The Traveller’s Tale

A young soldier who survived the winter-war prepares for her next journey. She assumes the identity of ‘Traveller’ and begins to gather food and medicines. There is only one problem: she does not know what she will need. For no one knows where she will go and what she will do. This knowledge begins to dawn on her and a haze of fear begins to cloud her heart-gaze. She realizes she is standing at the edge of a precipice and the path forward looks like a terrifying and choiceless plunge into the abyss.

She begins to desperately hoard food and medicines and clothes. Anything that might help is taken. She pores over old tomes and spends her days in the archives trying to envision the final destination of the journey and draw up the shape of her map. She desperately asks villagers about their journeys and asking for their maps, blind to the knowledge that no two journeys will be the same. She is frantic and afraid because she fears that the journey will lead her astray and she will lead herself astray and she will not survive the journey and she will lose her shape.

She steps further and further from the rooted oak-center of herself and takes bigger and bigger ground-eating steps and travels voraciously and gazes distractedly around her, for a yawning, dissatisfied gaping abyss-mouth is opening within her and it needs more and more and more.

But she has forgotten simple truths. The journey she will undertake is unknown to even the gods, and the precipice is not a precipice — that is merely an illusion-distortion created by the fog of fear. The path onwards is indeed only and simply a path. There is fear, but there is joy too, for the very unknowability is a joy. The journey itself will be a glorious shaping and the final destination that she will rest in matters less than the undertaking.

The traveller shapes the journey and the journey shapes the traveller. She has forgotten to allow herself vulnerability in the dark face of the unknown. She has forgotten to carry faith and hope and strength like a torch, and to remember that a seedling does not blossom into a fine and mighty oak overnight. For she carries within her all that she needs, and she has only to take the first step forth courageously and vulnerably and calmly, to begin blossoming.

Hurt

is abandoning yourself
and expecting someone else
to adopt
the poor,
abused,
pitiful,
emaciated
and wailing child
on the sidewalk
who is only visible
to you,
and being furious
because no one
even looks
at the empty sidewalk,
and no one
takes the child,
whose cries rend your flesh,
away
from you.

Hurt

is
living
like you are
the wound
made flesh,
seeing every person around you
through the frightened eyes
of an abandoned child,
looking for your mother
in every single face –
and when
no one
meets your eyes
and sees you,
and loves you,
you grieve
every
fresh abandonment
like it is the original wound,
not realizing that
you are the only one
who can
bring the child
home
and yours is
the only hand
that can offer
healing.

Harmony

I unfold my hands gently
and look at the space between my rib cage –
the space my shoulders hunch protectively over.
And I see the wounded child and the anxious worrier
and they look up and see me
and they look at me with eyes like wounds and eyes like fear.
So I gather them within my cupped hands,
and I give them my love,
and I promise them:
I will never abandon you again.

how to self-care

1) have patience for when the maelstrom of pain bowls you over, do not flick your eyes impatiently to your watch, do not let ignorant-harsh words drop like rocks off your tongue, do not tap your foot and wish of being elsewhere.

2) be present and stay with the maelstrom and let it buffet you until you find your way into its eye, where all is calm. attend to the cries the way a mother focuses on her child.

3) repeat and promise: I will not abandon you again, and again, and again, and again – endlessly. accept that you are the pilot of the plane spinning helplessly in the walls of the maelstrom, accept that you are the mother to a wailing child, accept that you are caretaker of this grieving body. weave a new story to the wounded child – you are trying your best and it is human and it is alright and feel-observe-absorb the changes in your body, like ripples in a pond, from the right words, for the true words calm and the false words slash.

4) practice gentleness and offer it to yourself as you have generously and selflessly offered it to every other person, for you are a person, too, and deserving. for self-love is not a feeling or an attitude or a belief, it is an action and a commitment, just like its partner, other-love. for only then will the truth of you float to the surface of the deep lake, and upon reading from the lake, authenticity and peace will steal over you like warm and comforting blankets that are tough as armor. and one day, you will find yourself in the home that you have longed for once again.

perfectionism
n.

1. blindness. it starts out innocuous. you have been gifted a new sword, and you are beyond enamored with it, and you hold it out at an arm’s length, and you marvel at its sharpness, and the gleaming sear of light off the blade that could cut air dazzles your eyes, and you do not see that the casual nicks it has already left on your hands and fingers, because, oh, how safe this sword makes you feel – how it sings to you of Control and Safety and Mastery.

2. till exhaustion. you test it out – the imaginary enemies fall like wheat before a scythe. you slash and laugh and how you do not notice the ghosts that begin to solidify faster than the sword sings, how an entire war’s worth of soldiers have filled the space around you, how the goal post moves further and further and further, how there is no end in sight, and how there is a strange quiet voice warbling of the lost center.

3. while trying to fight off self-abuse. why did you make this mistake again, why do you choose to suffer, why – do not listen, dear one.

4. and you look back to shore and realize how you unmoored you have become. you have travelled far from your roots, young soldier – the shape of “enough” and “success” have become amorphous as fog, you will travel voraciously and never be sated if you keep rowing and slashing – remember.

5. and you remember. sheathe the sword. you are not ready for it yet. take hold of your scythe-light again, remember your doves and your roots. press these words onto your heart – may i have peace – and tuck yourself into bed and begin the new-old-true tale: there once was a child who was making the best decisions she could, and she was only human, and she was only striving. and most importantly whisper to yourself the promise: i will not abandon you.