Of course, that's what water does.

I.
everything is changing
like, more than usual
I used to prefer it that way
I knew myself in chaos,
because I was a wall
rooted to myself in such a way
that I always knew up from down

but I gave that job away
cause I had other things I wanted to be
and it was getting in my way

I know myself
what I'm worth
what I believe
better than I did
this time last year
maybe up and down
are relative

I realize
this is probably
why people have mothers

in a class last week
I was asked to orient to the ground
as I rolled from my side to my belly
I was so focused on being
a conduit for forces
the idea of holding an intention of movement
at the same time seemed mysterious, foreign,
a revelation

this is how we are meant
to move through life I realized
how exhaustingly huge.


II.
in the shower it struck me, as I recounted my day
that I seem to collect Taurus employers, Captains of Industry
and as bizarrely secretive and possessive as my mother

also a Taurus

forceful, emotionally demanding, tricky with the information they share
molding the people and world around them into a landscape of their liking

to their advantage

also unwilling to ask for a certain kind of help, a safe space to expose
their weaknesses unless it is a ploy, to help protect them in the long run
Scorpio is the Sorcerer, a mover of people and matter

I am an ideal helpmeet

Just like Ariadne, keeper of the keys to the labyrinth
which leads to the bull at its center, waiting for human sacrifices
given as tribute from the surrounding villages

I finally understand who the Minotaur is

who do I give my gift to
this thread to find their way back from my depths
after killing the monster the haunts me?


III.
once, in the throes of puberty
my self disgust manifested
as physical punishment and I knew
I needed something so I stood in front of my mother
paralyzed, voiceless
she put her arms around me and I was stone
in that embrace but before any part of me
had time to melt she pulled away
yelling at me because of some weird insecurity
maybe she felt rejected
I just needed her to hold on long enough that
I could turn from stone to flesh again

I think it was around that time that
I started to shut down
my stepfather's eyes and words were so often on my body
like it was a thing that didn't really belong to me
and I was starting to understand that my mother
wasn't going to protect me from what comes next
he was institutionalized before it got that far
but the next decade or so was a blur
of out of body sexual experiences

A weird disturbance arose today, low in my pelvic bowl
a whisper of what might be considered a period cramp
something I've never dealt with in my entire bloody life
I usually get migraines instead, blinding, nauseous, debilitating
every 28 days or so

sitting on the subway, mulling over this little, pulsing, precursor to pain
I thought about my recent fling with a handsome foreigner
a stunning project we all worked on together, and how utterly female
curvaceous and powerful I felt showing up to work alongside him
a part of myself that I've hidden for as long as I could remember
reveling in my own femininity, tasting another human being
with nothing but pleasure in mind for the first time in my life

were those migraines a manifestation of those things I cut off
since I first began to bud
blinding, nauseous, debilitating
what does this new pulsing sharpness mean?

the development of eyes as an arms race

My body spoke to me today. Clear as day I could hear its question, the first time I have ever received a direct transmission from myself. My own voice. It took me 30 years to finally have access to it.

It is the ground's job to receive weight and give support, not mine. My job is to give weight and receive support. To witness, to be responsive. It would be redundant to call myself an Empath, because we ALL are, but I forget most of the time how fiercely my empathic capacity is involved in my survival. It suddenly makes so much sense, the intensity of the walls I seem to have built around myself - while the nature of my childhood is definitely a factor, it is a noisy layer in my life story that overshadows the reality of my energetic needs and awarenesses. For a mother who can't fathom the danger she put us in constantly, I realize suddenly how ill equipped she would have been to recognize the subtle damages suffered by a child missing certain crucial walls who was asked to become an adult too soon.

It has taken this recent foray into multiple embodiment practices for the brevity of my sensitivity to come to my own attention. I have been misunderstanding the source of this disconnect on so many more levels than I would have thought possible. I almost can't even believe my previous anger at violent physical reactions to places my body would not let me go - I never once paused to consider that they might be there for an incredibly valuable reason. That my ability to charm dogs, small children and jaded construction workers, to gauge intentions and gain other's trust and confidences might also come with serious repercussions if not handled respectfully. I know, and then I forget.

'I see', said the blind man.

It has taken a week of me wandering around at the precipice of nausea and panic, lost in an ocean of sensory information for me to really understand and appreciate my teacher's approach. By asking us to turn inwards and witness sensations and shadows living inside of ourselves, I got to experience turning that empathic gaze inward, to touch myself with the heat of my own powerful attention. Only I can unlock these walled off places, and forcing my way through them or allowing someone else to remove them leaves me completely unprotected, stripped of even the slightest membrane between me and the world. I am exhausted from my inability to prioritize all of the messages and details being received right now, by the massive multisensory organ of this body.

While some of this embodiment work is simply too much, too fast, like a baby being sat before they have the skills to get in and out of sitting on their own, I still have acquired some information of inestimable value:

trust the process that I have begun, and the woman shining her light on this particular path.  - When my body asks me to stop, there may be a very valid reason. Trespassing on myself may have laid the groundwork for others to follow. It begins and ends with me. - I am not my walls... rather those walls are a container and a clue about something deeply sensitive and incredibly important, and maybe even I wasn't allowed to go there until I could treat it with sufficient respect.