I try to remember to breathe, but my chest weighs too much. Nothing is the same. Everything hurts. In my mind I see the upside-down car pushed to the side of the freeway today. I see the tremendous splash it made, a fountain of millions of stinging needles. I wonder what it was like. I wonder what to do now.

The thought — I am lonely — blindsided me. I am lonely? Really? In this house with my soulmate, the man who now calls me his beloved, his twin flame? How can I be lonely?

I am, and I am afraid.

My bed calls to me, yards of white fluffiness, pillowy billowy down-filled whiteness. Come to me, it says. Rest in me. Sleep. Fall into oblivion. And so I do. I want to. I want to not think not feel not hurt not remember how alone I am. Not.

And I am angry. There is far too much Not in my world, I think, too much that I am Not. Too much that I will Not. Too much that I can Not.

I am. I will. I can.

Not?

So what do I do other than plow through this? One foot in front of the other, one breath, one heartbeat. The space between the footsteps, the breaths, the beats seems enormous. Stretching wide and far and deep. A chasm yawning into loneliness.

Burrowing into whiteness, blocking out the insistent voice of Fear, sinking deep into quiet. If you need me, that’s where I will be.

Once in a great while, once a year or so, I sleep the sleep of the dead. A whole day when I can do nothing but sleep. Oh, I try to make it through wakefulness when this happens, but after an hour or two awake — even after coffee — all I can do is collapse again, gratefully, on my bed. Comatose.

And I begin dreaming.

No, not dreaming, exactly. More like falling into a world that I cannot escape. In this state I find myself dreaming that I am sleeping and want to awaken. I try and try to open my eyes but cannot. They are glued fast shut. I call out for help again and again but there is no sound. I am seemingly forever doomed to my endless dream.

That is what I am living now. Sleeping, yet knowing that an awakened state is so close yet seemingly unattainable, if only I could open my eyes.

The days pass, growing longer as we approach the Solstice. Then they will shorten again. Meanwhile I will be crying out soundlessly, trying to open sightless eyes, feeling the world move past me.

Sad. I feel the loss of something I really really wanted.

Angry. I had expectations. Made choices based on them. Was I imagining things? Fooling myself? Did I believe in something that wasn’t there?

Afraid. Now what? I don’t know anymore. I thought I did. Today I want to try to find my foundation again, but I don’t yet know where to look.

I do not exist.

My life lies in boxes stacked two floors beneath where I sit. Halfway in and halfway out. I know I need to set foot on the ground outside, to take ownership of the air around me and breathe it in, but I am paralyzed. Ghostly. It is easier to burrow under a comforting white softness, choking out all air and possibility, than it is to open to what might hurt.

I am afraid and I am alone.

To be fair, the days since my one-year cancer anniversary, coincidentally also the day I packed a truck with the boxes of my fragmented life and drove it 80 miles south into the golden city, have mostly been magical in ways I have been dreaming of for so long. But now as I retreat into my ghost self I can only see gray. I know that my superpower of remaking realities works both for and against me and in truth, most of the time I only see the dark side of it, the lack, the fear of not remembering anything good and letting it all slip through my fingers even as I try to hold more tightly, but right now all I feel is missing.

To refresh, in case Algebra II was (cough) a few years ago for you: a polynomial is an expression of finite length constructed of variables and constants.

[What, you don't trust my truthiness in math? Go on, Google it.]

It has not escaped me that I am involved in the creation of a polynomial. I already told you that 1 + 1 = 3, remember? Well, what does 2x + y equal? Or 2x + 2y? Or … sure, the permutations are endless here.

To be sure, this equation is all new to me. Every equation is the building of a new world. I am just really glad that the magic is returning to this one after having walked through fire. What does not turn to ash and burn away into the atmosphere is made stronger. The path ahead is still uncertain — all paths are — but is made bolder now than before.

I am cold. I miss the warmth. I long to feel it permeate my limbs, my skin, my heart.

