Rambles: Rediscovering Hope on Healing Wings
Are you the kind of person who is intensely impacted by your environment? Like… if there is a lot of clutter, do your thoughts multiply like the goblets in Belatrix’s vault at Gringotts? Will the loudest shade of orange you’ve ever seen double your heartrate? And if the blue light of the internet is flickering in a corner in the dark, does your spine try to crawl out of your skin to get away from it?
Nomadic living isn’t for everyone — and while I can be happy with very little, being broke has worn me down. I’m so sensitive now.
I don’t know if I’ve always been so sensitive to sensory input, or if it came after too many years of living on the road and between AirBnBs… but I do remember spending most of my high school days in the quietest, coziest places I could find. Mostly in my bedroom or on my abuelita’s couch, always with lazy afternoon sun or cozy winter precipitation, always with a book or notebook. Maybe I needed that gentle, glowing environment more than I realized back then…
I ask myself: What changed?
And I know the answer: Romance, which I dive into headfirst, keeps leaving me overwhelmed by resentment and regret. I thought my rose-colored glasses were to blame, and the shame and grief I felt at potentially having to remove them forever broke me apart.
But I’m starting to notice something else… Along with those rosy shades I like to layer everyone in, I also have a very sharp and brutal awareness of behavior patterns. And while I believe people can change, I don’t believe they often do. Have I become a cynic?
There was a time I believed courageous, compassionate honesty could make anything better, make everyone happier…
But with the turmoil of the past few years, years spent running and gasping for air between waves of heartache and self-induced disappointment… Well, I guess the constant insistence on pushing my boundaries, trying new things, opening my heart and mind, diving into risks and trusting myself to learn how to fly on the way down, kind of got to me.
They say to spend your 20s being selfish…
And at 28 I’m reflecting and thinking: Well, I did it.
Kind of.
I was selfish in that I fed my love-life generously…
Greedily, and incessantly.
Carelessly. Unquestioningly.
And I was more selfish in a way I didn’t realize was possible:
I was selfish in the way that I was lazy with myself; I neglected myself. I ignored the need for boundaries, starved and dissociated rather than risk being an inconvenience in the slightest to anyone else. I walked out of rooms where I would have to set boundaries in order to stay, and instead chose to be alone or distract myself with the comfortable intoxication of romance.
It was fun and magical… until it wasn’t.
And then I sat in a dark cave (very nearly literally) for a year, burned out. With broken wings and a shattered sense of self…
My mind lost its sharpness and clarity, my values got muddled up with needs and grief and desperation for comfort, and in so many ways, I felt like an incapable child again. The wings of hope and inspiration that lifted me up all the times before, the wings of resilience and quick-thinking that always saved me from hitting the ground before, gave out and I hurtled toward the ground without a fraction of a thought toward any god to pray to for safe landing…
I sat in the dark, in the cold, and then in the unbearable heat, through desolation and sensory overload, buried in an avalanche of shame and stuck between the tallest mountains of fear and distrust I’ve ever seen.
At 27, I felt simultaneously the most beautiful and the most broken I’ve ever been, and I didn’t think there was any coming back from it. There were times I almost didn’t. Times I ran, and (unlike the strong girl I was before) came crawling back with my tail between my legs. Exhausted and starving. Open to any help that would come, because suddenly I couldn’t just toughen up and get through it on my own anymore.
I got caught in a spider-web kind of romance.
The kind you know you should leave, but that you can’t get more than one hand free from at a time…
It wasn’t until I was honest with myself and my lover about what I wanted, how unhappy I was, and how incredibly angry and sad I felt with them that I was finally able to surrender to the hopelessness that was consuming me… and feel the broken pieces of my wings start to reset.
Painful, brutal, courageous, necessary honesty finally offered some potential of healing… Of being able to fly again.
Despite all the doubt and confusion, the exhaustion and the weakness… it was honesty and courage that saved me, once again.
I reached out to old acquaintances, put myself on Bumble BFF, picked up The Little Book of Big Dreams, and started surrounding the spark of a fire in my heart with other sparks — this time the kind that wouldn’t burn out or fade away based on anything between our legs or where we laid our heads at the end of the day. A bird walking around on two shaky little legs, I started to nurture community within and around myself again. And little by little, I think it’s safe to say, my wings have been healing… and I’ll soon be able to fly again.
With the return of my strength and hope and faith in the ability of genuine love and kindness to brighten the whole world, one person at a time, I’ve been thinking about ways to re-enter the world of entrepreneurship.
I can’t push it the way I did before, and I don’t really want to be the reason more dancing reels and TikTok ads are created… but I’ve been thinking about the way I can make even the darkest of times into a fairytale, the experience I have with spinning weakness into strength, and giving a voice to courage when doubt roars over creatives like a fire-breathing dragon.
What if we practice making life into a fairytale together?
What if I share the questions I ask, the perspectives and angles I can’t help but see, the stories and characters who inspire me, and the way I collect aspects of a dream to create and [dare I call it] worship a dream board into reality? (“Nurture,” instead, if worship offends you.)
I love fairytales, but I write best in nonfiction.
Maybe I can show you what I see in the autumn leaves, the double-shot of espresso beneath the tin roof of a coffeeshop in the rain, what lives in the folds of a tiny mushroom cap, and the secrets condensed within tufts of springtime moss. Maybe I can teach someone else the ways you learn to love yourself through the darkest of times, to look in the mirror and not have to lie or be destroyed by what peers back out at you, to touch your body tenderly with the love and caring you deserve…
I don’t know the first thing about stocks and investments, manufacturing, or pouring concrete. But I know stories, I know love, and I know healing. Would you like to have a cup of tea and talk about it all with me?
