2023 - Tipping the Nest

We seldom admit the seductive comfort of hopelessness.

It saves us from ambiguity.

It has an answer for every question:

"There's just no point."

Hope, on the other hand, is messy.

If it might all work out, then we have things to do. 

We must weather the possibility of happiness.

-Jarod K. Anderson

At the end of 2022, I wrote down the words “I feel like I’m being pushed out of the nest, and I’m not ready.” Not even a week later, I had a reading done by Stevie Shayler, and without knowing anything about me having written this phrase, she said “Your mom is saying she’s pushing you out of the nest, and you think you’re not ready.” I get chills even now, as I recount this experience which summarizes much of what 2023 was for me. 

Throughout this year, the sources of connectedness and light that held me in the dark really began to recede, leaving me grasping at air. I could no longer focus on the words within the mystical teachings I previously drank in with the fervour of someone dying of thirst. The trees quieted their whispers along the paths I wandered and I began to feel restless while laying flat against the earth I’d had to pry myself up from many times before. In the withdrawal of spiritual sensation, the bed of peace I had made in being stripped down to such a slow and simple life was feeling more and more like a grave. 

A castle that once served as a stronghold for survival can seamlessly slip into isolated imprisonment should one never come to know that the attackers have fled. I suppose that’s what it is to live with trauma, the body having endured a battle that caused it to armour up, flesh now bracing for imminent impalement. The rules of the world I’ve known revolved around keeping me contained in my own fortress. My body wound up in such a severe state of hyper-vigilance that everything became a threat- food, people, city life, our medical system, movement, attempts to sleep, my own aspirations, the air around me…I could trigger a flare up just by thinking about a potential reaction to literally anything. 

When I began to sense my refuge rejecting me without yet feeling I had anywhere to land, I met some of the most intense fear I had yet to face. But through a series of seemingly orchestrated events, I began to be pulled back into life, little by little. I was drawn out by a girl who gifted me a unicorn from the best funeral she’d every been to and rocks with bits of lichen on them, a mandatory trip to remove suddenly problematic wisdom teeth during which I finally broke down and began eating food beyond my 16 “safe” ingredients because I absolutely could not continue eating blended squash and chicken, the upwelling of desire to flee to the island and be with the ocean, the wedding of two of my favourite humans that reconnected me with the man I am now very much in love with and a sense of home in Vancouver...

Throughout my wintering time, I envisioned some grand “return” starring a healed and capable version of myself who could now face old sources of discomfort without faltering.

No. Incorrect.

The process of coming back into my body and exposing it to what had been labeled as dangerous has been, honestly, a fucking nightmare. All of the aforementioned happenings triggered the shit out of me and were followed by periods of feeling like a trash heap of hellfire, inevitably forcing me back into my nest. But within all of them, there was also a glimmer of beauty, a light that enchanted me enough to follow along behind it.

Being back in Vancouver (which I complained about incessantly in my “the city is evil” writhing days) has not been easy, and in my years of much needed separation I could have never imagined I’d find myself back here. But as I wade my way into a greater window of tolerance, I am met with moments of gratitude and disbelief while doing things I had previously done mindlessly and then not been able to do at all. This happens while gathering ingredients for a (not squash) meal at the grocery store, laughing in the presence of beloved friends who I at one point couldn’t manage to answer the phone for, driving over the bridge to the north shore and willing myself to look at the road instead of the cityscape under tangerine dusk, being able to pick up my camera again and find purpose in doing so, and squeezing my boyfriend while he enthusiastically shows me his latest brilliantly weird project that will leave certain people asking “why would he do this?” 

Although it may appear that I am “back out in the world”, much of my energy still needs to be allotted to processing, breathing through persistent symptoms and tending to my fragile system that continues to wait for the other shoe to drop. I am not out of the woods, and fine is the line between facing discomfort and sending myself right over the edge. But I am now able to frequently engage in a gratitude practice that feels genuine instead of instructive, and for the first time in a long while, I am consistently found by moments where I can say that I’m okay.