I’ve used a cliff metaphor perhaps too frequently in the past for it to fully fit now, but I do feel that I have at least dipped a toe into the waters of change. Change happens slowly sometimes, stealthily, without us noticing, like a cat climbing into your lap: one paw, one whisker at a time so you will fail to notice movement at all until there are four paws of purring goodness curled contentedly where a few moments ago there were none. I feel that cat now, or one of her paws…

A friend tells me I know what is right for me. The next step. I look to the gods for reassurance, to the winds, to the stones, but they remain silent. All I notice is growth. Movement. All that is required is to step into the flow and let the current add its weight to my own. Exponential. Like breathing. I send my own green shoots deep underground where they grab hold and grow into exploding brilliant stars overhead, magnified by the rains and winds of my soul’s longing.

I know what I need to do now. The song of it fills me, warms me, exposes me to the soft warm breath of spring.

Last week over a million people read my story. Well, not my story exactly. A few sentences that briefly sketched my story. I have felt fearful angry tentacles reaching towards me, wondering how I could be the person they feared I was, and how I could be sitting here on my robin’s egg blue couch overlooking blue-gray waters while three beating hearts breathe 3000 miles away. I do not feel connected to those tentacles, I do not allow them to reduce me to a sobbing floor puddle, and yet they signify the disconnect we all share. We are all trying to do the best we can, in any moment. We are all trying to not feel so alone. We are all trying to connect to something outside ourselves, to feel allied in some way.

If I could love the angry tentacles, would anything change?

Closer to home, or at least closer to my heart, in these days a chasm has opened. In the chasm are my fears. I have fed them with new fears and protective patterns designed cleverly to mask the fears. The chasm has become a great gaping maw, begging to be fed. I can barely see the heart that stands on the other side, shrouded in mists of illusion. The feeling of disconnect, of loss of something that not long ago was a bright star of promise in my heart’s sky, feeds the gaping maw and leaves me without breath. Arid. Desiccated. It is possible, I think, to weave a gossamer to the other side and walk across over the fears clutching at my feet. I wonder if I have the courage to walk that thin thread to see what remains standing on the other side.

And yet I cannot yet embrace it. Embrace the suckage. I smile slightly, inwardly, as I write that. A wry smile. Rueful. It’s irony, after all, and I dig the ironic bizarreness that life is. Except when it’s about me, of course. Me? I have to be Perfect. No suckage for me.

I could say “Thanks, Dad” for that one. A big part of my imprinting is in this concept. Let me see if I can explain it to you; it’s a bit circular but to me makes perfect sense since I have been living it so long. But if I throw out the keyword phrases of high self expectations, heavy judgement of self and others, low self esteem, and heavy arrogance, do you begin to get the picture? In my growing-up world and the one I have created ever since, I have had to be perfect. I have judged others for their seeming imperfections, largely because 1) I am a mirror and I have those same imperfections, if not more, and 2) judging others takes the onus and focus off me. In fact, a big part of why my work appeals to me as much as it does is that it allows me to sit there on a guru pedestal and reflect stuff back away from me and toward my clients when it begins to hit home a little too much. I cannot suck. It is not possible, not part of the reality I created.

God, I suck.

I could say “Thanks, Dad” in a sarcastic way. Thanks for all the shit you gave me. Thanks for all the pain. Thanks for being the one who turned me into this ball of suckage. Except … what is the point in that? In blame? I have held my father accountable (in my mind) for a lot of my “stuff” for a long time. I would rather release that now. I could feel into the possibility that 1) I chose this experience (duh), and 2) it’s actually a gift (!), and 3) it’s up to me to figure out how to see it that way.

All this comes up for me because there is a man who loves me and my inner response is to run. Danger! Danger! Abort! Abort! He loves me and I think I should love him back by being Perfect. Because in my mind that’s what I should be. And if I am not Perfect, he won’t love me. In my mind. This is the very thing that has ended relationships in the past. Every single one, really. When someone got too close to seeing me, I’d set up a defense. Make them suck, in my mind. Concentrate on their flaws until that’s all I could see. Rationalization! Yay! Or I would set up a wall. You are getting this close and that’s all. Many people are happy with that. You can live an entire life not truly connecting.

