Weathering

I spent a good portion of this year intensely afraid and ferociously angry. And by a “good portion,” I mean I felt these two emotions on varying degrees of intensity every single day.

Every. Single. Day.

I don’t think I’ve known true anger until this year when she took control, walked right into my soul, and (what felt like) molded herself to my insides never to be moved again. In the earlier days of this past year, Anger was the most selfish bitch. She knew I was vulnerable and she loved it. She liked when I couldn’t help but shrivel up so small that I might as well have floated up from my tiny spot on earth and disappeared among prettier things in life, like the moon and the stars. When I was small, she was as big as could be, taking up more and more space in my body and mind.

She watered my tears and made them icy hot. Hot enough that they would mix with poison still in my body and burn as they fell like nuclear bombs from my eyes.

She wrenched my heart around and around and around until I didn’t know if I would ever be able to take a clear or full breath again.

She found my anxiety, cowering in terror in the most private places of my mind and she hung her out to dry, naked and exposed, with nothing to reason with or cling to.

It was too much, I thought. Anger, this red hot beast that I had yet to claim as my own, was burning everything in her path and she didn’t care. She sent me scrambling every day, frantically trying to pour drops of what little water I had with me on the flames before the very last pieces of me turned to ash.

It was smoky and I was suffocating.

Surprisingly enough (or maybe it’s not), the one thing that reigned over the blistering Anger was Fear. If Anger was a hellish experience of inescapable heat, Fear was the ice that would freeze me over in less than an instant.

In the lifetime of this year, fear was so cold that she could conjure one idea, freeze it into the ever-playing movie of my mind, and force me to watch the same thought, the same “what if,” for days or weeks at a time.

…

So, where do you go when you’re caught between ice and fire?

Honestly, for most of this year, I stayed right there. Right smack dab in the middle.

I sat in angry, burning lava and I screamed until I didn’t.

I swam in the frigid waters of my fearful mind, and when my body gave in to the cold, I sank to the bottom and stayed there a while.

For most of this year, I have sat and thought and sometimes agreed to the idea that I may never again escape my ties to fire and ice. Even as I write this, I want to have a concrete answer to satisfy my story.

I have spent a lot of time trying to fight the angry fire burrowed in my belly and to soothe the frigid thoughts of fear that sometimes ache me to my bones. And, through it all, I have found that the more I’ve fought to return to a time in my life before ice and fire and before the intensity of Anger and Fear, the more those fires blazed within me and the more that ice pinned me right where I was.

I am a person who desires control and it did not bode well for me to give myself up to these elements. I still haven’t completely. It’s almost funny how feelings so natural oftentimes give the illusion that we are going against our own nature by feeling them.

In the spirit of honesty, I’m exhausted. I tell people I’m not built to fight fires or endure harsh elements, and yet, I do and I am.

In varying degrees and levels and experiences, we all are. We walk through the journey of our life, bare feet to the earth and toes pointed forward. Storms roll in and we weather those elements, unprepared, but we do.

And now we’re wet and a bit disheveled and our feet are muddy, but our toes are still pointed forward and we still walk.

My eyes have been averted and directed at this particular storm for most of my year. I’m drenched and my mind and body are bruised and a bit broken in some spots and I have plenty of scrapes and burns to go around. Anger is still warm and present and Fear is still a cold burden to carry.

But, I’m beginning to remember what it is to refocus my eyes. To blink out the remnants of a really big storm. To look down at the ground and see it supporting me, even after what we both just weathered. To see dirt in my nails and see that my toes are not just pointing forward, but that they're dug into the earth, expectantly, waiting for my cue to push on.

-Kels