I won't come here and start badmouthing the year that has just concluded. I am sure that whatever sympathy fetching analysis that I could use as bait about how her days could at times be so unkind might have me lamenting on it somewhere in the future as your days unfold unpredictably, but, to be honest, it has been exactly that.
2021 was an aftermath of the brutal exist of 2020. Everything was crumbling here the first dawn of last year. Life did what it could. Love sneered at me from a distance and oh how I hated myself for worshipping what my crushed ego felt I shouldn't.
I lost a few solid freelancing gigs... money grew wings and left me with a disarmed wallet and unrelenting responsibilities staring back at my broke ass.
After a move in midyear, death decided to visit briefly in August and whisk my human compass back to his ancestors. The world grew a different shade overnight. I felt lost. My soul gasped for breath within my dead bones and I could feel my grieving spirit drifting between unearthly realms looking for him only to be guided back to my sickly body.
But.
Balance would somehow find me and restore itself later. For example, the move countered the days of living in a small space in an instant. I have never appreciated anything as I do my current home. Or how hive is helping me pursue my love for farming which in return chased away the blues of losing hundreds of dollars on family land.
Love also defiantly stayed for a while and though it brew too much toxicity within me, it also taught me that no man can bleach their love-stricken hearts or mend their broken ones.
Only dark sad music and poetry can truly nurse a thrashed romantic back to life. Writing helps too if your pain lets you paint it out. Mine won't let me at times though. Talk about the conditional scribe.
And time.
Time gently erodes what was to bring what is. Seasons might have disguised themselves in weeks and forced hours to be as long as days but the sun still replaced the moon every different morning after I made it through another long night.
That's how I knew I could get better and that it does get better indeed.
I have felt something reignite itself within my resilient walls every time I have gone under and last year was no different. It is in how I dare to resurface every time something psychological tries to drown me that leaves even me a bit impressed.
How can one tiny person have this much fight in her? I have always wondered.
Quick automatic flashbacks are how I gladly remind myself of a past that might have my inner child in a defensive mode all the time to prove nothing can drag the goddess that she has always embodied behind them.
And so, fight she must...
But my old bones are also asking if it is possible to finally get that rest they have been yearning for. They want to know if your days are dry and harsh or if they are moist and gentler. And if it is also possible for the rains to drench the soil now and then to encourage my budding farmer side?
Can there be some sort of smoke signals for the spaces, engagements and environments that I should stay away from? Or is that too much to ask? Can I be left at the mercy of an ink shrine to figure myself out creatively? Is it safe to give in to the gravity of some healing hands and watch myself fall again? Can I ever trust them with me again?
I hope your days teach me how to be freer...
...to be continued.
wambuku w.
