REALIZED – PEACE IN THE VALLEY
This piece is dedicated to my dad, from a heart of gratitude and love.
Everything has changed.
It is easier to breathe now.
It is easier to think now.
My thoughts are coming in blocks now, instead of in sentences. Years can be lived now in a few hours.
You can feel it, can't you? Can you appreciate that the air is sparklier?
Please understand that this is not in reaction to any blogger's peer pressure, my telling you these things. After these changes became undeniable, I caught wind of how magnificent the equinox was to be for all of us. It's nice, now and then, having confirmation. Things have been very different for six days now. I am counting them, now. I want to see how long this thing goes. I want to see if it is just How Things Are Now, or if this is just another incremental adjustment.
I don't know the ins and the outs. I just know that things are very different inside my head and heart now.
And here's the thing. I worked through the Equinox. And it was a tilty shift.
Early in the shift I took a mental health toilet break. I took my hair down and looked in the mirror. Really studied myself. And it just came to me clear as day, What are you playing at? You do realize you are a grown up, right? You aren't fifteen. You don't have to do this if you don't want to. What exactly are you playing at?
Then I put my hair up and went back to work.
It was a weird shift. It was teaching me, they all do, but it had a grinding quality to it. I wanted it to be over. It was dawning on me that the last two shifts have been about me not being seen as having even one whisper of authority. I had nurses treating me like I was a new grad. It's like I gave off a gripless vibe. It was weird, the last two shifts, how very much like a mentally handicapped child I have been treated.