Walk

[ehowton]

I dreamed of Dorian again last night. She's been assaulting my subconscious here of late. We're always together, with friends, but non-communicative. Last night we were separating. In silence. I awoke angry. Those who know me would be shocked to hear me speak of having anger, as it is not really in my wheelhouse. Insidiously however, the emotion has been lurking in my background for some time. I assume for the purpose of reminding me I'm in yet another grief cycle, and will not, cannot, escape its grasp. I assumed the anger would subside as I sipping my morning coffee and blogged. It did not. Instead it grew. Being unaccustomed to anger, I didn't have any readily available coping mechanisms I could throw at it, so instead I seethed most of the day, unable to pinpoint where (gestures vaguely) all this anger was coming from. What was its source? Surely if I could identify where it was originating I could strategize a mitigation plan. Yet it remained elusive.

I'm not one to distract myself from thinking, or feeling. On the contrary I enjoy the challenge it brings cataloging the emotions which play across my physiology, despite how difficult some of them are to living every day life. I'm often curious where these Ms. Frizzle field trips will take me; what I may discover, even as a suffer under the weight of them. They fascinate me. To be clear, I'd prefer to not have them - I'd rather live my usual joyous life of ease and wonder - but I suppose every now and again, that's life. I guess the rarity is how often these things plague me. But when they do, hoo-boy.

Was I angry at my soon-to-be ex for throwing everything away? I didn't want to be. Was I angry at my on-again-off-again not-yet-lover for pulling away as she did every time things got too comfortable? I didn't want to be. Was I angry at myself for not being able to automatically and effortlessly apply the Buddhist concept of non-attachment to my budding relationship because absolutely everything else I thought I knew about myself has also changed so dramatically? I didn't want to be. Yet here I was, with all this unspecified (or collective) anger. If it even was anger! I experience it so infrequently it could be any number of things adjacent it along the wheel of emotions. Still. It was uncomfortable, and I had no coping mechanisms in place in which to address it.

I instead reached out to a couple of people, one who compared my brain-chemistry checklist to her own, and said to me, "So here's my first self-care item that you should consider: Go for a WALK." I used to have a walking path behind my house in Newton and walked three times a day. I did it to clear my head and keep my body active. It was infectious. But unlike New Mexico, where you could walk down wide sidewalks adjacent wide shoulders to breath-taking hiking trails, Midwestern hospitality contains no sidewalks and people are being killed trying to dodge moving vehicles between cars parked on both sides of the street in this dystopian hellscape. No thank you. But we do have a walking path 3.8 miles from the tiny meth house in which I currently reside. So I drove there. And I walked.

Almost immediately, all the reasons I remembered walking in my past came flooding back. Ten years ago I walked through grief and pain and sadness and hopelessness and despair. I walked for two years. I've been needing to break down and cry for some time now, but haven't yet been able to. It almost came today on my walk, and it was glorious. Twice a sob escaped my lips and I was so looking forward to the release which never came. But I'm going to walk again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. I'd forgotten how wonderful it is to simultaneously exercise the mind, the body, and the soul.