Attachment

Every once in a while, I’ll get a clumping of words that float around, float around, float around, until they hit just the right order, at just the right time, and *click*, they fall into formation and descend into my being.

This week the words have been, “Crutches are helpful when you’re healing, but once you’ve healed, they’ll slow you down.” Or in other words, crutches are helpful, even necessary, when you’ve injured your ankle, but if you’re running a marathon, those same crutches that once helped you heal will trip you up and hold you back.

In yoga, I learned about this concept called, Raga; attachment to things that bring us pleasure. They can be things that are actually beneficial, even necessary, for a certain situation at a specific time in our lives, but at some point years later, we can find ourselves attached to that thing when our life situation no longer has need for it.

A few years ago, I was in a place where my world had been turned upside down, my faith and familial relationships shaken to rubble, my mental and emotional bodies fatigued and failed, exhausted by running from past traumas. As I felt my world collapsing around me, I was in deep distress and in need of comfort and safety, but few things felt safe, and nothing felt comforting. There are these times in life when everything is put on hold as we succumb to the weight of our circumstance. Times that stand still as grief of the dying overshadows life. Times when it feels as if even the slightest movement forward is just not possible and all that can be done is to rest and heal.

Back then, days felt unpredictable. It mirrored for me the chaos of my childhood, though, this time I had to face it without the solace of faith or family. In the gap, other supports took place. I’d wake up each morning, mentally and emotionally on guard, doing my best to ward off the almost certain heartache that would visit. I’d come home to a joint at the end of long days, to relieve the incessant chatter of my mind and reward myself for making it through another day in tact. To offer myself some sense of control and to comfort my openly breaking heart, I’d eat as much as my body could take in and used the added weight in my body to take up space in a world I wasn’t sure I was safe to do in other ways. I’d stay in my house as much as possible, and in relationships wouldn’t venture further than my husband and a few close friends, because these homes felt safe when the outside world did not.

These things supported me when I felt my most broken. In those days when I had to wake up and go to work and be an adult and wife and mom and give out so much, when I felt no more than a child who needed so much, these felt like the comforting embrace of a loving parent after I had a rough day at school. When the world felt scary, my home, food, marijuana, they were the mother who gently laid my head down on her lap and gave me space to be, breathe deeply, and release the worry and fear for a little while before it started all over the next day. I will forever be grateful for these these salves and their healing. They belonged. They made sense. They were the things that held me from there to here.

This week I woke up to another level of awareness about the reality of my life and how these aids imprint in my life now. I am a different person than I was three years ago, a year ago, even a month ago. I’ve figured out a few things along the way. I now know I have everything I need to navigate the unknown, so the world feels less and less scary. I know I inherently belong and my presence matters and has value, and it is my birthright to take up space. I understand other peoples’ issues are not my issues, so I don’t need to hold myself responsible for others’ health or happiness. Basically, I used to believe that this life, in every form it presented itself, was just way too much for me to handle, all the time. It felt as if I were to engage in the world in any meaningful capacity during the day, I needed to disappear to recharge at night…and it’s just not true. Not anymore. I’m actually handling life like a fucking boss.

I pay attention to everything. I notice my thoughts, my emotions, my behaviors, my choices…and I watch the ripples. I try and do this with as little judgment as I can. I think of it more as data than anything that needs to be fixed. It’s like, when I do this, this happens. Do I like it when that happens? It informs my future decision-making. And in this new awareness, I’m seeing that my level of dependency on these aids, as a necessity for existing, is just not the same as it once was. I’m seeing that the up/down, engage/disassociate cycle is exhausting me, and the excess energy I expend sustaining this unbalanced cycle could be honed, curated, and poured into things closer in line with the things that bring me longer lasting fulfillment and joy and into relationships and opportunities that beautiful, hurting girl of 3 years ago could not have dreamed of.

There is nothing wrong with these things in themselves. I mean, I really enjoy my home, food and marijuana, and I’m sure I will continue to enjoy them. They have all shown me exceedingly more good than harm. It’s just that my level of attachment to them filling voids, voids that really no longer exist, that particular relationship to them, fit better with a previous version of myself. I truly believe I could choose to continue just as I am and live a happy and full life. My life now is testament to it. My life is beautiful and full of love, life, progress and adventure. But because I’m paying attention, I notice the old ways simply don’t fit as well as they used to. I am noticing the invitation to more.

We often find ourselves “self-improving” in order to appease, please or qualify, but this is not what I’m talking about. I am not talking about improving for the way you present yourself to others. Your life is for you. I’m talking about reevaluating the necessity or influence of something as it affects you and your life, NOW, so you can walk in more peace, make decisions in more clarity, and stop living life based on a version of yourself that no longer exists. I’m talking about relief and ease.

I think it is SO important we enter into areas of our lives where we feel the invitation to go beyond where we are today, with gentleness, patience, and immense gratitude. There should be no shame in anything we do or have done. Shame and regret are some of the most harmful and unproductive spaces we enter. There is always a reason we do what we do, and there is always a learning. Even in the things that at face value seem negative. We must remember, there is no roadmap for life. It is unpredictable and sinuous, and we walk into it every day blind. We are literally doing everything for the first time, over and over again. So, it only makes sense that we would fumble and soar at intervals beyond what we can blueprint. It is not a mark of bad character, but of human experience. Love where you are. Love every part of it. It is truly the only place you can be, and it is the only place that will lead you where you’re going.

We need crutches to heal. Then, as we heal, there is an invitation to lay them down and walk, maybe even run, in our own power. And don’t worry, if you don’t accept the invitation the first time, there will be another, and another, and another.

We’ll see where this new understanding takes me. We’ll see if it’s the first, or the fifteenth, out of twenty perspective shifts that lead me closer to home. Patience on the journey, friends. Where you are, is where you are, and it’s the perfect place to be.