Chance = Change

I knew there'd be nights like the one I've just had: filled with awake-ness, doubting, worry, wondering if the decision to break away from everything I knew to be "me" was a wise one.  I've even had the arrogance to boast that i would welcome such nights of doubt, as opportunities to examine, inquire more deeply into who I "truly" am, without all the crutches and ID tags of the familiar career and daily routines.

I never remember that pain ...well...pain hurts!  Doubt and fear....well....they're scary.  And then I am so surprised when they do come, and I hurt and feel scared!  Like most of yesterday afternoon, after we walked home in a truly enchanting rainfall (though a trifle chilly)  from seeing a matinee of OR - a new play to us both - at the Magic Theatre nearby.  As gorgeous as San Francisco looked to us in that light grey rain, I felt the beginnings of a gnawing upset, an upset that later bloomed into a fully grown, adult anxiety attack, and i spent the rest of the afternoon and evening under covers and cuddling dogs. Dear husband waited on me, served me dinner in bed, even found a truly bad movie for us to watch on his computer. He knows me so well. And I fell into a sporadic and restless sleep....thinking I'd never rest well....and then, I did.  I slept very well, oddly...and let myself sleep until this luxurious hour  of 6:30 am.

There are always demons in our minds to plague and terrify us...i've learned along the way that the Mind has to find ways to assure its survival, so it invents these nightmare scenarios to keep us aware of its presence and power.  Those terrors are not who we truly are - not at all - but they do feel , at times, like they are ALL we are: terrified and powerless.  I do know better...but (as a friend recently posted) my flesh is weak, and I succumb to the habit of worrying...and when I fall, I fall hard.

I was looking over my journals yesterday morning - I've 40 years' worth of them - and in a Facebook posting, I labelled so much of my young writing as "Self-Indulgent Agonizing"....well, even as the child goes, so go-eth the adult...some habits are rooted in being human and hard to get rid of, so...if I were a younger woman, with less experience behind me, I'd be plunging into pages and pages of purple agony, scrawling my pain across every page, using the journal pages as a friend I felt I had none of otherwise - not exactly wasting space , because after all, those pages are part of who I felt myself to be in those years - but certainly writing the drama of my life down on paper, almost as if I needed to do it to feel real....to feel like I existed at all.

As the pale grey light dawns on another beautiful San Francisco day, and as I look around at all the chaos we still have to unpack, straighten out, find places for, buy new furniture for, organize, make easy to find, i wonder where the ideas for a new creativity will find place and time to be born, but my experience tells me : I cannot remain un-creative for long....something will come forth, and the exciting thing is: I have no idea what it will be.   The terrifying thing is: I have no idea what it will be!

I just feel something within me this pearly morning, urging me to relax enough to trust: all is exactly as it should be.  My courage has not totally fled me yet. There are new parts of my life I know I am on the verge of discovering for the first time.  In the still of dark nights, I just must learn to dance with them, not run away like Cinderella at the ball when the clock strikes midnight....my magic is within. Bibbity-bobbity--boo, and onward!

 Breathe in the day and don't fear the night, for in the dark of it, a certain kind of light can shine on the things that are too timid to come out anytime else.

Labels: San Francisco Thoughts