Everyone says one step at a time, one foot right in front of another, and you’ll get there. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve walked myself in circles.
What questions am I asking myself. What am I asking of myself. What am I trying to prove to myself. What am I using others to prove to me. What am I using my environment to prove to me. Why. Where’s it coming from. And if I’m done interrogating myself is it safe to just be those things.
My sister asked us, her siblings, a deeply personal question about her.
When she asked that, I realized in that moment that I had become aware enough, conscious enough, that I finally slowed down enough to get in front of all that feels like “just happening,” and ask myself what questions I had been asking myself. What had little Miriam sought to prove. In relationships, in moments. There are times when I can see my life moving and not even know why, but feel a silent ache to interrogate it. But in that moment, I could see her life clearly as a reflection of that question.
And realized that even in that asking, there’s so much you have to do to get there.
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When you ask a question about yourself, you’ve reached a certain tri-fecta of awareness. You’re confident, you’re at peace, you’re fine with what comes up — you’re not fighting it or going against the possibility. You’re opening yourself up. And in that there is freedom. Whatever follows that moment feels like the release of a tightly clenched fist. So much so that I have found in my experience what comes next almost always feels so much better…
Last night, after a family ride to pick up a Target order — what can I say, we are a velcro family and I will cherish it as long as I can — I leaned over and whispered to Chef that I didn’t want to go home. He said, me either.
And we drove to a neighborhood with homes and views that we both wanted to explore. As we drove, he gripped my leg and kissed my cheek, but I was unsettled on the inside. In fact, I was having a bodily experience that caused me quite a bit of panic. My arms, the forearms were tingling. Not really — they were kind of heavy but not painfully so. They were awake. Alive.
I don’t know, I feel silly trying to explain this, but like someone who had just gotten superpowers in her veins, like Alex Mack or something. Alternatively, a crackhead with an itch that no one else could see or believe.
Rewind the clock to about three hours before. I used a fascia tool to rub my arms, my latest attempt to find relief in the pain that two plus years of breastfeeding put on my arms and shoulders — the hyperextension and strain of laying in awkward positions to accommodate a baby, now a toddler, as she grows but still craves the family space she once fit easily.
Anywho. There I was. Two little kids in the back seat, windows down, exploring the luxury suburban landscape of NKC.
In that moment, I breathed in and let the sensation just wash over me. I rode the wave. Not letting anxiety kick in to defend against what I was feeling and whatever was coming next. The feeling rushed over me. I breathed. Chef asked me if I liked a house he liked. Z yelled that he saw a pool. T chimed in — her too, her too.
These moments used to tear at me. They used to bring the worst out in me. My desire to attune to everyone, competing with my own needs.
In that moment, I chose myself. I took my breaths. I let Chef attune to the kids. And I sat there, quiet but feeling loudly and deeply.
Everyone was fine.
I was fine.
And more so with every passing second, until finally, just before I screamed and hopped out the car in panic, I was fine and my arms felt normal.
I put my hands out the window and felt the cool wind rushing over me, the rain moistening tight skin that desperately gobbled up the sensations.
Then it happened. A thought popped into my head.
I’ve been trying to get back to it all morning.
What if accepting yourself just means sitting in the place before the questions show up. What if it means I get to choose the question I am asking myself. What if I get to choose what life will bring up and answer for me as a byproduct of my own imagining, asking, questioning.
Be the person asking. That’s power.
