Souless

I remember when it happened.

 About three years ago. 

I remember the circumstances that led to me being pushed beyond my limits. The stress had taken its toll. I remember being in the bedroom of the old house and backing against the wall because I no longer had the strength to support myself. I remember sliding down and sitting in a fetal position. I remember the tears would not come because I no longer had it in me to cry. I remember that feeling of numbness. That feeling of nothingness, the feeling of emptiness. The void of who I was, who I had spent years making myself out to be ---was now gone, with nothing to replace it. I felt soulless. This wasn’t about pride. It wasn’t about not getting what I wanted.  It wasn’t about having a hissy fit fueled by self absorption or conceit. I literally in that moment lost my soul. I was a shell. I was numb and hollow and empty in a way that could only feel like death.

When a Phoenix rises from the ashes it is a bold, fiery thing. The heat is unmistakable, undeniable; the power is beyond words and emotions. The Phoenix is powerful and knows that it will inevitably change. That it will rise again, that it will overcome, it will conquer, it will live another day to grow and strengthen and rise.

But people are not Phoenixes.  At least I am not.

I didn’t come back from there as a Phoenix. I didn’t rise and stand and feel my fire and my strength. I had no ability to take back  who I was, I didn’t have the strength to  stand, how I could I have the strength to fight. I didn’t have the strength to breath how could I become fire?

But time marches on. Like water, like fire, time leaves nothing untouched. Including me.

The reason that I remember that moment so well is because this week I felt the beginning of a lasting fire again.

Real fire, my fire. Not the fire that I had borrowed from others who had given me the strength to stand again, but I would have to return to them.  Not the fire that I had hoped would be there but could not feel.  Not the fires that I had seen flicker and die and then flicker and die so many times. 

This was the beginning of my fire again. It burned softly, steadily, and carefully. Like it was trying to make its way--- not just back into the world again, but to be seen and felt again.

It felt like I could feel my own soul again. It was not that “who I was “had begun to return. It was that “who I have always wanted to be” is again within my grasp. 

That is what it felt like to breathe in again and feel my breath, feel my life, and feel that somewhere sitting by my fire was my soul again. 

I think that when we all fall there is this idea that we rise as powerfully as we fall, or that we comeback like the Phoenix. 

But that doesn’t always happen, in fact, it mostly doesn’t happen. 

Roads back to the self when so much is lost, or roads down to another self, are long arduous journeys that take time. They are painful, they are difficult, and they are filled with road blocks that make all of us just want to sit down and ask ourselves   “ why am I doing this anymore? “  “Why am I challenging myself to grow?”  “ Why am I bothering when that last part of the road that I just came from - maybe that wasn't too bad. I think I remember that there were fewer rocks there. Maybe I should go back there.” 

Especially since there are no guarantees that at the end of the new road things will be better, or easier.

 But there is one promise. One promise that my Mom made to me years ago, that I hold onto like the air that I breathe, like the fire that warms me.  The promise that it will be different.

And so like time, like water, like fire, I am different now. 

I can feel myself retuning to me. Slowly, but steadily. 

Who I was, a provider, a lover, a lesbian. Who I have always wanted to be a provider, a lover, a lesbian….  I feel that fire again.

Small, steady, but warm.