The rain falls relentlessly, tippy tapping on my steel roof. Usually I find it comforting; that feeling of being deep within, submerged in water from all sides. It’s cocoon-like and a place where I don’t have to think about the rest of the world. I can bring the quilt higher over my head and shut it all out. “Sorry—too much rain today, I won’t be out to play.”
But this day, this day it just makes me cry. The relentless sound of it, the drips here and there, the sloshing against side. Being within the weight of water reminds me of all the ways I am not enough.
All the ways I am sinking.
The way I somehow can’t say the right thing, despite thinking the right thoughts. The way I let things overcrowd my mind and steal my time. Or the way I forget what the point of what I do, is, anyway. And then, of course, the way that I feel I am simply not enough.
Those are the days when I lose myself.
Life blurred with water, from inside and out. The cocoon closing in further, shutting everything else away. Because, sometimes, everything else carries too much opportunity for pain, for sadness, for disappointment, and it’s easier to stop, step away, say no, retreat…than it is to keep pushing, keep saying yes; keep trying.
These words are a reminder to me—to anyone reading this for whom it resonates—that on these days there is no quick fix, no “but think about how lucky you are.”
There is only heaviness.
And so, I learn to be within that weight but with an eye to knowing that in time, if I’m gentle with myself, it will lift and fortunes will have turned around. I will have made amends, with myself and others, with time and place, and sunshine will peek through to warm me from the inside out.
On these other days, though, the endless water keeps hold of the reflections I am unable to see.
The Day I Lost Myself