There are wispy clouds like someone painted white fine squiggles in the sky with watercolours. A pair of condors is flying overhead, taking turns falling from the sky and then back up again before drifting side to side. They are beautiful, I want to remember the moment. I pick up my phone. Then change my mind. 

I look at them some more and blink my eyes once like a shutter release to take a snapshot with my mind.

A swallow swoops down in a perfect U shape and skims the surface of the water I’m submerged in. It is cold and wet against my hot summer skin. It is 32C at 10 am and the air is thick with heat and humidity. I am desolate and sad, and I have a tan which feels like a contradiction.

On a Zoom call, my therapist says that I am having a delayed trauma response to a brutal rupture. My therapist says breakfast and routine are important, especially when the body is under duress.

I try to have some semblance of a routine.

Every day, I eat breakfast. I’ve never been a breakfast person; I don’t wake up hungry. I eat my favourite things. Pineapple. Tasteless. Watermelon. Tasteless. Eggs, scrambled. Tasteless. I try coconut pancakes instead. Tasteless. Coffee. Horrible.

Every day, I answer emails, have Zoom meetings, and work on commitments I had made before everything fell apart, and I wonder when it will stop feeling empty and meaningless.

Every day, I walk to the pool and lie in the sun for an hour to let the Vitamin D spill into my body with the ambition that it will fill me with some hope. When the sweat starts to form a sheen on my skin, I let the water swallow me for a while.

Every day, I fill pages and pages of my journal with thoughts and observations, wishing they will lead me to a clue, an insight, a sign for what to do next.

Most days, I lie still in bed scanning my body for signs of life.

For the first time in years, I leave my message notifications on because every ‘ding’ is a vital reminder that I am not alone, that I am loved, that I have not been abandoned. Each note asking me to hold on. Telling me that this will pass.

My world has shrunk. My system keeps scanning for signs of danger. All I want is familiarity and safety. I cannot go too far in any direction.

In the early evenings, I walk to a cafe 10 minutes away. 

Last night I time I ordered rainbow rolls and an iced lemongrass and ginger tea, and ate alone in silence. I think, afterwards, I could go for a walk. I love walking. But I am not myself anymore. Too quickly, the outside world becomes too much. I have to go back home. Back to lying on my bed. Back to overthinking. Desperately looking for some version of a perfect plan that will make this feeling go away.

The cap on my electrolyte drink is so tight that I cannot twist it open. I go downstairs to ask the doorman to help me. Crying is dehydrating. 

A man in the lobby tries to strike up a conversation. He asks me where I am from and how long I will be here. His teenage daughters blink at me expectantly. I can tell he’s trying to be kind. I want to tell him that I am sick and heartbroken and do not want his pity or his attention. Instead, I force a smile and tell him that I have a cold and lost my voice and cannot speak right now. It’s also true. I regret wanting to drink my electrolyte drink.

Back upstairs, my mind begins its familiar looping. A restless, compulsive turning over of questions that refuse to settle: where now, what next, where now, what next. Steady and unsatisfying.

Do I stay in the States? Do I go back to Europe? Do I begin again somewhere I haven’t yet thought of? Do I simply sit here, in this suspended place, until something becomes more certain than this?

I move the possibilities around in my mind, but nothing sticks. Everything is blurry with maybe, and too soon. I wish someone would hand me a plan. A project I can immerse myself in that is not mine. A location to be in for something greater than myself. I don’t want to think about myself for a second longer. I want something outside of myself to exist for. I want someone to say: come here, be here, we need you here. 

I keep looking at the words I’ve just written in my journal:

Do you have the patience to wait until the mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?

I stare at them. I don’t know if I do or if I can. But I will try.

I want to remember that it’s possible, and that waiting doesn’t mean giving up, and that stillness is not the same as being stuck. The only way I know how is to decentralise my attention from my mind to my body. The mind keeps cycling; the body, at least, can soften.

So I come back to these few small practices.

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