The Boy Who Cried Wolf

I used to be the girl who cried epiphanies. Teary eyed. Daily. Bouncing in my skin because of some new revelation that sifted through my arms and chilled my shoulders, my arm hair standing taut and firm.

I don't have epiphanies like that anymore. Not frequently. Not weekly. Not at all. Maybe it's what happened to my sense of anchoring and home this past year - my parents sold the house I grew up in, and many things regarding the dynamics and relationships on which I used to depend shifted, became different. Maybe it's because I went to graduate school and disconnected from my self. Maybe it's because I grew into my late-mid twenties, out of my mid-twenties.

Whatever happened, I do know that they are important. The epiphanies. The daily connection to the web of strings that attaches everything in the world to a giant grid of splendor and purpose.

I have said this before - in blog posts, in conversations, in my head: I believe that the meaning of life is to discover your core, and nurture it.

I am learning that sometimes, we deviate from that which directly nurtures our soul in order to learn trades and lessons and techniques that will allow us long-term submersion with and around that which nurtures our soul. And that's alright. We just can't deviate for too long. Otherwise, we forget who we are. We start to shatter. Like a broken mirror. Or a broken record. Or a broken heart. We start to shatter into pieces, rather than standing firm, as a solid body, yet still made up of pieces and parts.

I am learning that sometimes, it takes a series of phone calls, or dark thoughts, or smiles, to veer back towards center; and going back to center, is really just diagonally moving back towards the path - because nothing ever goes back. Every step, sideways or otherwise, is always movement forward.

Somehow, I forgot about these lessons, and all lessons. I forgot about the part within myself that constantly reminded the moments of pessimism, that in fact, everything is optimistic. Everything is a give and take towards something of evolution and growth. Somehow, I forgot these things.

Somehow, I forgot about patience. And how everything is perfect. And always as it's supposed to be.

My ability to change trauma or pain or disappointment into a lesson or point of growth used to be fast. I know it's still there. Somewhere. Maybe buried. Or dusted over. But still there. Cause I know that that is, in fact, part of my core.

I'm still piecing together what happened the past 12 months. I know that I got depressed the week before I started graduate school. I went to the West Coast for some Phish shows, a bachelorette party, a wedding, and to visit friends. I remember not wanting to leave my college roommate's studio apartment in San Francisco. The weight of the changes occurring in my personal life fell down on me, right there in the Mission, because my pace from life in New York slowed down, and I suddenly had days to process everything going on around me.

I'm starting to feel like perhaps, this entire year, was spent stuck in that week. I returned to New York: my boyfriend picked me up at the airport, days later I attended graduate school orientation, that Friday I did my laundry - ink from a blue pen in the dryer stained all of my sheets, that Saturday I drove to upstate New York for my poetry collective's annual retreat, that Sunday I drove to Saratoga Springs for the last show of Phish tour. They played Harpua. I wrote my first graduate school assignment on my laptop in the back of the car while my boyfriend and his sister giggled and chatted in the front as we drove back to Long Island. That Monday, I fell asleep in class.

I feel like I just now woke up.

I feel like I spent the last 12 months in a holding pattern, stuck in those days in San Francisco, even while incredible moments and people circled around me. During those somewhat dismal days in San Francisco, I still experienced wonderful joy - my boyfriend and mother and sister texted me and called me, constantly checked up on me. Constantly supported me. My college roommate was an amazing hostess. I saw old friends. I enjoyed weddings, celebrations, and Phish concerts. But there was still something a little off. A little un-epiphany. A little confused.

So maybe, it's now, that I have come to accept the changes that occurred in my life last summer and this past fall. Maybe it's now that I am waking up, after a long nap - albeit still inundated with unbelievable dreams and realities - amazing people and loved ones and lessons and experiences and moments. I fell in love. I got a masters degree. I made the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe slam team, and we finished second in the nation at the National Poetry Slam. I had dreams upon dreams fulfilled.

Maybe the epiphany - this moment around - is that it isn't worth sleeping through class. I probably should have slept the night before graduate school classes started, even though Phish played Harpua in Saratoga Springs.

I probably should have slept that Sunday night. That, or I should have cried my eyes out. Far more than I let myself that week in San Francisco. I should have left my tears there. I shouldn't have flown back home with mist in my eyelids.