when we see the sky
A different way of navigating the world becomes available when the standard way of moving through life is removed. Senses become heightened, new life forms begin to emerge between rows of status quo.
My life blossomed in heartbreak, like flowers growing after a wildfire.
I’ve spent months not feeling creative. It was the year I was supposed to become a mother, when I was supposed to be at the top of my career, when I was supposed to execute certain behaviours expected from a wife and a coach, a writer and a woman nearing her thirties.
Instead I spent a lot of time laying on the floor. My head resting against cool laminate, when even the sunlight creeping through my window hurt my eyes and felt like an attack I did not welcome. It was as if every creative bone in my body had slipped out the back door into the night, and I watched my spark fade from between my fists.
This isn’t the first time this has happened. I’m sure it won’t be the last. Still, each time, it surprises me and creates this internal terror where I’m afraid I won’t ever come back. I must brave taking new forms if I want any chance at returning.
More often than not I don’t return the same. More often than not something inside of me has irreparably shifted, and who I am on a molecular level is different.
The day I feel my spark returning, my desire to capture life with words as quickly and frantically as a fleeting sunset, I have spent the night in the ER. The doctor on call does not see the whole picture. He treats me for a migraine, and I know as he zeroes in on the details he has forsaken the sky.
I review my records to see he has given me ringers lactate, a medication to which I used to have written under my allergies. I’m no longer unable to draw on my body’s ability to cultivate sweetness, and I wonder what else has shifted before my eyes. Where am even I missing the entire sky to focus on a singular cloud?
The day after my hospital room visit, my hand still green and blue with bruises from the needle that pierced my skin, I find myself crouched down in a grocery store. It’s a way of navigation that feels comfortable to me, close to the earth, a breathy pause.
A man I haven’t seen in months, before speaking my name, asks if I need help. The encounter is awkward and he is unconvinced and it isn’t until I’m driving home that I realize he isn’t seeing the sky.
When there is only one way to do things, only shoulds, there is narrowing limitation. What if we crawled through aisles? What if we traced back history lines like map coordinates to the destination where we covet arrival? What if there was more that meets the eye than the way we have been taught to navigate the world?
I’ve been guilty of this too, losing sight of the forest for the trees. This sight is a gift that the floor gave to me. When I thought I lost my creativity, I was just learning to see.
