maslow

Uncertainty

Sometimes everything is cloudy and my mind feels like its wearing the wrong pair of glasses. Sometimes I stand there, wishing with every cell in my body     for the escape hatch to materialize, for the lever to pull it, to miraculously, mercifully fall into the floor. Sometimes I have no idea what the point of these last 9 months has been, save to serve clear concern for my mental sanity. Sometimes all the information is right there, I've got it. Sometimes, usually, the paltry information fed to me on small spoons isn't enough and I take huge heaps of more, and I love it, sitting late in the lamp light of my bedroom, paging through texts. Sometimes, though, it's like I'm  living in a bank of fog and I can only vaguely make out the shapes and sounds of all that I thought I'd learned so far. Sometimes all I think I've learned is how to beat the shit out of multiple choice exams, but that I know nothing in practice. Sometimes all of it is on the tip of my tongue, it's right there but not; sometimes its something I've looked at a million times before, but have only organized it in my brain as the answer to a test question, not a clinical entity in real life. Sometimes I'm certain it's because I have been taught little to nothing, except that I "need to know that". Sometimes I'm certain its because we are routinely ignored and alternately chastised but rarely instructed. Sometimes I blame it on the fact that I've yet to get my hands on a complete medical record, one with writing I can decipher or pathology/imaging results I can correlate anything to. Sometimes its so easy to blame this system, the institution. But sometimes, lots of times, sometimes I'm pretty sure its me. 

Therapy

Running is the only thing that makes me feel better, so I do it. I'm no longer strong, am deeply deconditioned, and there is no peace or quietude to be found within the distances I can run to. So instead I try to outrun the static and manic, reliable pieces of this life I'm in, my head or my heart. I'm not sure. Running is the only thing that makes me feel better, so I do it, trying to quiet the quick pulses within. There is no quiet to run into and there is little space to open up and there is no dirt to pound over, but running is still the only thing that makes me feel better, so I do it. Running forward, running ahead, running away, around, before and back again. Peace through exhaustion; quiet body, unsettled brain.

Joy

In the slanted, half-empty light of spring I can still walk barefoot through the sand. It's been a long journey to come here, to my mother-in-law's house, amongst the auspicious lawns of East Hampton, but I am ever and always grateful for it. And just like that, it's still and settled. And I can wear flip flops and jeans, easy in a sweatshirt. And I can walk to the shore and bury my feet and see the ocean and look out, again, to the big wide blue. Standing, dizzy, breathing deep, happily again at the very ends of the earth.