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The Journey Continues
Birth to Death to Birth
Sixteen years ago I was 16. I recall thinking about how I would die young. I hoped for a long grand future, but I felt a certainty that I wouldn’t make it. Yet here I sit, 32 years old, looking back on my life. At 16, I was right, I wouldn’t survive to old age. My mistake was thinking I would face my physical death before 30. Instead, I died emotionally. Instead, I died mentally. The person I was at 16 has died and been reborn multiple times. I have stood on the edge of life, crippled with exhaustion, and been dragged away from certain death by loving people and my own determined desire for hope.
Today, however, I watched “Water Lilies” by Monet for a while at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. I say watched because as you breathe amd look the picture changes, different colors come to life. Earlier, I had watched the changing trees which blossomed with life. A bed of daffodils sat outside the museum, ringing out spring. I slowed down, my voice became calmer than usual. I spoke with the sweetness of love and kindness on my tongue. I truly felt love for all of creation.
There are things I’m developing and growing in my life. I’m expanding my limits and risking my all on how to love others better. This is 2019, this is 32 years of life and death and rebirth.
I have wandered far and wide. There is much left for me to see. It is yet a new birth with tomorrow to be lived. I accept it may also be a death of who I once was. However, the past lives should not be forgotten or we risk not learning from them. Then, we might risk to necessitate having to learn it again.
I am 32 years old and I live and love with unlimited potential and possibility.
The next chapter is starting, and so I will share it here, in hope the next person might wander even further.
Searching for Narnia
I dream of impossible things. In my actual dreams at night I see images of oddly dressed people or creatures, las creaturas, that are from fables. They want to take me out into a field and tell me that all things are possible, that I can search for Narnia. They are trying to point the direction I must go. The field is dull and dingy and the sky is overcast, the color of the landscape is poor and unremarkable. There are walls in areas that block the view. There are people from the normal world that follow me saying that there is no Narnia. It is almost a horrific dance in a way, the push and the pull between the impossible people and the possible people. I watch as walls are built by these impossible people.
I use all the worldly logic to argue with the fairy creatures and beasts who speak of things that do not exist and we are incapable of. I am an impossible person. I listen to those people from my normal world that have followed me to insist that I cannot fly, and that there is no Narnia. They insist that the world is black and white, or simply shades of gray. They’ve convinced me that every Zebras skin is exactly the same as any other and old dogs will never learn new tricks. The impossible people encourage me to believe that things are impossible. That people will always cheat the system if they can. That we need to guard and defend from those who want to use us, even at the expense of those who may truly need us.
There is this part of me that pulls to the faeries and las creaturas, the comical beasts which speak not in plain tongue, but in a voice that I understand in my soul. These beasts and oddly dressed beings, the nymphs and the leprechauns, the unicorns, the Amarok, the Yeti’s, the Geni’s and the Giants, the Gnomes and the Elves, La Loba; they speak in a way that sings to my soul of the possibility in life. They seek to pull me in to their dance and away from the impossible people and the impossible part of me. They draw me through the walls that are my barrier and further into the field. As we dance the field blooms with color and possibility. They show me magic and mystery and the belief in everything being possible. They surround my heart in love, even love for the impossible people, and they teach me I don’t have to live as an impossible person, even if I live among them. Without words they encourage my soul to go and journey and be me.
The words for this dream slip from my fingertips onto the page just as quickly as the images begin to disappear from my awoken mind. The urgency with which I felt the need to write these things speaks loudly to my awake self. Dreams are the communication between the conscious and the subconscious. It is the place that tells me I am starting to heal, or starting to turn in a good direction. It is where the depths in myself communicates, processes, and guides me through the struggles of my awake life. My dreams are not normally good places as I work to process past traumas. This dream did not start as a good dream. It changed though, it changed into an impassioned possible thing. As I tossed off the hold of the impossible people my soul was given the chance to express and inspire my waking moments. It is the part of me that spent several hours on the phone Monday with my best friend making plans to do incredible things and have incredible adventures. It is the part of me that I worry I will lose and I work so hard to keep.
It is so easy to get jaded in our day to day lives that often it seems like we are impossible people living in a dull world surrounded by other impossible people. It is at the end of the day where I am tired, cranky, and jaded that I look back and I cry tears for building a wall of impossibility in my day and letting it affect my attitude. The creatures in my dream showed me magic and hope and most importantly love. With movement and song we journeyed in my mind and were possible. I believe this can be my waking journey as well.
I am daily working to implement new things which provide good self-care. I know that I will stop searching for Narnia if I do not give care to myself. I know that more things will become impossible because I fail to take care of myself in the best possible ways. I dream these dreams because my subconscious knows that we are headed in the right direction and it is encouraging me on. My inner Wild Woman is reminding me to dance and to be a possible person.
Whatever your dreams, at night or just for life, be a possible person and you can do it. Practice self-care and set your eyes on the prize. Journey through the dingy fields and the dark forests following the light of possibility till you find your colorful field that you can dance in (metaphorically or literally). Let your dreams and desires be the creatures that lead you to your Narnia. Don’t give up. Keep searching for Narnia, and little by little we may find it.