I sit here, with everyone scribbling around me, happily engaged with the prompt. All I sense is a darkness, welling up and overwhelming words as they try to form.
Recently I’ve experienced anhedonia, loss of ability to feel pleasure. It’s a horrible feeling, like the capacity for joy was surgically removed from my body. No joy, no awe. The ability to see beauty in the serrated ridges of the mountain, just gone.
Jess said she felt like this, like she had lost the connection to landscape. Perhaps I understand now why her options may have seemed clear. She was a beautiful, passionate being. Without that spark, if unable to look at the sea or the sunset and feel something, was there a point to continuing?
As directed by the sea, I continued. Continue.
After a time the colors of the sunset bled back, slowly, and I moved past that dim place. But here in this journaling session, despite company and best intentions, rises this darkness.
I don’t turn away. I don’t run. I don’t refuse. I watch it ripple out. I let it be.
This is my learning. Not to dissociate, but to sit with this sensation and know it from bones and breath.
I need to know the texture of this darkness. The temperature. The viscosity.
How deep does it go?
Can I sink beneath the surface and breathe with it rather than fighting?
Is it woven of my thoughts, or is it an older cloth, of which I have only caught the edge?
I have a flame and a coracle. An open heart and a will to be with the discomfort of not-knowing, the energy that sustains this adventure. Hope, the smallest boat. Ready to navigate with uncertainty, my old friend.
If I can drop the conditioning that says 'be afraid', then perhaps I’ll find I belong here. Not a guest, sailing on uncharted waters, but of the waters themselves. A darkrainbow tailshimmer quickness of fish among weeds, deep under lake ice.
Perhaps this darkness is alive, threaded with stars.
Gratitude for these lessons:
For the Wild: Gabes Torres on Journeying Together
https://forthewild.world/listen/gabes-torres-on-journeying-together-326
The Five Inner Senses - Bo Forbes
https://boforbes.com/blog/the-five-inner-senses-of-embodiment/
I was beside myself: On Not Being Present - Caroline Ross