Slipping.

It begins with the cramps - a clutching in my stomach. Before I even open my eyes, it’s as if the weight of it all has settled on my skin in the night, and my body is finally awake enough to react. Louise Hay said the cause of diarrhoea is ‘Fear. Rejection. A running away.’ My body is running away from my mind.

Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Either way, we are here - week three of tapering, each day getting worse than the one before. In the beginning, it was like a science experiment. What symptoms am I feeling today? I wonder, if I wake up at 5:30am to meditate each day, will it be enough to support my mental state? Now, it’s less of an experiment and more of an observation. A slipping away from myself. The me that stands by and wonders, at which point will she refuse to go any further? And the me that has already stopped. Frozen. Forever representing the ‘freeze’ state in the fight or flight response. Some days I think, fight would be better. Fight would be action, at least. Even flight would be a movement, a heading in a direction - whether forward or backwards, who gives a fuck? Anything but being trapped, suspended. Unable.

I spend most of the morning considering how many parts of me are useless. Which is a shitty thing to think about, because a) I am fortunate, in so many ways, and b) they say if you’re looking for an asshole, you’ll find one - and boy, the list gets long quick. And then I see a video of people watching whales in British Colombia and it pulls me out of the well of self-loathing long enough for me to think,

That is beautiful.

And, that is something you want to do.

And, that is something you can do.

There is so much preciousness in this world, and you won’t see any of it if you are too busy counting your shortcomings and inspecting them under the scope of resentment.

And so I watch the people watching the whales, and I turn my thoughts towards the things I want, rather than the things I don’t,

and instead of running away, I slowly, gently, remind myself - keep running towards.

P.S

Here are the whales.