Both doors are open. This is my life now. There use to be the possibility of explosion around every corner but this is not a militarized zone that I live in now. It is a world between worlds. I have come from a somewhat solid place, a place of comfort I guess. Not safety really. A place where I knew what to expect. I knew how to tip toe and go unnoticed. I learned to be a witness to a smile or a smirk or a look of panic. Mostly I learned how to become invisible. I got use to heartbreak. No expectations. No future, at least of the one I had once dreamed of. I told those Brite Lites of possibility to lie still. Shhhh girls...don't speak. Lay low under the floorboards. Don't you dare come out of hiding. Don't imagine the possibilities that exist outside of these four walls, the ways you could use the simmering volcano of energy, ideas and heart-wisdom you have inside of you towards service to others, towards service towards your own soul. I was like a rat in a trap, biting her own tail, thinking this would save me from the impending gauntlet.
The body knows however. The body will eventually say NO- loud and clear like a warning wind just before the storm hits. The body is a flock of ravens that descend on the bare trees directly above. It tell of a window of time during which you can run for safety. Do it now! It says, with aches and pains and infections. With sleep that won't come. With a neck that stiffens to the touch. With flu-like symptoms that persist beyond the binge the night before. With teeth that fall out for no reason in response to stress that goes beyond what that partucular body is capable of handling.
Before the storm hits there is always a warning from nature. Before everything gets turned upside down again in a blur of panic and confusion, there is a murder of jet black birds, a stopping of the blood in the veins just before fight ot flight kicks in. Must it always be this way? I dont know.
All I know is that there is no safety in illusion.
There is no safety in being comfortable with pain. The storm will inevitably come and one can choose to run for safety or attempt to hide in plain sight. I can't control nature, even though I try. I can't control other humans either, even though I try to do that too.
In the end, there is nothing I can do or say that would turn the perspection the other has into anything other than what it has always been...a hurling tornado of anger, rage and denial. People see what they choose to see and respond accordingly. In this knowledge, there is hurting. There is pain. But for me at this moment, in the seeking of shelter in the warm, calm, cool air of my own life claimed again, there is no shame.
A person can point to the sky day after day after day, trying to get a blind man to see the black feathers ruffling in the wake of the pending storm. But all that effort on the part of the other has nothing to do with if he will ever ever see them.
The gift of sight, of realization, is between the blind man and his own two eyes.
