When was the last time you cried? Truly. When was the last time the flood gates opened and you just let loose with gigantic bursts of deep, heavy breathing and loud guttural sounds. Trying to catch your breath and unable to see for the blurred vision of, what feels like, buckets of warm salty water streaming from your eyes. It has been months for me. Not to say that I was counting the days between moments of anguish... which doesn’t mean to say that I only need pain and suffering to cry, but I really did think about how it has been a really long time since I truly cleaned my eyes and tear ducts out with this age old form of reconnecting with the inside self.
Today I chose as a day I needed to let loose, today was a day to open the doors and connect with some past sorrows that I hadn’t let go of completely yet... or will I ever let them go?! This past Christmas season was one that reconnected me with memories of my past... feelings of good and feelings of bad, feelings of sad and feelings of glad. Yet, I hadn’t really cried and just let it all out. Funny how we humans like to store up emotions and feelings inside of us... tucking them away like old newspaper articles that we think we will one day get around to read and ponder over.
This season for me feels like it’s been an indulgence in solitude. Not judging it good OR bad, it just is. Have time for oneself to really sink into things. Think about things, think about where I am, where I’ve come from and how far I’ve traveled. Moments of gathering in one’s wits about them to discover that we really are a full collection of encyclopedias under this shell of skin and bone... we have amassed a very large array of memories, stories, legends, truths, lies, hear-says and the likes. All summed up in the Encyclopedia of (insert your name here). Of course, it is unfinished and there are still many revisions to be made. But still... we’ve collected a whole lot of data and really only celebrate it once in a blue moon. Or at least once a year when the time-line changes from one century to the next, one decade to the next or one ... to the next.
Through our measuring, we get to take a peek into us and my measurement this at this time was one that I wanted to just let loose and let it all out. Take some time to gush... take some moments to just get it out. I am tired of storing things for a rainy day. (okay, bad choice of words for where I’m living at the moment... Vancouver, British Columbia, can be a pretty rain laden place to live) But really, just tired of saving things up for the moments that I “think” I would need them again. It’s like saving that favourite essay from grade six that you got an “A” on. Or the teddy bear from childhood. It surely will not last long in the hands of a new born child these days, and we attach so many memories to it... what the heck do we do with them? Laugh over them, cry over the and then what? Just like stored up memories, we have to put them somewhere. It’s just like those plastic wraps that newspapers or magazines come in...it’s plastic... what the hell do we do with it next. It will get stored in the trash, never to decompose and never to be needed again. One use, one time and then... just takes up space.
Here is to our moments... our indulgences of solitude... that bring us into the clearing out phase of our lives. What really do we need in life than to spend the time we have in this moment with what ever and whom ever it gets to play with next. What is your indulgence? Where do you find your solitude? When did you have a good clearing out of your tear ducts last?
...and breathe.