one unsteady foot in front of the other

            Sometimes I can’t help but feel completely unsettled.  It feels as if I am missing some key piece of information that would clearly illuminate things.  Then, I would have the answers to the questions that I have been asking all along.  I would no longer feel as if the ground upon which I am walking is shifting beneath my feet, about to open up and swallow me whole.  I tread lightly on these unsettled days, tiptoeing around, so as not to disturb the forces in this world that are balanced just so delicately that I am left to place one unsteady foot in front of the other.

            I lie in bed, morning light washing over the sheets and blankets, keeping my arms and legs and body warm and safe, in a cocoon.  My heartbeat grows stronger and faster, with the engrained memories of my past.  I take deep breaths to calm my rising anxieties and remind myself that this is another day.  This could be the day when things change—when the pain melts away and my strength and energy return and life is sweet and full of humor and possibility….  I roll over onto my side and push myself up.  I commit myself to the day by touching my feet to the floor and accepting the weight of my small but heavy body.  Every day starts the same.

            I have hopes for which I am afraid to hope.  I hope for the ability to go back to school to explore the intricacies and insights of taught knowledge.  I hope for a meaningful career, something that makes sense to me where order can be made, so that I may support myself.  I hope to have money and energy left over so that I may socialize with friends and create art.  I hope for a family of my own—for a loving, supportive, and understanding husband, and bright, happy, optimistic children.  I hope that I can bear those children and raise them to be safe in their own bodies and minds.  I hope for a house with lots of windows through which I can see butterflies, birds, honeybees, and dragonflies, flitting about my flower garden.  I hope for a piece of land to grow fruit and vegetables and to have chickens, enough to live from, with trails leading through a forest by a stream.

            But I am afraid to hope for these hopes.  My body feels drained of energy and strength.  Some days I can walk three miles, while others I can barely walk to the end of the street.  Two years ago I hiked rim-to-rim of the Grand Canyon.  It was a stunningly beautiful and physically draining hike.  But I did it.  Then I hiked fifteen miles through Snake Gulch before beginning a 4,000 mile solo road trip, driving and hiking nearly every day over the course of two weeks.

            Last year I started working and living on a family-owned organic farm.  Up at the crack of dawn, planting, weeding, cultivating, through the height of the day, and falling into bed at the end.  I did that for three months.  Then one night I started burning up and couldn’t sleep and my pain and stress overwhelmed me.  I could hardly get out of bed for two weeks.

            It’s been almost a year since that episode.  I worked a bit at a local coffee shop, but I could hardly do anything else.  My energy waxed and waned and finally I couldn’t serve coffee drinks any more.  I realized that the only thing I could do, which is perhaps the hardest thing for me to do, was to devote my time to understanding why pain and fatigue had taken over my body so that, maybe, one day, I could hope my hopes once more.