Orphaned, yet free.

Life has taught me many things, but one of the biggest things it has taught me is that things don't go away just because you ignore them. Things like fear, pain, anger, sadness, guilt; they cling to your soul no matter how far you've stuffed them away from your daily cognizance. They just get driven deeper, and eventually locked behind the numbness of our once vibrant hearts.

Last night before I fell asleep, I decided to do what some may never dare. I had a little conversation with Death. You see Death has always been lurking amongst the shadows of my being, weaving in and out throughout the years, sending along its passive threats to consume me. Death has always been the fear that has controlled me the most, whether it's the death of a family member, the death of a job, the death of a relationship, or death of a former me as I travelled along life's highway. So, I decided that it was time for Death and I to have a little chat. I've grown tired of Death's passive, yet, lingering grasp of me. I invited Death to step forward and show me its many faces, and when they all appeared before me, I explained to them all that I knew I couldn't control how or when they appeared in my life, but I don't want to live and die with my heart imprisoned behind their walls.

They whispered back to me, "Wouldn't you rather die numb?"

"No!" I whimpered back. "I'd rather die soft and feeling pain than hard, brittle and numb. I want to die all the little and big deaths with my heart free, wide open, wondering and loving/living fiercely!"

Their response was immediate: "Then how do you have to live so you can be sure to die that way?"

And I realized that the will to live and the will to die are intertwined.

Last night as I lay exploring the complexities of interiority, I found a twisted seed of passion I've been slowly, yet surely, nurturing my whole life--the seed of denial. Whenever I've been hurt or was afraid, I turned to ice. But last night upon my windy mountaintop under the immense white sky, where everything has been frozen into dormancy, I made a commitment to melt those attachments clinging to my soul that are stuck there from ignoring their presence. Despair, hurt, guilt.

If I feel the energy in my body, and don't tell myself any stories about it, if I follow it all the way, drifting down until I touch the soil where the pain and fear can root, what will it become in the spring? Could that twisted seed of passion, denial, become the full, ripe seed of presence, of coming to my senses, the place where true Passion abides?

The ice walls that have been the fortress of my soul for so long are melting, softening. I am learning not to ignore or abandon myself when I am in pain. In some ways I am an orphan now that this twisted seed isn't an umbilicus.

I am an orphan who is also free now to live abandoned and fully alive.