Nice to have found you again

tonight i walked and listened to the owls calling to each other in the dark.  i knew they were nestled in the trees, some distance over my head, though the only trace of them was the deep timbre of "who! who!"

owls show themselves to me only in very special times.  the last time i was really close to one, i was feeling a little desperate and lost, wandering one night--a full moon--in the hills behind North Winds Ranch.  i guess tonight i feel lost again.  i am stronger, maybe, emotionally now than i was then...but i am still longing for something not quite in my reach...

everything spiritual i read tells me to accept what is, and i will be free...free from this desire, this craving, this longing that eats me up on nights when the rest of the house is quiet and i am no longer simply reacting to daily life.  be grateful for what i have--which i am, don't get me wrong--and i won't feel tormented.  but there is a pull, a push, a fluttering of a memory...except that it exists in the future: it has not yet come into being.  i do not know what it is, but i will when it happens...i hope. 

the stars and the moon--half-crescent and waxing--and the deep indigo skies and the towering mass of the long-dead volcano above the townhome transported me, momentarily, to another time, a space where i might have been more wary of mountain lions pouncing onto my back.  ancient, forgotten, alive only in short bursts, like the trail of a meteor across the sky.

i get that a lot.  with places, with images, with people.  a friend i recently met said to me, "it's nice to have found you again," and i believed it, with the whole of my heart, to be true.  i looked into his eyes and i saw something that resonated with me.  not attraction-that came later, with getting to know him.  affinity?  recognition?

i have been reading in the cards that help is on the way.  i've gotten this far in recovery with and without other entities--hospitals, doctors, therapists, drugs, process groups--relying mostly on that tiny scrap of fire inside me that insists on survival.  when i had the help, i didn't want it...now that i am hungry for it, it is limited.  but that is how it goes, i suppose.  the moment i knew--with my heart, not my intellect--that i wouldn't be able to go through recovery alone was when i experienced the jump from half-hearted effort to full-blown war on the demons that nearly killed me.  and, ironically, the moment i knew i would have to decide to fight on my own behalf. 

i started out with a fierce stubbornness--a tiger, indeed.  if life was suffering, then i was going to inflict it upon myself with the wrath of a starving she-cat, claws out.  as i danced in Death's arms, i began to ponder needing people, needing nourishment--what would that mean?  how would it feel to address my needs--not to satisfy them, but simply to admit that i had them: that i was like any other human?  as i slowly began to experiment with recognizing them, i grew ballsy and began to ask for things--and to give them to myself.  this is where i stand currently.

i am at the painful stage of having endured the lessons of humility and vulnerability.  i have faced my very worst fears, crumbling inside under the weight of my terror, but pushing on--pushing on.  now, i realize, new fears materialize as soon as the old ones are vanquished.  delightful.  the never-ending story...though if this is true, it also works for joy: as in, the more joy i feel, the greater my capacity for finding joy where i once found sorrow. 

i am weary.  i need so much.  i want so much, though i am still trying to figure out what that is.  i am afraid that if i am left to dream, my dreams will grow and stretch to disproportionate heights.  not only do my dreams grow large, they grow deep, they grow soft and refined, like fine silk--watery and light and strong and rich.  like my paintings, they are made up of every color in the spectrum...every texture one could imagine, every shape, every pattern ever conceived by nature.  they are intricate, they are bursting with vitality, with music, with movement.  what will nourish dreams so large?  i think most people are afraid of deep dreams...it is easier to discourage them, discount them, for fear of risking materialization.

i want. i need.  but i also give.  whoever will be enough to meet me, to look at me and KNOW me? 

i don't know.