It isn't really about my dogs.

The first-ish words I spoke to a human being today were, "I woke up feeling like my life is falling apart."

I thought I could get away with bringing both dogs outside to pee at the same time. The problem is you have to time it so no other animals are outside, if there are, which there were, Delilah Moon will literally take my arm off. And then Bunny will just start to run like her life depends on going as fast as she can towards I have no idea what.

I felt helpless. I felt angry that my dog does this to me. I felt weak because I can barely hold her. I felt angry because she makes it harder than I want it to be.

Now, most mornings I have it down to the exact moments. I know when the other people in the neighborhood are out with their dogs. I avoid her seeing the street. She is a lovely dog when she isn't working on ripping my arm out of the socket.

She loves other dogs. She is socially motivated which is why we got Bunny. She needed a dog.

And it wasn't at all about Delilah, we will get that under control, this is a very fixable issue. 

It was about me feeling like I was standing exposed and raw and helpless and not knowing.

All of a sudden, in this one moment I felt like time was up on not knowing. My trust in letting a decision fall into time's hands no longer felt valid.

In that moment all I could hear in my own head was, "I can't do this."

Something old and deep. I can't do this.

.......

My first baby having what they called colic and listening to her cry as I rocked her, swung her, praying and crying along for so many hours I couldn't breathe. "I can't do this."

Sitting outside of a social event I had been invited to by myself, in a building I had never been to before, terrified of walking in the door and having not had my usual two glasses of wine before. "I can't do this."

Having to ask for help picking my kids up from camp in the early days of being a single mom because my interstitial cystitis was so bad I could hardly walk. Having to ask for help. "I can't do this."

The morning before we told the kids we were separating, crying so hard I couldn't talk, hugging him in the kitchen before we got them all together on the old brown leather couch. "I can't do this."

The words, you're always sick. "I can't do this."

I can't do this.

The Full Moon. The first sober social gathering. The one month left to decide what comes next. The fear that I don't have the energy anymore. Post ovulation funk.

I have stood here so often that my feet have worn down the earth into permanent footprints.

I woke up feeling like my life is falling apart. I got angry at my discomfort.

The coffee pot is dusty from weeks of drinking tea to heal my gut. I pull it forward and let my hand fall into the dust, etching out four fingers and then I wipe the dust away and walk over to the sink filling the cold glass pot.

It feels like a heavy decision - 4 cups or 6? I choose 6.

I stand in the kitchen leaning against the counter with my eyes closed listening to the way the pot begins to heat the water and then so slowly starts to drip it into the filter of coffee. I have missed these sounds, this smell that reminds me of being a little girl and a teenager and a new mama and a single mom and whoever I am now.

I choose the mug that Pippa used each morning of the last retreat, the one that looks like waves. The mug comes with me to the bathroom and I start to clean off my face using my daughter's wipes and then a lavender witch hazel and then my favorite oil that calms my psoriasis. 

I know that this is my brokeness trying to take over all of it. I know that I am not drinking or eating or spending money before I pay the bills. I know I am not texting anyone in chaos. I know I am standing and looking in the mirror without a damn thing to keep me from feeling what wants to come through.

I can't do this.

OK. What can you do?

I see the scissors and I have a fantasy of taking them and just cutting and cutting and cutting through my hair, maybe bringing my bangs back.

OK. What else can you do instead?

I can tell the truth. That there are mornings when the broken parts and the shadows and the fears wake you up.

I can tell the truth. This moment feels icky and I change my outfit so many times because I can't figure out who I am today.

I can remember that nothing is different than it was yesterday when I felt my blessings and my joys and my love.

Maybe the most important thing of all of it: the footprints.

I know this place and I have spent every day of the last two years learning to be here without anyone to save me or anything to numb it. There are now weeks when I forget the footprints are there.

OK. What now?

I will close my eyes and sip hot coffee and I won't do anything I can't do until I can. 

I like that.

.......

Sabotage once was explained to me as a return to familiar before we are able to 'learn to live in a new climate.'

We have to give ourselves a slow, thoughtful chance to move back and forth from what was into what is. Eventually we don't have to visit what was for as long or feel stuck there because our now is our new safety. We can become again.

My word for this year is SAFE. It was so boring I fought it until it wouldn't leave me alone.

I will let this morning be the first visit from my word. I am safe standing in the worn footprints and I am safe when I step out of them.

There is not a single decision that I must make today other than nurturing that safety.

I would be safe if Delilah managed to pull out of my grasp and ran up to the other dogs. It has happened to the kids before and everything was OK.

I am safe during a little fight with my partner. I am safe when I run out of the 6 foods I can eat right now. I am safe in whatever outfit I choose to wear out today. I am safe to not go out to anything social for another six months or year or however long I need until I learn to live in a new climate.