weed, and will fill those shattered parts of me with everything it is that I needed but did not receive. These seeds are full of the blessings of my truest spirit, that entire essence of love. That power that transcends time and space, and maybe just maybe, sitting within it all, while holding this awareness and healing is helping little me, child me, college me, current me, future me, and everyone else around me recieve some ounce of beauty again. Maybe just maybe I can trust the forests of the world to work as they do, to take my pure intentions and grow the magic that they know how to so effortlessly grow. Maybe one day I no longer will think of death as some long forgotten friend that I missed the opportunity to get really close with, and instead honor and value the moments she meets me, in this life and all those that came before me. Maybe just maybe I will walk besides her as a companion and as a guide and as a force of strength that I know yet do not need to become. Maybe I can see her in her power and kneel before her with reverence and respect and love and appreciation while trusting that I am still one of the living, and as such, I must live as such. I must breathe as such, I must play and learn and dream as such. Not to be consumed by the the endless void but instead to see what can be born through it. What is it that my soul wishes to birth? How can I let this simply happen?

I’ve taken those knit squares from that time in my life and sewn them together. I’ve made a small blanket from the mismatched yarn and it now lays upon my couch. I sit upon it and no longer think of all the times I abandoned myself for a quick fix, a pleasure to distract from the pain, but instead as a collection of memories. Of stories, of ways that I took something so horrible and sewed it together to make something useful, beautiful, and warm. I hope that we can all do this in some ways with our own stories, with our own grief, and with our own troubles. I hope and I pray that you never give up on yourself. I hope that somewhere off in the future, maybe even next week, you can take what you’ve experienced and make something you love from it, for within the creation lives your story, and no matter what has happened or what does happen, you and your story are so important, and so meaningful and so useful to all of us, and they need to be shared. It needs to be brought forth into his world, in whatever way that means to you, it needs to be known. A blanket holds a story, just as a carved wooden spoon does, just as a song or a poem or a book full of words. Everything that you create is a product of your story, and trust me, my love, the world is ready is listen.

I love you. Keep going. And just simply create, even if it’s never been done before, we need the truest most unique essence of you in this world. It’s probably the most vital thing. It’s all going to work out, I promise.