When I started this April blog series called “Taking the S out of Scared,” I was soooo excited. How awesome would it be to recycle and reuse that S. Sure sounded good! I had, after all, so many better, sexier, more interesting uses for that S, S being one of my favorite letters.
Confession: I haven’t succeeded. I’ve been scared. Really scared. Scared with a good bit of overwhelm. You know, when everything feels like “too much,” and even the best of sounds can sound like noise… Like that.
Good intentions. AND good to notice that a huge part of my motivation was being pushed by the part of me that was freaking-the-hell-out: it wanted me to get rid of Scared once and for all. Pro-bly on account of it being scared, too!
Wanted: Calm. To know down to my bones that all is OK. Knowing I’m taken care of, no matter what. And, doggone it, we were going to make that happen.
Laudable, isn’t it? I justified my agenda by saying that of course calm is a good thing. As is feeling taken care of. Who doesn’t want that! And besides, this was me doing it. It wasn’t like I was waiting for anyone to come save me or anything. I was going to do it and then share my findings with you.
Oh well.
Enter reality. Hello!
Over the past week every time I’ve gone to write an entry: nothing. Or I’d start and stop and start and stop over and over again… Oh the pressure.
Last night found me in this chair right here trying to write yet again. I so wanted to sing the praises of “Essence” and “Simple” — but everything that came was convoluted. Plus it felt forced. Like me pushing something that didn’t want to move. Or wasn’t ready.
Finally, exhausted and battered over a week gone by without a second post, I went to bed. “Oh no! Now what! I can’t even write any more. Writing is my love. Will I lose even that?”
It was a hard night. You know: too long and too short at once.
This morning I wrote my friend Elizabeth a 5-line email:
Dear Elizabeth,
Do you have any time today?
I have lost interest in everything. I’m scared.
Love,
Heidi
Basic? Yes. To the point? M-hm. More to the essence than anything I’d written all week.
Elizabeth Levine—whose middle name might as well be Kindness, or Presence, or Kick-ass-sense-of-humor, or Understanding—wrote back inviting me to ask myself:
Is it true that I’ve lost interest in everything?
Hmmmm. Pretty quickly I see it’s not true.
For one: I’ve not for one moment lost interest in finding ways to take care of myself.
For two: I’ve not lost interest in not giving up on myself.
For three: Ironically, I’ve not lost interest in Scared. It’s here in spite of my trying to get rid of it. Hello!
For four: It seems what I’m really interested in is how someone with lots of overwhelm and scared can take good care anyway.
For five: I’ve not lost interest in beauty. It’s just that at the moment, as one dear friend so succinctly said: “You’re seeing everything through shit glasses.”
Oh my. Nails it!
But know what? Beauty is still here. Alive and well. And yesterday, even in the midst of an overwhelm of gargantuan proportions (redundant, just like the overwhelm)—beauty found me.
Oh my. So subtle and even more beautiful for that. This beauty looked a whole lots like 4 itty-bitty sparse paragraphs written by the equally beatiful Havi Brooks:
Anyway, it was just the two of us. No waitress. I was covering the bar and he was taking the kitchen.
We knew we’d be hanging out together until at least six in the morning when we closed, so it wasn’t like we needed to fill the space with conversation.
I was cleaning something. He was cleaning something. Johnny Cash in the background. All the space in the world. All the time in the world.
Just cleaning. And thinking. And waiting, but not impatiently. Knowing that any minute a door will open. A bell will ring. And there you are.
Oh my. So simple. Ahhhh. So calm. Ahhh. So much care.
All for today, my friends, all for today—
Heidi
