Friday, sunny, breezy, warm. Black Cat Awareness Day
Have you ever felt like you were riding the moon? So super happy and excited, your energy positive and radiant? I sure hope you have, and often. But if you're human, you've also had to deal with extreme lows, disappointments, betrayals, hurts, and sadness. The question is: What do you do when one of each of these occurs within a short time frame? How do you reconcile smiling, beaming at the good, while simultaneously feeling like your heart is being ripped out of your chest?
You might think I have an advantage at this, since I'm a Gemini and we're kinda crazy like that, but unfortunately, I think it just makes me acutely (intellectually, not necessarily emotionally) aware of these in the moment, making it that much harder to sort through.
Yesterday, we saw the baby on the ultrasound and I was weeping with happiness, seeing the little mouth open and close, little fingers extending and rubbing his/her face. I was elated, in joy, heart fit to burst with love and amazement. I've never connected with a baby en utero like this, so seeing this child thumping, while feeling it at the same time, was nothing short of a true awestruck, nurturing, Mother moment for me.
Just a day later, today, I went to a funeral for a dear friend, a classmate from
kindergarten through high school, and even working together in college.
We've remained friends throughout the years and his funeral was very
difficult for me. I cried and felt like death itself, mourning the loss
of someone who was only 32, watching his weeping family, feeling the
loss deeply, as his shining light was felt radiating from another place,
but certainly not from that cold, hard casket in front of us.
My collision occurred as we're sitting in the church service, mourning the loss of my friend, while the baby starts thumping around inside me, reminding me of the beauty of yesterday. Two extreme emotions and energies at the same time, both strong and in-themselves should be felt and experienced with plenty of processing and having time to be felt. Yet here they both are, pulling me on a rollercoaster.
How many times have you felt "I shouldn't be happy right now, it's not right to be happy when all this crap is falling down around me?" but inside you know that this is celebration-worthy and on any other day, you'd be dancing a jig. Likewise, we've all sought solace and comfort during the rough times, and sometimes found more joy than we expected any chance of having.
The opposite is also difficult...to be flying high awesome, just to have bad news that jolts you to your core, rocking everything and anything to chaotic dumbfoundedness. You still want to enjoy the good, but just can't now.
It eventually feels like you're emotionally exhausted, tired, numb. That, right there, is where I am now. I have had three of these huge life-changing, majorly important things happen in the positive, and three catastrophic-feeling, crushing, heart-rending things in the negative. All in the last four days. Each would be enough in my life to stand on its own and give enough to think about by itself for days and weeks.
It's not just because I'm a Gemini. It's not just because I'm pregnant. It's just life and sometimes you ride the waves as a surfer would, sometimes you are caught in the undertow, holding on for dear life, and sometimes, you would rather get out of the ocean altogether, just to sit on the shore and watch from afar. I'm tired from all the swimming, the good and the bad. I'm ready to just sit this set out for a few days...my arms are tired from too much paddling.
"Two extreme emotions and energies at the same time, both strong and in-themselves should be felt and experienced with plenty of processing and having time to be felt." Oh, these days are hard, and pregnancy does make it harder. I hear you berating yourself, as though your emotions are inappropriate. But they are perfectly legitimate. They come and go with the tides, the flapping of butterfly wings, and cosmic winds. Acknowledge them and remain in the moment, give yourself permission to feel them as they come, but you don't have to let them push and pull you around. In the Buddhist tradition, one learns that our thoughts and emotions constantly change and ebb and flow and beg for our attention, but it is not necessary to pay them any mind. Certainly, not all of our thoughts or emotions are good ones, and dwelling upon any of them remove us from the moment and take us to the conception of the thought or emotion. You can't control the thoughts and emotions from coming, but you can adjust how you react to them, I guess is what I'm saying. I've been working on it for years. I often catch myself dwelling in my mind and missing what is going on around me, neither of which solve anything or make me happy. It's difficult, in the midst of emotional turmoil, to step back and remind myself that this, whatever it is, will pass and that we cannot appreciate sweet without also exeriencing bitter.
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