The sense of nothing

I remember being in church one night and the pastor prayed for the Holy Spirit to fall on everyone in the room. No older than 16, my mouth tightened with braces, in love with the boy standing two seats behind me. My older sister stood to my left. I was standing in the exact middle of the church, six rows back from the altar, six chairs in from either aisle. The pastor started walking through the aisles, touching people as he went through. I closed my eyes as I heard the crying get closer to my row. A slowly building wave forming in the room. I’ve heard people pray since I was born, a second language to me. Suddenly I felt the tip of my nose get hot. I knew the pastor was right in front of me. I could hear my mom crying somewhere in the front. My mom’s cries were like dog whistles to my ears. She always cried when she prayed. The heat from my nose spread to the rest of my face and I felt two things at one time; the pastors hands on my head and my body leaving that sixth row. I do not know how long I had my eyes closed or how fast my lips moved as I prayed. How deep I cried. Looking back, it seemed as if I cried for my future. My younger self somehow getting a glimpse of my whole life while standing in a sliver of heaven, hands outstretched. I don’t remember coming back to this reality. Maybe I never did. But I do know I have been chasing that feeling since that long night in the basement we called a church.

“Do you feel like you need to be calmer?”

I’ve been living in my new home for a little over a month. Island life. When I first moved here, I was afraid of everything. My body tensed at the sight of living creatures. The sound of the dogs barking in the distance made my heart race. My old home was so far removed from the nature, I forgot what the Earth sounded like, what it felt like to be enmeshed with it. Mahogany and fruit trees surround my new house. The backyard rolls into a hill of grass and the ocean sits as a constant rectangle of blue on the horizon. For a couple of weeks, I only came outside to get into the car. The first time I went to the beach, I couldn’t stop checking my beach bag because I felt like I forgot something. I couldn’t stop opening it and rummaging inside of the bag, constantly wiping the sand off of it. I had a feeling of longing but I didn’t know what I was checking for. Everyday I would wake up with the ocean hanging in the horizon, ignore it and scroll on Instagram. Checking. I would pour some wine in a tall glass. Checking. I would pour some rum in a short glass. Checking. I would pull the blankets over my head so tight I couldn’t tell when the day came. Hiding. On the last day of November, I was bored of myself. Had The Fates decided this for me or was this the fate I walked into? Whose life was I playing out on this green stage?

“You have to kill the seed before it can take root.”

December arrived and with it, a cool breeze from the ocean. I started opening myself up to my new environment. Opening the windows of my life so that the breeze could slip through the gaps and pull everything out. I started exercising again and stopped drinking. I felt this pull to reconnect my soul to my body and my body to the Earth. The memory of that night in church doesn’t pop into my head often but when it does, I know I am out of alignment with myself. My own silent fire alarm. Once you reach the point you’ve been waiting for, sometimes the momentum leaves and you wait for the next what else. As the high from moving across the ocean dissipated, I found myself feeling like there was nothing that could be as exciting as the move I just completed or my future wedding. I was wrong, obviously, but for the sake of being dramatic, the present felt incredibly dull at the time. But as Tolle said, the present moment is all we have. So here I am, sitting outside writing this post as I watch the wind run through the banana leaves. I pray I never get used to being able to see the ocean from front door. That the crickets that sound like a buzzing generator at night are always there to lull me to sleep. That my eyes never get used to seeing the color green and that I can always hear my mother in the distance.

The beauty of life is that we can always start again. Thank you for being here ❤