Embrace of the Universe

I’ve really been struggling lately and have had some pretty dark moments…hours and days even. I’m no stranger to grief and existential depression, and though my experience tells me that real growth and expansion often comes about from these periods I’ve navigated throughout my life, these times are extra heavy and uncertain. I’m rather self-sufficient, able to be alone and enjoy it, and generally optimistic, but I also have big capacity for empathy and a deep desire for community and I’m pretty intuitive—I was born this complex mix of things and it can be both delightfully satisfying and painfully lonely.

Today, I went out to run some errands partly because I needed a few things and a lot to rehearse feeling connected and a little joyful—“Create the conditions for Joy and trust she will return to you” has been my mantra for a decade. But one of my errands was to pick up a teeth grinding guard because, for the first time in my life, I’ve realized that I’m compulsively tightly clenching my teeth during the day, so who knows what I’m doing in my sleep. My teeth and jaw felt sore and my joints in general were a bit achy and this persistent mix of longing-anger-sorrow lingered in a hole in my chest. But I put on a groovy little Saturday errand outfit and made an effort to hold onto a smile. Strange things started to happen.

First, the young woman at the drugstore register told me she liked my purse and gave me another lovely compliment. “Wow, thanks,” I said 🥰 Then I went to the grocery store to get arugula for me and chicken Rue. I was happily noting that Rue was just a few weeks old when I gave her the name Arugula and, indeed, she turned out to be charmingly spicy and to love the tasty green that is her namesake. There in the produce section, a young man smiled and said “hello” for no real reason. Next I went to a local coffee house in search of a new source of coffee for my espresso machine, because I don’t want to give Starbucks any more of my money right now. While I was waiting the five minutes for my coffee to be ground and feeling that I had a new and better source for my coffee (they give you a free drink of anything but alcohol when you buy your can and $2 off a drink when you return it to boot!), I observed many people patiently waiting and being kind and polite to each other. And then another young man told me he liked the color of my t-shirt—that it was a really cool color! And though I know this is crazy over the top to add and quite possibly unbelievable, I even observed people using their blinkers while I was driving around!

In a lot of ways, my world keeps shrinking as I set important boundaries to protect my core values with people I love and corporations I used to freely give my money to. In the darkest moments, I shrink myself to a small deep indigo blue thing and ponder the relief that might come with just disappearing into space and time. It can be exhausting trying to stay well informed AND mentally healthy-ish, and I’m often conflicted and apprehensive as I seek to find ways to take enough of a stand to make some kind of difference while also staying relatively safe. But in spite of all that muddled mess, my two hour outing in my little community this afternoon felt like the Universe holding me when I was hurting and reminding me that the community I long for is there and that kind, polite, and caring people are all around me. That all of this angst and turmoil and shrinking may just be creating the spaciousness for building something new and glowing and far better than everything being shattered before our eyes.

I came home, walked the dogs and let the chickens out. I battened down the hatches for the approaching NorEaster—it’s getting pretty dark out there. I’m going to shape my teeth guard and understand that I’ll probably be attempting to crush all this grief and lonely worry between my teeth for a good while to come. But just like there are safeguards for the clenching, there are actual and invisible arms to hold and reassure me if only I put myself out there and make myself available for the embrace.