June, 2020

It feels like being in a vast, green meadow. Lavender fields? Or maybe strawberry fields? But hopefully not forever. There isn't freedom to roam. There are fences, but also the illusion that one can escape. But I can't. I crawl to the base of the fence and insist that I need to leave. But I can't. So I rage, but then I am quieted by the vastness, though this too is an illusion.

 The lavender or the strawberries quiet me for a time. I depend upon the serenity prayer to keep me in the moment, to keep me okay with the fence and the illusion of control. The prayer suggests that I accept and change only what I can. But what can I change?  The wounds are deep, and they fester at times.

 I want to be in the studio dancing, I want to hold my son and hug my friends. I want my husband not to be the only person I can sit close to and reach towards. But the fence continually cautions me to stay inside the field. To smell the lavender and eat the strawberries and to be grateful.

I want to subtract the worry I feel when I am restless in the middle of the night and when I awake each morning.   I want to omit the sadness and rage and disappointment at only having so much room. I am tired of the sacrifices, and then in a moment I am embarrassed that my white privilege embodies so many options that others don't have.

I want to crawl less and insist more and rage less and depend more on the optimism which my mother embodied. I want the wounds to keep receding so they are hardly noticeable any more.

I am weary of the sacrifices and want to be able to dance through the meadow. To leap over the fences and run and run. To enlarge the field so the boundary disappears and time becomes endless and the future never ends.

I would prefer to feel safe and contained in the meadow, rather than trapped. So I go inside my heart, or is it my head, and repeat the serenity prayer over and over until I feel quiet and the rage stops. I breathe and the boundary no longer feels like a sacrifice, but becomes a gift. A chance to go deeper, to stop running, to stop wanting, to just be in the moment. And to simply smell the lavender and eat the strawberries. If only it were so easy.