what happens on the day after

On most mornings I wake up thinking thank God. Thank Goddess, Thank Spirit. Thank Source. Thank you – whoever/whatever you are – for giving me this life. Thank you, thank you.

Thank you for the strength, for serendipity, for freckles.

Thank you for sunshine and living plants, for love.

For awareness, for sensations, for time. I thank you.

Thank you for the awful thing that happened. For the insight into my own will to survive. For my own dogged persistence to kick in. Thank you for the moment when her hand was covering my mouth so that I too could not breath. Thank you for that moment when she almost took her last breath while slowly saying, “You’re coming with me.” He arm tighter around me and her hand pushing in. “You must suffer too.” She squeezes and her breathing slows and so does mine.

My face hurts. “You will watch this,” she says again.

Thank you for breaking me, I think to myself. Everyday. Thank you for breaking me apart so that I could put myself back together. Thank you for pulling the biggest heaving sobs out of my body at that moment. For putting enough power into the depths of me to break free. Thank you.

Thank you Goddess for giving me the strength to wrestle away and out of her grasp.

For showing me the way. For giving me the opportunity to draw my boundary there and move into a different frame of mind. Thank you. I could not move into the larger compartments of my mind without that day to map the movement. Thank you, I think to myself almost every day.

For today, I wake up entangled in the mass of two bodies that equal something so much bigger than myself. That equal something more than just working out our childhood traumas and understanding the realities of our past. Today, I wake up to someone who pushes out with me instead of into me. Today, I have the world at my fingertips, just enough to launch me - and today, I move outward more and more.

Today, I look into the eyes of a friend. I look at her and I look out at the world with her. I see my strengths and I see my genius. I am not just capable, but I am doing. I am not just able, I am witness to. I am moving – always moving.

But sometimes, sometimes

I wake to the ire. I am outraged. I want justice.

I want the world to be fair.

I want to think that I could have come to this place where I am without the struggle. And then I am angry. Angry that it is not possible to come to this place without having gone to that place.

I want to be angry at myself for spending too much money. For putting too much of myself into a shallow pit where I was too big to live. For squeezing my consciousness into the tiny crevices that needed tending to. For expecting myself to go against my own gut and go against my own will for the sake of another selfish person.

I want to be angry at her and I want to sit in it again and wallow for awhile.

Angry.

Angry comes so easy when I think this.

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