The Steps Before Defying Gravity

One expects finding flow to be difficult under stressful circumstances. If I had a nickel for every time someone has said “moving is always stressful” I’d have been able to outsource all this decluttering and packing and have some to spare.

Every time someone says it I bristle. They say it like they know and they say it like it’s supposed to be a comfort to know. But no one who has said it to me knows moving under stressful circumstances like I do. And even so, I do not believe moving always has to be stressful!

After having mere minutes to decide what to take and what to leave—not once but twice—I know what a stressful move is.

Yet even I surprised myself this time with how I simply stayed in flow.

Perfectly? No. But continually, yes.

Like snowmelt running off a mountain, always finding a way. Perhaps pooling for a moment here before overflowing through soft soil and rushing on its way, water never truly stops.

Not living water anyway.

So every time the paralyzing pressure of overwhelm made it feel like I was trapped, I simply pressed into finding the way out. There always is one; that much is promised.

Spirit, wind, water—they always find a way.

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This is my chrysalis. My place for twenty-one days of unraveling, coming apart, becoming liquid.

My place for radical trust; like a caterpillar who doesn’t even get to retain her brain I cannot direct this process. I am letting go, not just what is in my hands, but even things I cannot grasp.

It is my own set-apart place but it is not so solitary as to leave me exposed. This place was set apart for me, not by me—prepared. Protected, as I will be in this season.

I listen for the healing: flowing water, quiet birds, even the steady ebb and flow of the rumble of the road. It reminds me of the first place prepared for me. Carried across that threshold I became new—or began to.

These portals prepare me in ways I cannot prepare myself, try as I might. That’s where some of the fear leaks in: each past transformation has deposited me in the most unexpected territories; it makes me worry—no, wonder where the next one will be.

The world is tilting underneath me, too slowly to make me lose my footing so long as I keep my sea legs; too slowly for anyone looking on from shore to understand when I do stumble. Their ground is so stable, but to walk upon the wind requires uncertain steps.

To fly is not the dream I chase. My longing is not defying gravity. But if I spread wide in surrender the fiery updraft will take me up.

So first I fold, surrendering to being remade.

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Everything hurts.

Every thought hurts.

Making words match what I want to say is hard today.

I’m not sure I even want to find flow, even thinking about moving is repulsive. I curl further into myself, let my eyelids droop, not because I am tired—I am weary.

Cold and alone, I’m not sure I don’t want that, but I know I can’t survive this way for long.

How long?

Until I get some relief—if only I knew what real, lasting relief felt like.

I don’t want to feel.

Feeling hurts right now.

The feeling of my curled spine pulling back muscles too taught, the bones in my feet and pelvis pinching flesh against bench.

The feeling of road vibrations again eardrum punctuated by splashing fountain—white noise that’s supposed to be soothing is still noise.

My big toe is asleep.

I’m forced to move.

Like the water in front of me, movement must move to maintain life.

Maybe that’s why I keep thinking I want to die. Maybe what I really want is to just be still.

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Finding flow is unexpectedly difficult under restful circumstances. When it’s all too easy to default to a dissociative shutdown the stakes are low; everything won’t have burst into flames when I come out of it so why not?

It’s especially easy in the middle of burnout. I’m pushing pushing pushing all the time and now’s my chance to… not.

I can’t even call it laziness when it’s the burnout driving it. No, this is a default mode for a reason: conservation of energy and processing power.

But is it rest?