Picking through the weeds
On a bus ride from Meteora to Athens, I spotted the Strawberry Full Moon. It was low and magnificent. I was trying to understand the science behind it but having had a carafe of rose tainted my scientific comprehension so I decided to just appreciate what was in front of me. My camera took the dim light as a sign to rest and I stared out of the window until the buildings obscured the view.
By the time I got back to the apartment, the moon had risen and shed its pinkish hue (that is scientific and an optical illusion. When the moon sits low on the horizon, it can look pink, orange or red because the air scatters the blue particles and other short light waves. Also known as Rayleigh Scattering.) We opened a bottle of wine, and stared at The Acropolis of Athens. I was fully where I was.
Then my holiday ended.
The cleaning of emotional wounds means dealing with the sting of dark meeting light. But we need to clean the wound so that a scar can form, and then fade. The idea of being fully healed is an illusion. As humans, we carry so many emotional scratches and more glaring emotional dents. We can have them for years without noticing them. Or we notice them immediately and decide that aren’t a big deal. But what isn’t attended to when it is minor often has major consequences down the line.
All this to say, my holiday didn’t fix what was wrong or change what I left behind. It did give me distance and perspective, and for that I am grateful for.
I came back just as night was settling in. I had to sit in front of the house for a bit because I didn’t have a key. New house. Familiar shit. Once inside, it was hard not to notice the dirt. No one cleaned up when the renovators left even if they said they had… I couldn’t get the hot water to work, so I had a cold shower. I fell into bed, having done half my nighttime routine and without supper.
The next morning, I woke up to unpack and do laundry, clean and shop. The washing machine hadn’t been connected properly so water flooded the floor and seeped into my closed boxes. My plants were under-watered and droopy. My blender and smoothie blender broke, in succession as I tried to make breakfast. I ordered pizza and coffee. As a friend mentioned, without the holiday, I would have lost my whole damn mind by 9am.
Instead, I made a list of snags and sent an email. I booked a cleaning service, because momma got to write and cleaning is an obstacle. I reminded the powers that be that I needed a wardrobe so that I can finally and fully unpack, and so on and so forth. It was a week of asking for what I needed and working through the feeling of having a holiday that wasn’t truly mine.
For lack of a better word, I felt like it was hijacked. Of course, this isn’t the full picture. But. Two things can be true at the same time: I enjoyed my holiday and the holiday wasn’t what I imagined it would be.
And therein lies the lesson: I am getting better at asking for what I need (physically). I am still working on asking for what I need emotionally. While finding the balance between asking for it and giving it to myself. These are worlds apart yet still in orbit and I’m constructing the bridge.
I don’t want my joy to be an optical illusion or momentary scatterings. I want it to be ever-present in all its phases. Influential. Steadfast. Predictable. Awe-inspiring. Strawberry Full Moon-esque.