September 4: Cracking Open

All day today I have felt like my chest was cracking open. I have continued to press my hand over my heart just to keep it from bursting through me.

I’ve needed this day. Needed this feeling — not just one feeling, all of them, bursting through at once: fear, hope, gratitude, guilt, grief, pure joy. I’ve been giddy with the experience of them, unsure if at any moment, I would rupture into either tears or laughter.

I haven’t felt in so long. Not truly. Not like this.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I found the ocean today. I remember the first time I visited the ocean it felt like something released in me; like I could let go of something I thought I was supposed to bear — someone I was supposed to be. Still now, even after years of living beside it, any time I’m near the shore, I feel its power over me and in me. I feel it welcoming me home.

Today I arrived in Ayr. Even the name of it is beautiful. Like the best of the elements coming together — air and water, sky and sea. I got on the train this morning, rode it to the end of the line, unsure of exactly what I’d find. I got off the train, turned a few corners and immediately smelled the sea. The smell of salt and sand got caught up in my hair, pressed into my skin. I felt a smile bloom on my face.

The years I spent in Denver were hard for many reasons, not least of all feeling trapped by the mountains and deserts. They hold beauty for many, but for me their magnificence is unfamiliar. It doesn’t feel like a homecoming. It doesn’t open me up. If anything, they feel rigid, restrictive, over-protective, dominating.

The symbolism of the geography there is not lost on me.

I hope you’ll allow me to be sentimental for a moment. My years in Denver weren’t just marked by arid mountains, but also by failing treatments that made me sick, by academic work marked with deadlines, hierarchies, and arbitrary rules, and by a relationship that was stable and consistent but that made me feel small. I want to be clear: I am grateful for advances in medical care that allow me to be here today, for the privilege I have that enables me to attend school, and for my relationship and all it taught me, and still, the chapter needed to end when it did.

At the time I moved to Denver, I was almost exactly a year out from my diagnosis. I wanted to feel like I could still take risks, still live. I needed to try something new, to get out of my own head and away from the place I had felt sickest. Mostly to prove that I could. I also needed to feel valuable, worthy. School has always given me that. I’m good at it without needing to try too hard, even if I don’t fully buy into its systems. I also needed to feel wanted. When I was diagnosed with Leukemia, I didn’t think I’d ever feel that again. But relationship showed me I could still be loved, be wanted. And he was so stable, like the mountains in the distance. Consistent, steady. I interpreted that as safety and I clung to it.

But all of these things, they were outside of me. They weren’t me and they didn’t encourage that which is me. As much as I may want to be, I am not steady or consistent. I am not moved by the dry mountain air, not inspired by academic achievements and structure. I am not content with stable and safe. I never have been.

And so I spent years unfeeling. I thought that was safe. I thought that in not feeling all the towering ups and crashing downs that I was fine. That that’s how it’s supposed to be. Simple. Predictable. Safe. And I didn’t dare to feel — to risk uncovering the sorrow I was harboring, the discontent I was managing.

For some, consistency might be safe. But for me, it was a cage. And even when everything ended: my time in Denver, school, my relationship… I couldn’t risk facing the feelings. Not all at once. I was too afraid they’d be paired with regret. So I continued to close it all off, to remain as unfeeling as possible.

But here, today, everything rushed in. And, you know what? It was not accompanied by the regret that I feared. Just gratitude. Gratitude for all the beautiful experiences I had in those two years, and gratitude that I’ve found my way back home now.

Home, even over here. In a new place. It feels familiar somehow. I can taste comfort on the salty air, feel safety in the ebbs and flows of the waves. I feel inspired, invigorated… safe, in my own way (not in consistency, but in change, in movement, as I always have).

I’m grateful. So grateful. To be here, in every sense. In Scotland, by the sea, in my body, in my soul… present, aware, open.