The epiphany will soften me.
The mountains will be my breath-giving medicine.
The mountains will be my motivation to drive at dusk and at dawn to witness the landscape get lavished by the cosmos, by sun.
The mountains will be waiting to greet me at the end of the neighborhood road that melts into highway.
The mountains will jolt me out of my complaints, constrictions, concerns and return me to the resonance that frees and centers me.
And the mountains will be there at the end and beginning of the road, emanating a pure stillness that’ll sweep out my mental noise.
At first, I’ll not notice the mountains hinted in the near-horizon.
I’ll be busy routing and orienting myself with the pathways I know, and I’ll be slightly sleep-deprived and eager to escape a too tiny for my free-spirited self Airbnb.
There will be a droning AC unit that’ll consume and chew on my ears. It’ll be the first thing I notice when I walk into the cramped room, and it’ll be the last.
My sensitivity will be coming back online after a decade of it being suppressed and squashed. My boundaries will be bettered and practiced every day with simple and significant asks, a check-in that’ll occur throughout the day to lovingly tend to my present self. My creative liberation will be cultivated by how I care, befriend, and tend to the relationship I have with myself, with my connection to the sacred, to the divine heart.
And all of this will be challenged by the antagonistic AC.
Immediately, I’ll know that the AC unit is too loud for my ears, disruptive and distracting, and I’ll attempt to dutifully follow the settings to shush or minimize the artic racket, but it’ll morph into a snore and snort.
Mind-meddling reason will dominate over my thumping heart, a quickening beat telling me this space doesn’t suit.
I’ll resort to slide open the window (the only window, and a small boxy one that looks like a microwave) instead of messaging my host to seek another solution.
My conflict-avoidance conditioning will clasp around my throat, and will result in restless and insomniac nights, in nightmares populated with attacking snakes and extended relations, and in an old trauma resurfacing – another window left open in a city hours away, and someone with ill-intentions peering in.
I’ll realize this on my second to last night. I’ll unravel the anxiety to the exact point in time when I did not speak up and ask for what I need. There will be hot tears spilled, wounds reopened, and volume on my deepest fears blasted high.
I’ll sit up straight in bed, wrestling with a hopelessness louder than the AC, and I’ll cry. In the middle of nowhere which will be my cherished somewhere, I’ll bring all my shadows and scariest fears, and I’ll also bring a renewed remembering to turn inward, to voice the despair to the gentle and ever-present listening love within and around.
Help me, I’ll pray, help me be softer with myself, more loving toward myself.
And there’ll be the lightness around the heart.
It’ll be that simple to ask for help, to be real and be honest about the experience. The difficulty will be in remembering, in cracking open the throat to speak, to remember that I am that loved, I am that supported, I am that worthy of receiving mercy and grace.
Honeyed warmth will hold my heart, and I’ll sleep until 6am. There will be an exhaustion existing behind my eyes, but an alertness that’ll make sleep a struggle, so I’ll surrender and step outside to look up at the stars. And those stars will be magnificent. And I’ll be in calm wonder, later thinking that the elegant beauty of the universe use to be a routine sight for my ancestors, and would I be different if I lived in a place where I could so easily gaze upon the glory of the stars and let the glory of the stars gaze upon me?
I’ll walk through the cool sunrise to the lavender-brushed mountains.
I’ll realize I don’t need to drive to see what my heart yearns to see.
It’ll be crisp. I’ll pull a long sweater over my skirt and tee and take purposeful steps to where the street becomes highway.
I’ll go longer. I’ll walk further and hear a quiet that will I’ll realize is the truest reflection of my essence, of a self freed from thoughts, a soul embodied and present.
This epiphany will soften me toward myself.