A Yielding Start

  
Just start and the rest will come. I know this now. It is not something I have always known. I used to be distrustful. I used to wander aimlessly with arms flinging and flailing hoping for a life vest or boat to rescue me; something other than myself to rescue me. It comes, but only sometimes, so I have learned to let go, trust, open up, lend a hand, show up. It doesn't mean I have stopped flinging or flailing. It just means I have found comfort there. The same comfort I find in solid ground and a firm direction. Or the same comfort I find sleeping next to my husband.

Again, I am at a crossroads, a point leading in multiple directions with varied outcomes. I have recently been here. I have actually been here many times in the last few years. each time I feel out trying to find a way. Then, a step or two. I may circle back, feel again, and take a new step. I may stay where I am at too. It all depends on circumstance and intuition. Rarely, it relies on fact. Those are messy and always changing.

I have never found a dead end. Finding one would require me to believe in death, and I am still too catholic to believe end equals death. It is more of a cul-de-sac or a holding patter, something that can be perceived as final or terminus but isn't I guess the Catholics would call it Purgatory, but there is too much negative connotation to that word. Calling it that implies a hellish type of atonement upon arrival. I prefer my atonement while in transit. It allows for a certain amount of course correction.

This crossroads is slightly different. All the others included a certain frame or reference point, some guide post that at least marked space or time or location or some other defining feature. I have ripped out, torn down, and destroyed the guide post that once was here. I mutilated it to the point of unrecognizable, undefinable, unreadable. It happened so slowly that I only realized it was destroyed once I looked for it. Then, it was too late to hope for it to be there. So, instead, I stand firmly waiting for my foot to lead itself or another passerby or just resting in this moment. I don't yet need to move. And if I am not compelled, then why move?

I am excited to see how the next few days, weeks, months, years, decades spread outward, contract inward, spiral. I have a feeling, somewhere between the back of my eyes and in the depths of my belly, that I will be here for a while. I will become momentarily an observer yielding to the tides and currents rather than shaping them. I will travel with the least resistance possible making my self obscure and hopefully obsolete. I shall shrink and expand.

All I have to do is start. Again and again start. The rest will find its way.

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