Familiar Haunts

November 7

Saturday was a hard day, physically. I didn’t want to get out of bed, and was feeling bummed out about that, too.

I went to class and I noticed something strange – something that I don’t really notice when I am doing my home practice – which I suppose is because at home I am targeting specific things and points on the body…

I noticed I could feel everywhere I had ever injured – and so for parts of the practice I felt like I was reminiscing all the pains of my life…

I hurt my shoulder kayaking in the ocean about a decade ago.

It was a clear day, but the wind seemed to pick up out of nowhere. We were completely harbored, but it was a sudden fight with nature, and I remember thinking again about the power of the sea. For a while I couldn’t lift groceries. It took years to heal.

I had surgery in January – and both the inside and outside of that throbbed – in that low quiet way – the caverns and the incisions… I don’t think about the pain of the decision to have that surgery anymore. The complication of the cutting open…

I fractured my foot in high school. I sprained my big toe. My hip has been killing me. All these ghosts of missteps visiting their old, familiar haunts…

I said to my friend how strange it was. I thought these things were healed. I thought they were gone forever. She said, but it makes sense, doesn’t it…

I remember my father explaining to me about grief that way. The way that we can feel a current pain and it can echo through our psyches to all that came before of loss.

Luckily, love is like that too.

I did a crazy thing in my life and fell back in love with my first love a few years ago – in a way, all the pieces then connect… child to grown up and it the continuity of who we are is really rather astounding.

There is a story a class lesson on bullying circulating facebook this week – 

a piece of paper is crumpled – then smoothed. Of course it can never be made new again.

We gain character through the creases. Personality, wisdom.

But healed is not the same as in tact, she said.