Ease In 2018

Toasts and caffeinated cheers to the New Year.

***

The liquor halts the epiphany. 

I tap glittery glossed nails onto the almost empty glass as if to summon the sneaky, elusive word into spoken existence. 

I drink too damn fast. 

The greedy, relished slurps of the emboldening tonic (the name dissipates into the pleasantly expanding fog of buzzed giggles and relaxed nerves) ripples a haze over half-conjured answers.  

She waits, kindly listening, waiting for me to finish a sentence that is now stumbling through the bar’s dimmed lighting, and awkwardly bumbling into the cozy booth she and I share to spill out stories from our past year. 

“Messy.” She saves me from the scrambling, stretching silence.

“YES." My hands leap up in sheer (drunken) delight to snag the finally found word.

“Messy,” I repeat with a sigh of relief. “It’s all messy.” 

Messy encompasses the healing journey after the stalking incident in the spring. 

Messy details this past year’s professional workplace upheavals, difficulties and inevitable departures. 

Messy showcases my struggles to say “no” so I can learn and live into my “yes”. 

Messy captures the interwoven intensity of dynamic and boldly diverse feelings all swirling into being in one breath. 

Messy. 

And yet, as I lean back into the comfy corner of this hip downtown bar, in the glowing company of a free-spirit who lives from her heart, speaking out loud my narrative from 2017, and adoring the snug way the high-waist jeans and black leather jacket tuck up around me, I feel a deep sense of ease. 

I am comfortable in the chaos. 

I am at ease living inside the question. 

I am serene in the rocky waters of reality. 

My external world whips in questions about securing a new position aligned with my interests and talents, financial security, whether or not I’ll stay in Austin, and in the eye of the storm, I calmly observe. 

This embodied ease gleams as the parting gift of 2017. 

2017 applauds and offers a toast. 

I charged into 2017 ready to hustle for my dreams. I had a clear vision of working with families in Austin, and by February, I had the position with an educational nonprofit. 

I launched full-force. 

In the rocketing to Austin and in my attempts to be established, I forfeited ease for grit, stillness for stress and striving, and embodied knowing for mental problem-solving. I operated under a misbelief that straining forward meant that I was doing the work of taking adult responsibility. 

And yet, when I sweep my awareness over the timeline of 2017, I see that all the true joys – the yoga gig, the friendships, even the jobs – unfolded organically, serendipitously, easily. 

Those joyful happenings and opportunities occurred because I showed up. I showed up with a desired vision and a desired feeling fueling the vision, and while clear on the vision and the feeling, I was open to the Universe’s timeline and left the exact details of how and when to the grander design. 

I desired to be of service. 

I desired to feel connected to a spiritual community. 

I desired to feel lighter, freer, fully seen. 

I could have never imagined when and how those Texas friendships and Austin opportunities would bloom and occur. I could only trust the feeling, the glimmering stream of ease quietly coursing through the decisions, the interactions, the “yeses” and the “nos”. 

Showing up in life does ask for effort, for energy, for intention in feeling. And yet, I do not need to overextend my energy. 

I stress, strain, strive in fear that I will settle into complacency, to ensure that I will not take the easy-way-out, but the easy-way-out is difficult, slippery with fear, guilt, regret, anger, fantasies. There’s a holding of breath, a tightening of muscles. There’s no ease in choosing a path that purposefully avoids growth. There will always be a restless rumbling of what could have been, a bitterness of unresolved feelings, a stagnation of energy. 

I am too passionate, too much of a seeker, too much a wholehearted enthusiast for life who desires to be of service to settle. 

I believed this fear of settling was a safety net, but this fear blocked me from receiving and easily flowing into intuited solutions. I will not settle because I am wired to learn, expand, thrive. 

This is how I am, and now I can trust my own power of desired visions, my own power of desired feeling creating the visions to inspire the effort in achieving and succeeding. 

So as I lean back into the booth corner, slowly savoring the remaining sips of the forgotten-entitled drink, I relax into this scene. 

I revel in this experience, and feel splendid ease at letting my natural self shine out and be seen with a poetic soul-mate friend. She accepts me in all my questioning and carefully gathered understanding. 

I take note of the feeling, because I desire freeing ease to lift me up and gently guide the way into 2018.