I noticed it as I drew nearer to the mountains yesterday- not the highly dependable rush of excitement and feeling of wellbeing that I would have expected, but distractedness and weakness in my limbs… and sadness. The feeling rose within me a centimeter at a time.
When I woke up this morning and gazed hopefully at the sunlit Appalachian mountains with my coffee, the feeling didn't leave. Though it seemed it should have.
I stepped inside and sat beside a stone fireplace. There was no pressure on me to do anything but enjoy my surroundings. It got worse. I started to sob. I didn't know what this was about, though. Sure, change and loneliness, but why? Why now? What exactly was happening? Who am I right now?
Later, fourteen hours and running since it started…and no change.
I've wanted to go to a dim sum place since I was a teen. We went to one today in Asheville. It was delicious. I felt numb.
As I sat in the restaurant, I knew that I had such profound sadness within me, but I wasn't sure if it was mine or if it belonged to the mountains or the people recovering from such extreme loss in my homeland… connecting with me beneath the surface like roots. I only knew the feeling kept rising.
The kids wanted to walk across the street for boba tea. I wondered how much longer I could hold all this nondescript pain in.
As we sat in the coffee shop drinking our boba I realized something was terribly wrong. Suddenly the tension increased as the kids joked around and made lots of normal noise, teasing me about a few things here and there. Typical stuff.
I became hyper aware of every sound around me. Muriel said something cute but not funny enough to laugh. My senses heightened and crested.
With absolutely no warning as to what was coming I SPIT a giant explosion of laughter out so loud that everyone in the coffee shop turned and looked at me as I started to convulse with awkward laugh-tears in Joaquin Phoenix/Joker style.
I can honestly say that there has never been a time in my life when I have burst into laughter that way….like a flood blasting its banks and taking everything with it. All of the things from upriver.
For the rest of the day I felt good. I had laughed, I had wept a little. I cried some more. I laughed some more. Mostly I was just shook about how weird it was that my body's energy had burst out of the barn like a calf running. And I cried because I finally realized I didn't have to figure out whether something was wrong with me or whether I was picking up vibes around me. It was both.
I see it now: Coming to the mountains I was invited into grief - the grief that lives all around me and is caught in the tree branches and backed up in the riverbanks in piles of debris. This is my home. And the energy of the place allowed my dams to break. That is the invitation of the hour. That is the moment that anyone who calls this home is invited to experience here.
Death. Grief. A breaking dam.
Tears. Hope. Release.