Clarity

In the midst of turmoil

I woke up anxious, my belly groaning and shrinking, pulling me to curl under the sheets. I breathe, I move, I write.

The person I loved for twenty-one years, my number one person for my entire adult life, is asking for more. She’s sending a lawyer my way. I feel cornered with no other way to either fight back or dissolve into smoke, slowly burnt by anxiety. She needs clarifications, she’s feeling strong. Good for her.

The threat of going into debt, needing to sell my home paradoxically to share an inheritance from my mother’s premature death, an overflow coming from the abundance of my ancestors’ land, diligently passed on generation after generation, so it can go to a stranger coming from Nordic soils, is real. She felt part of my family, she says. She enjoyed the lands, the apartment, the money, their generosity, their immense hospitability for sure. She felt left down, thus entitled. She wants compensation for all these years. The cold clear-cut law strangely is on her side. I am angry and sad, weighed down by betray and regret.

I don’t understand. How can two people who (I thought) were bond by pure love, something higher than any petty other thing, disagree to that extent? How can money dig a gap between us as wide and deep as the love I thought existed between us? Whose money was it in the first place? Why does it matter at all? I feel alone.

Many downwards slopes and bumpy roads—physical, mental, emotional, and soul turmoil. I’ve always empathized, I’ve always backed her up, I’ve always defended her against the unsolicited critique from those who love me. I am starting to listen, and the echo of their words sounds true. It also hurts. Perhaps I reinforced an unnecessary victim narrative. I don’t know. I am confused.

Magically, I feel the inner stream of stillness inside. I can’t understand how this is even possible. I am finding clarity, and only then can the thread of wisdom unfold. That’s the voice of Soul or some sort of inner knowledge speaking. Murmuring, rather. Keep breathing, keep walking slowly. Keep being attuned to the voice of nature. A grasshopper and a hoopoe take turn to charm and mesmerize me. The horse hugs me, the dogs and the cats come to my feet to stretch their small bodies and rest there. The mosquitoes leave me alone. The breeze quietly rings the sounds of blowing leaves above my head. I am part of this. I am included. Yet there is no plan.

As I slow down the breath, I retrieve the silent ground of stillness—perhaps from which everything departs, fear and love alike.

My mind insists. I need a lawyer too. It’s about time to make myself a priority. If fear teaches me something, it must be to move through and, especially, move past fear itself. To find courage and discernment from accepting its shaking. To dare being the “emperor” archetype—”structured authority” says the deck’s book. Do I dare say it; I can hardly fathom or sense it… Is that hope? Is that faith?

I have no idea how naked and bare I would end after all this. I have no idea how long hatredness and anger will continue to taint my relationship to her. It is obscured already; can it ever brighten up again? Perhaps, this isn’t the point. Some relationships are supposed to end, more or less gracefully. But why? I know nothing.

So I keep writing.

I keep making room for the discomfort shaking of my limbs.

I keep accepting the feelings of betrayal, indignation, and profound deception.

I keep watching the leaves moving, caressing the horses, gazing at the birds, hugging my friends, unrolling my yoga mat, enjoying my coffee, and receiving the soft air of spring on my skin. I feel alive.

The silence in me continues to tell me something. That no matter how this painful divorce ends, no matter how able to forgive myself I am, no matter how much fear surfaces and disturbs it, I will be OK.

And so will you, I know it.

I hate to say it, but I think we were made for this. The joys and the pain. The thriving moments and the heartbreaks. The bliss and the aches. Because, what if…

We’re already whole?

A clear moment in me, in you, can last forever. Transparent, transcendent, apparent.

Wise.

Love.

Or else?