#10: everything ultimately almost never happened
and, she was right, this couch really is so magical
Dear friend,
For the past hour, I’ve been lying on the couch my housemate feels lucky to have acquired, in silence, just feeling things.
It feels like I’ve been lost at sea, and now I’ve finally been picked up by a rescue boat or helicopter. The ride is rich with serenity and full of relief. It no longer matters how tired I am. I know I’ll be home soon.
I forget who said it, but I read someone describe loving deeply as living with your heart outside of your chest. And I am hanging somewhere between resonating fully with that statement and viewing it with suspicion. On one hand, it implies a loss of wholeness, which feels codependent.1 On the other hand, it speaks to the courage of vulnerability and the way love seduces the heart out of shelter and into a grand adventure.
Love terrifies me. I wonder if this is because I experience it as living with my heart outside my chest. In the past few months, as myself and people I love have experienced the heartaches that come with being human, I have felt stretched too thin and pulled too deep into dark places that make my knees shake. Somewhere along the way, I decided I didn’t have the strength to bear it all. And so I‘ve been numbing myself and avoiding contact.
But in the past hour on this teal velvet couch, in silence, finally feeling things, I had a revelation: I can follow my heart wherever it goes. I can go with it on grand adventures so long as I’m willing to summon all the courage I’ve got.
Every grand adventure has a terrifying chapter. That’s where I’ve been this summer. My heart has ached to the point of numbness. I stopped wanting to follow my heart, so I let it go alone. And I felt incomplete.
Earlier today in the afternoon, I noticed I couldn’t feel any of the words I recite in prayer or any of the words of support or love I spoke to people in my life. I felt so far away from my words, and it made me sad.
At approximately 4:45 PM today, I was on my back practicing boxed breathing in a yoga class, and I started visualizing a little cartoon illustration of a sperm cell moving in the outline of a box. I remembered something about how, out of millions of sperm cells making the journey, only one sperm cell ultimately got to fertilize the egg that became me. If it had been any other sperm cell from the tens of millions that were ready, someone else would have been born. That thought made me feel so insignificant and so damn miraculous.
I carried that seed of a thought with me for the rest of the day. I felt in touch with the miraculousness of (almost) every person I interacted with. It was overwhelming and beautiful.
And after being in a large gathering and chasing my heart as it roamed all around the room like a dizzying toddler, I returned to a home that smells of focaccia and windex. I quietly finished my dinner and texted my mother good night. I followed my heart to the teal velvet couch and lay my head down on the cylinder pillow. My heart went to Richmond, New York, North Carolina, Cairo, corners of Austin I don’t yet know very well. I was pulled with it, and my tears, too, and gravity let me go where I wanted but took my tears as taxes.
I am terrified of love, and so it won’t leave me alone.
I think this is what I’ve been seeking all along.
Yours,
Aaliah
I don’t like the word “codependent” very much. It feels like a police officer showing up to a person’s house uninvited (the person being love in this case). I don’t like it because it confuses me and puts me in confrontation with how my philosophy of love is tangled up in therapy-speak and spiritual concepts that aren’t properly investigated. I am bookmarking this as something to explore more thoroughly in another entry.