You have a chance to talk about writing and your creative practice in a yoga retreat in Maui.
You are nervous because you don’t think you are a writer. You keep changing your keynote hoping your audience never notices that you’re a fraud. You wonder if telling everyone you’re nervous might make you less anxious.
Somehow, you finish the talk and the audience gives you positive feedback. But you feel awkward because you don't know how to accept compliments.
You lie awake in the middle of the night watching the palm trees float around. You realize that this hole inside you might never go away. You know that no amount of compliments from others can fill up the hole. You have to fill it up yourself. You just don’t know how.
Your spouse arrives in Maui for a vacation. Everything goes well until it doesn’t.
One afternoon your spouse complains about his eye. After a series of events – call the nurse hotline, find the doctor – you realize you don’t have a car. You beg the hotel staff to give you a ride. The doctor is only a five-minute walk away, but you don’t want to risk anything.
You get to the urgent care, and the doctor does the workup. Your spouse’s symptoms disappear and he seems to be doing better. Yet when he goes to the bathroom the doctor grabs you.
She asks you if you’re ok. You are about to cry but you don't.
She looks into your eyes and tells you: You need to be brave now, because you are taking him to the ER.
You (still) don’t have a car, so you call an Uber. All you can think about is how far everything is. The ER is a 45-minute drive away.
You suddenly feel grateful, because you know you can’t drive in this state of mind.
When an ER doctor sees you right away, you know that is not a good sign.
The doctor does his thing. He can’t find anything wrong, but he doesn’t have all the equipment to make a clear diagnosis.
A day later, you somehow manage to fly back home and realize that your allergy is worse.
Your leg and your arm turns purple. You apply more steroids and take more pills hoping that you won’t wake up in the middle of the night with pain – who knew itchiness and pain are so interconnected?
But you do wake up in the middle of the night.
Another day later, you go to the ophthalmologist with your spouse. You hope nothing is wrong. Indeed, nothing is wrong and you are relieved. But you are upset because shit happens for no reason. The doctor cannot answer why either.
You realize that this doctor will probably think that you’re a crazy hypochondriac who asks too many questions. But you think of what the urgent care doctor (#10) told you.
You are his advocate. You need to be tenacious.
So you do ask more questions, but still there’s no satisfying answer.
You can fall apart later. You can fall apart later.
You do fall apart later.
The following morning you wake up and cannot move your neck. The past you somehow knew this was bound to happen and she was smart enough to have an acupuncture appointment on her calendar.
You wake up to your friend’s texts about the fire in Maui. Your friend is anxious and devastated about climate change. You send a text back.
It takes you another thirty minutes to connect the dots – that you were just there. You were just in Maui. You were just at the emergency room in Maui.
Back then, Maui was fine but you were not fine. Now Maui is not fine. Get your shit together.
You can fall apart later.
Guilt and shame rush through you because you were wallowing in your trivial drama while fires are burning through the island and people are dying. It’s all relative.
Your sorrow should shrink. Your emotions must become weightless. Your pain is insignificant at this moment.
You can fall apart later.
Your nephew is born, crying and seemingly smiling with his whole being.
He’s a Leo born in the rabbit year, and his dad names him a “wise tiger”. Welcome to the world, kid.
Whether you are a writer or not becomes irrelevant.
Writing is your way of processing life, a dire necessity you just have to embrace.
I was captivated reading this. You have a powerful voice. You are a writer, and there's nothing irrelevant about you or your writing. Your pain is never insignificant. And it's okay to wallow in our trivial drama; it's what we do and how we learn what we're here to learn. The fire in Maui stands on its own and is not to be compared with your pain. No guilt or shame is necessary. Be kind to yourself and send whatever form of support you can to the island and its people, monetary or prayers/positive thoughts. 💜