Except, I have always held an ideal in my mind. That there was, somewhere, someone out there who would truly see me. Who would love me, simply because I am me. Who would accept my full heart and take it in. Love it. Who would be incredibly and intimately connected with me in every way. Who would feel wonderful just to be near. Who would be a real partner to me, without an agenda other than wanting ways to connect, love and support me and want the same from me. I have wanted that, so much, and always thought it was possible. Someday. Somewhere. With someone.

And I have that, I believe I have that now, and it scares me. I don’t want to fuck this up. This is what I have been wanting.

Why this man? Why now?

Destiny?

Because I am ready for this. Because he is. I have been presented with almost the same opportunity in the past … except it wasn’t the same. Not even close. Same but not-same. Just let me love you. I have heard that before. But there were triggers. Or they hadn’t done their work. There was a charge. An agenda. Something was missing. And I was different, too, for those men-of-the-past. More scared. More in denial. Less self-aware. Less close to the internal ball of suckage that’s inside me. More. Less.

I am scared to let this amazing man truly see me because I don’t want to see me. I want to run home, close my blinds, turn on the TV, get a bag of chips, and disappear into the couch cushions. I want to and yet he looks at me with eyes of understanding and love and invites me (invites!) to undress my fears and be naked for him. Along with him. Beside him. No requirements, just an invitation. Just a witness to whatever and however I am. And the irony in this is part of what endears him to me are all his fears, nakedness, quirks, the very things in me that I want so badly to hide from him (and myself).

What if I find out that I truly do suck? That I don’t actually live in a Lake Wobegon world where I am always above average? From here, standing on the edge of suckage, it feels like my world would implode if I found that out. If I am not as awesome as I wished I was (but have never truly believed about myself and so have set up layers and layers of defenses about, especially to myself). If I am not special. If I am like everyone else.

I counsel people frequently about what it is like to let go of identities. I have gone through this myself. Once I identified strongly with being a mother. I changed my lifestyle and forced myself to let go of that identity. It was extremely frightening. I didn’t know who I was. I felt like I didn’t have a foothold, that I was falling. So what did I do? I created a new identity. Helper. Healer. Guru. And now, through this invitation to let myself love and be loved by this man, I am asking myself to let go of that identity as well. I have nothing else yet to hang onto. It feels as though I am falling through space, formless infinite space, and it scares me, thinking that there is nothing at my core to grab onto except for suck. And I scramble back — a fingerhold, a toehold — trying to keep from falling into the ball of suck that is at my core.

The thought strikes me that there could be another identity out there that’s even better than the one I struggle to hold onto. And then I wonder if that thought isn’t in itself sort of self-destructive, leading to more Denial of Inner Suck. Then I employ a whole stream of shoulds and tell myself that I should just be allowing. Just be in the present. Just let things unfold. Stop trying to DO. Be.

I am going to work with this concept of inner suck, even though it scares me. I am going to love and be loved, even though it scares me. I want to be a better person.

And I resisted being here. Cactus. Bah.

Mostly I felt lack. My heart has been elsewhere. My thoughts have not been on the face of Kali that lies in the bright unforgiving sky and the rocky lunar landscape. I resisted what was offered.

On Day Four I decided to embrace this place as best I could. I was here; why not? Be One with What Is. I knew that the rest of my days here would unfold and I could either be open to what came or … not. Either way, I have a ticket home tomorrow. Why not be curious about what I could learn?

1. I now have clarity I didn’t have before. Yes, time brings clarity and in my time distorted world the past week has really been a month, but the simple act of time passing doesn’t explain the depth of clarity I feel now about What Comes Next.

2. I offered clarity to several people. Simple conversations — asking questions with an intention to create space for clarity to emerge — often yield powerful results. This is one of my superpowers. Score! Clarity for me and clarity for my friends.

3. Creation. Things become more real when you talk about them as if they are real. I set a lot of intention this week through casual conversation.

4. Kali smiled.

I feel complete about the desert. Today I went up into a canyon and sat on a sandy beach next to a snow-fed stream. A brown butterfly whirled around and touched down next to me. I knew it was time to leave, time to begin What Comes Next.

Oh, and tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. No pressure or anything, but I think it will be wonderful.