I bring the pot to a boil. It’s a thin metal, and when the pot is heated too quickly it releases an odor like burnt plastic, probably from the handle. It wasn’t too bad today, but I smelled the faint odor as I tilted the pot and poured water into a measuring cup, the edges of the pot making the water sizzle and splatter until it cooled enough to quiet down. I pour the cups contents into a bowl with dry grains and measure one more cupful before I pour the rest into a mug with tea I got from the cheap corner store when I was living in Koreatown(LA). I got that tea after I lost my job, but before I left, hoping to boost my mood by buying something that would relax me in the morning. I live somewhere else now, probably in my head mostly, but ultimately back with old friends.
The accident has turned my life upside down. I knew about how I could have saved a deductible, how maybe I could have found another job without such risk, but I was stuck at the time. How could I look for work when I had so many things to look after? The chicken before the egg dilemma was my excuse, and now that I look back on it I see there really wasn’t much holding me back, I just couldn’t find anything I wanted to take risks for. I had given up on school after 3 years of community college courses and now that I knew med school was a waste of my time, there was nothing else to do but try to save up enough money to try certifying in something. Funny enough, ride sharing paid about the same for me, at least at the start, but when the accident happened I was feeling nervous approaching the holidays, as the year before business dropped off about %70 in between thanksgiving and Christmas and I nearly missed paying rent.
So what happened on that gloomy day(no, really, it was overcast) freed me from all of it when it dumped me and my partner jobless and passionless out of the cozy deluded world I had laid in for so long.
We spent two weeks listening to the tarot, meditating, keeping our minds up, active, and out of despair. Ironically, we discovered later, there were shops that waived deductibles that we could have gone to for those two weeks, and we probably would have had the car returned in time to move had we taken the risk.
But again, our loving guide and benefactor, Triton, had told us to rest and heal, and to go inward for guidance through this difficult time, and we followed directions, hoping to keep our place in line in the big city.
So when we were asked to leave “the line,” we were floored. My partners best friend lovingly opened her apartment to us, and we threw away half our apartment to fit everything we could into our car, borrowed a truck from my brother for our expensive mattress, and broke lease to go back where we had just moved from 15 months before.
But the two weeks we spent indoors, healing and soothing, were really the most important part of this story. I learned more about my fears, and how I had been programmed to deal with them, than I had my whole life. Living in LA had upped the stakes for us, and it had seemed like my worst nightmare was coming true. It triggered a lot of memories of my childhood, and me and my partner had already had our share of flashbacks that year.
When we moved to LA 15 months earlier, we thought we would be finally free from our parents, who we thought were just “control freaks,” Instead, after a few months of feeling safe, our brains saw fit to present a series of disgusting and horrifying traumatic memories for us to cherish. We had been systematically neglected and abused in ways I don’t think are appropriate to share with anyone, so let’s just say it was “inhuman.”
The two weeks we spent resting after the accident were the first time I had not worked or been in school for more than a week in years, and I saw guilt, shame, and anger rise up with a vengeance. I fought to transmute the situation into something positive, but each time it was short lived. Coming home from a walk in nature or a park, I would slip right back into arranging strategies and potential paths I would take, attempting to calculate odds. When I had made the decision that it was impossible, I would begin to snap at my partner about arbitrary issues, and argue for my case that we were sure to lose everything.
She had experience choosing how to interact with her thoughts, so my partner saw things very differently, even though the accident threatened all the things she had been working for as well. When confronted with my doomsday scenarios, she would insist that I didn’t really know that these events would take place for certain, and that I was simply attaching to the feelings I was programmed to reach for in these situations.
About a week in I finally felt a shift, as I had started a morning routine that had begun to collect momentum, and changed the mood I started my days with. I let go of the problems I thought were likely to arise, and began to understand how equally likely each scenario was. I began to trick my mind into thinking that focusing on the one scenario I preferred would bend the rules and trim the others out of existence. I also learned to let go of what it would mean if things didn’t go my way. I was so attached to feeling disappointed or angry at myself when I was confronted with change, so it helped tremendously.
I have more to write, but not today, so I’ll leave you with this :
Don’t work at something because you feel it’s all you’ve got. If you’re in a situation where that’s what people are telling you, they’re not your people, they’re someone else's. Find something you know would be worth the risk if it panned out, and throw everything you have at it without any reservations. When something gets in your way, follow your instincts about whether or not it’s part of your plan to grow into the most amazing and wise version of yourself.
