Finding My Star

Is it still getting dark,

Or is it the light of the moon?

I see my friends standing tall, standing strong.

Is it your voice that I hear,

Is it you, is it true?

Or is it the wanderings of my weary mind.

-“Song at Dusk” by Emily Metcalf

It is dusk, and I am sitting on my porch staring at the green young oak, the willow, and walnut in my back yard. Suddenly, I feel myself opening. The breeze is speaking to me and moving about the trees. My kitten is prancing and hanging out with me on the porch. I feel myself opening to the language of the trees, as I have done before in my past. Tears begin to flow from my eyes. I can feel everything. I can feel the plant life, and as I speak to it, and tears flow from my eyes, I take in the language of the trees as easy as breathing the oxygen that they pour from their leaves. That is the language of plant life. It is as subtle and healing as taking a deep breath of much needed air. I feel seen, and though I am crying, I know that I am not alone and that I am happy. I mourn for myself and the planet, and I pray to my mother that is beneath my feet. I am reminded how the earth and the life that grows here is very much a friend and a guide to me connecting with my inner self. The water that is flowing from my eyes is as cleansing as a river. Finally, I must get up from my chair and go inside to blow my nose, as I can no longer breathe through it, and I go to lay down in bed, feeling heard, feeling seen, and feeling connected to the gentle love and life that lives inside of me having been born of this home I call earth.

I am constantly in awe lately of how clear life is. I give credit to the fact that I do not get intoxicated anymore. The fact that I was able to connect to my inner voice and the trees in this way, reminds me of my younger self. A self that was clean and new in my teens. I was a seer. I spoke the the trees often. This was before my heart was broken, and I suffered a handful of psychotic breaks in my life. This was before I learned to numb the pain with alcohol, so that I could get through and manage my day to day. I learned to create a false world of satisfaction. I would connect with the most primal emotions only, the carnal passion of love making and the emotion of anger. This would keep me feeing alive, and I found purpose in this. Then, I made a decision to pursue healing full time, and I also found Jesus. Eight years passed as I prayed, meditated, walked, and wrote my thoughts down. Gradually, I arrived at the day that I would give up drinking, and the regular participation in the chronic numbing of my spirit. This was also coupled with episodes returning to what had become a fairly stable existence, and I was forced to reckon with the very raw face of my illness once again. Over the last eleven months, I have learned to abstain from alcohol, and ALSO practice a program that helps me participate in healing through the sobriety that I am pursuing.

I have felt tired, and I have asked myself why I chose to live the very placid existence of not drinking with friends and family to pass the time. The answer came to me last evening while crying and communing with the trees; and as I checked in with myself this morning on my porch. I can read the subtleties again. And slowly, my long sought after desire of uncovering my true self is finally coming true. There was a time, at seventeen, the number of the Star archetype, when I was coming into myself. At this time it all felt so real, so magical. I was connected, and in this connection I knew that I was not alone. Jesus is real to me, and is very important in me finding hope; in rising from the ashes. But just knowing that there is love, and moving forward in blind faith is not everything. I wish to feel her, the trees; my true love once again. And eventually this has come to me. Perhaps the music is sweeter, the silence much less vacant, and thus the emotions can find their way to the surface; the good ones, not just the pain, passion, and anguish. So now, let it all continue. Let the healing continue to find its way to my consciousness, and penetrate the surface of my being, as I cull the song that is me, and always has been there, though I could not hear her.