cliodhna’s wave

I have been given a gift of solitude. Two days alone in a house in Chihuahua city. It wasn´t supposed to be this way, my partner having promised he would be there to collect me. I was pretty annoyed I tell ya when I first read his email but then I realized I wasn’t actually really annoyed, just thinking I should be annoyed and I calmed down and you know it is actually good to have this time to catch up with myself and let myself rest and have silent time for a day or two before properly diving back into the fray of life and all its attendant madness.

We are driving to the border to change our visitor status and then we drive to Guanajuato to collect the rest of our stuff. We are getting a new house here in Chihuahua city and I am organizing my English language lessons for when I return to Palmarejo.

I am still coming together after two weeks of emotional intensity, whether mine or other peoples and when you are in a group like that it doesn’t really matter whose it is. After two weeks I could feel my hold on my inner calm wearing, which of course just means I have more stuff to look at, but it is a longing to be alone again, without the constant friction of being aware and present in every moment. Makes me realize how much time I spend not being present when I go to these journeys. All the stuff comes up. It comes up in me, it comes up in somebody else and triggers something in me, I compare and judge myself for it, I make mistakes and judge myself for it. I come clean and tell all and it feels so much better until the next stuff comes up and I have to do it all over again.

What did I discover… well if it can be put into words. Here is the biggie; I had an epiphany about how I have resisted my parents trying to teach me things all my life. I had always thought it was about music, or school, or the Irish language (when I was six I told my mother this was a stupid language and I am not learning it… I didn´t) but I had a feeling then that it went way back before that. I think, possibly, that I was just resisting… full stop. I was not going to be who they wanted me to be but I didn’t really have anything else to be so I daydreamed glory and being amazing at something, anything, so they would have to think I was great. Combine dreams of glory with passive resistance and an insecurity complex about not being good enough and what do you have? Stuck.

The thing is I realized was that it wasn’t about them trying to make me into what they wanted or whether they were or not. I was in resistance even before they tried to teach me anything. I think I was born resisting being here. I know that sounds stupid but it made sense at the time it occurred to me. I don’t even know if it’s true or not, doesn’t really matter, what was great for me was the fact I saw it as mine, not theirs and so now I can keep it and own it.

So, I am going to stop resisting. It will take practice I am sure, I spent the last three days of the workshop with a tight band around my stomach. Pure resistance, my mind in a last ditch attempt to hang on, and I am sure it will use wily means and old tried and tested patterns to hold me here. But I have seen past it now so in the end it will have to let go and learn how to float.