Day 85: Horse Latitudes

Maybe it's the oscillating effects of this remedy I'm on. Maybe it's the cold wind or the meeting I forgot I have on Tuesday. Maybe it's the fact that I'm at that horrible two-thirds point of this book and it's a hard final push to the end. I know I have to keep going, but GAWD. I'd rather go sit on a beach. Half the people I know are doing that this week.

And then there's Salad & Smoothie Purgatory, a feeling of culinary ennui so profound that I'd rather not eat at all than choke down another banana/mango/zucchini. Last night, after eating my body weight in homemade guacamole (yes, it's raw), I decided to cook a couple of those trendy Omega-3 eggs. One of them tasted like fish. I'm serious. I imagined these raggedy-ass chickens chowing down on ground up fish bones which immediately led to picturing all the Chicken McNugget urban legends you hear about beaks poking up through the tender "white meat" and I almost puked.

Maybe this is what they mean when they say you can't go home again.

Maybe this is what Dr. Ka-POW meant by 'a sense of inevitability.'

Once you've crossed over, whether it's going raw, coming out or finishing your novel, life just ain't the same anymore. It's a new set of rules. Your old life is gone and the new one awaits, no matter how hard you resist or how much you wish you could take it all with you like some sort of security blanket.

I've been thinking about my divorce a lot lately. Getting accepted into the anthology has meant almost a dozen emails beginning with the greeting 'Dear Divorcees.' I had forgotten that means me. I'd also forgotten that first year when all I wanted was my life back. My horrible, joyless, empty life. It sounds strange, but I think it's all-too human. Pain was my comfort zone, and I wanted it back: its predictability, its safety, its familiarity.

And now, almost six years later, I find myself grieving the loss of another Dis-comfort Zone. Only my life has changed so much, I couldn't pinpoint any particulars, beyond a general lack of consciousness. I was sleeping. And now I'm awake.

Drea always says once you know something, you can't un-know it.

You can't go back to the way things were because the way things were no longer exists. You have to move forward. And you do that by staying still. All these paradoxes, but it's true. When you're feeling pain, boredom or confusion, you can't run from it. You can't hide. The only way out is through. The way forward is stillness. It's not here yet, the clarity, the sense of purpose, but it's coming.

"Never give up. This may be your moment for a miracle." - Greg Anderson