Just after sunrise, I was walking at the edge of a coniferous forest next to a prairie marshland and heard a tremendous cacophony in the air. Looking up, I saw three separate migrating flocks of Canadian geese, each flock consisting of well over 50 birds, flying directly over me and merging together to form an enormous flowing aerial river of birds. The commingled flock started turning to descend onto the protected marsh in front of me, a small wetland already occupied by pelicans, several species of ducks, herons, egrets and smaller shore birds. Four blackbirds landed in a nearby apple tree, this quartet singing their private morning song for all.
I realized tears were streaming down my face. Surrounded by beauty, enveloped into the great natural order, I felt my own circadian rhythms start to synchronize with the specific seasonal harmony of this spot on the planet. I was a little clump of cells in a vast living ecosphere, experiencing the wonder that comes with realizing the freedom of nothingness. “Everything is everything” turned into a skull-swelling, visceral sensation, while I stood there with my hiking boots slowly sinking into the mud.
The ability to heal is a mind-boggling concept. A lizard can regrow its tail multiple times, a sea star (starfish) can regrow its entire body from one arm, and some salamanders can regrow almost any body part. A Dutch writer I follow, Michel Faber, stated that after his last book, The Book Of Strange New Things, he’d reached the limit of things he was put on earth to write. (1. I hope not, and 2. You should read all of his books. Start with The Crimson Petal and the White and we’ll talk.)
In his last book, a missionary in an alien world is thought to have supernatural powers of healing due to his Christian beliefs. He is a normal human, and his powers of healing are that simply, when he is injured, his wounds heal, just like you and me. Something taken for granted as part of our human condition, and simply commonplace here, is seen through a different lens.
For at least 40 of my 70 years, I’ve never considered myself or been viewed as a particularly emotional person. Passionate about some issues, such as geo-politics, but not one to weep easily or have emotional outbursts. Steady, calm, unflappable, I would be the one you’d contact when you were undergoing an emotional crisis, the one you’d call when you found out your husband was having an affair and didn’t know what to do. I was the voice of pragmatic reason, sorting life events into columns and placing numerical value on nebulous concepts like security and comfort, then developing a checklist of things to do to move forward.
Those spontaneous wet streams running down my face that morning were a manifestation of my emotional regeneration. After living in a controlling and progressively more emotionally abusive home for 30 years, I’d left. It was a long wait, to leave without being the catalyst and to do it with minimal damage or surprise to the people I love. It was a less than opportune time physically as well. I was undergoing surgery on one hand, and scheduled for the same procedure on the other hand within four months. But I was like that house cat who sits quietly for years, patiently watching the door open and close, then catching the one moment the door is left open a minute too long and dashing out, a flash of fur and whiskers heading for the tree line. And given sufficient motivation, all sorts of physical challenges can be met, so I steadily sorted and packed with a focused energy I hadn’t felt in decades. Then I did it, arriving in a new state in a new city in which I knew not one soul, with just my big cat. Again, the sustained energy of motivation took over as I unpacked and made a place for myself. But it wasn’t simply a matter of energy. I was no longer going to live in a way where I was treading silently, smiling mildly, being part of a perceived couple profoundly and perpetually mired in loathing and distrust. I couldn’t live the time I have left as a lie, for half-truths are finally just that, lies. I simply wanted to live an authentic life.
Not that slowly, the emotional callus I’d manufactured over the years to protect my tiny little psyche from the abrasive hostility started disappearing. Much of that callus had been fear, as it was frightening to think of what would happen if I did let myself feel and react to the constant demeaning comments, dismissive actions and manipulations. I would become only somewhat existent, not a whole person, and lose those parts of me that make myself my own self. Years of gaslighting can really undermine your self-confidence. If you are told often enough that you are crazy and you do not remember things, there comes a point where you start questioning your memory regularly, unprompted, and even judge the appropriateness of any response as to where that might land on a sanity scale. And by the way, I’m fine and while I might forget to return a library book on time, I do remember just about everything else, even those things I tried desperately to overlook or justify.
So it turns out the human kaleidoscope of a psyche can regenerate sensitivity. And if you get embarrassed by spontaneously crying while watching the Pacific Flyway in October from an Oregon wildlife refuge, just pick up your binoculars.
Or don’t; tears are actually a medal of victory.
More to come on this,
~Cleo