For 3 days I have been in a fog. Fighting a flu bug, exhaustion and general Zombie brain kept me curled up on the couch popping tylenol like it was candy.
Feverish and with body aches and pains and a list of “stuff to do” that I kept adding to, and never depleting.
I sat, staring at my computer for days, willing the words to come pouring out, begging even for a few cheap sentences so I could feel like I had achieved something.
But nothing came. The words were dried up, my brain refused to work and I my body needed sleep.
It has been a summer of drought here in the West Coast. We haven’t been this dry for 38 years, and you can feel it. The air crackles and the ground is dusty and dead. It isn’t the oozing, breathing west coast rain forest I am used to.
But then we had rain.
And perhaps it was coincidence that the sunshine shut down and let the rains take over just as I curled up in bed begging for more sleep, or maybe these two things are inexplicably tied. Whatever the reason, it seemed like the whole country took a break these past few days. A week of sadness and trauma launched us all into conversations around our own humanity, our truth. As wars broke out, we started challenging, again and again.
And my truth?
I don’t write when I am sad. And this week made me sad. It made me sad that so many people are fighting these hidden demons. It made me sad that so many feel the need to cover them up.
My world has been a blessed little bubble of light, and for a moment I was overwhelmed by what was outside my bubble. A person just opening their eyes enough to see that what is out the window isn’t as idyllic as she thought.
Three days I responded automatically. Three days I added items to my list. Three days I thought. and thought. and thought.
And for three days it rained, and the ground started to breathe again. The grass turned a hint of green and noises started coming back to the forest around our house. It was dark in the daytime without the sun beaming through the windows, but it was a welcome darkness.
And then this morning arrived. I woke before the family, feeling the last fingers of fever slip away, and the muscle aches just a shadow of what they were. I woke and I squeezed my mind, just to see what would happen, and it responded. I snuck out of bed while the others slept on and went outside to greet the day.
The clouds are still here, low lying, holding tight to the trees, but the sky above is blue. The sun is burning its way through the fog and it is coming back.
The ground, damp from the rain is breathing. The rains have worked their magic.
And again I feel a glimmer of hope. I feel accepting of this new reality of mine where things aren’t always “ok”. I feel I can manage to listen a little bit more to stories that aren’t just full of light. Perhaps I can bring my flashlight as I walk into the dark to sit with my friends who reside there more often than I?
The sun is coming out, and the rains of the week have done us well friends. Let the growing begin.