Prayer for a nervous system.

I got hit with a surprising amount of sadness. Apparently I still want to control when it comes, or fill myself with so many distractions that I have no time for it. Truly I prefer these distractions to the feelings that are so much my nervous system feels like it is shutting down.

All I know to do is go back into my rhythm, my practices of ritual. My prayer.

I wash the dishes. I set the coffee pot. I pour a glass of water and fight myself to drink it.

I get my camera and go in front of the bronze mirror that has become my daily window into photo sessions of a frazzled, worn, confused body.

It is where I am able to allow myself to see the reality of sadness through a lens of compassion. If only for a moment.

My nervous system is holding time with fear and a rise of cellular restructuring so deep inside I can't yet access it.

It feels wrong somehow when it is all so damn hard and so amazing all at once.

Questions of how am I fucking up mix with celebratory decorating of space.

If I live in the gray and the white space who am I?

I want to live inside a glass of water and not make another decision about how I am feeling or who I am hurting or who isn't adoring or who I am too much for or what it all is leading to or how to do that next thing that wants to be born or if it was stupid to put on red lipstick today of all days.

The beauty in my life in my nervous system in my heart is beyond waking into dreams and visions that I knew how to ask for.

And yet the sadness. It pulls itself up and feels like a million stars exploding from my eyes down to my vagina. It feels like pleasure and ache and longing.

The reminder that the laundry is ready to switch to the dryer as the timer goes off and the little feet go running down the hall to be the first one there, quarters tight in their hands.

The wine glass with the stain of my lips lingering as I stir the soup pot.

I sit before the bronze mirror that welcomes me back in ritual of seeing and being seen.

One more time. One more look. One more feel.

(From my Thursday morning love notes, Making Space.)