Lost

When she was 10, she suddenly awoke to the fact that she was lost.

A drop of water in a vast and lonely ocean.

A storm mounted inside of her, seeking answers to questions that only posed more questions. Her mind became a box of snakes, her thoughts wriggling around each other, stuffy and chaotic.

When she was 15, she went to a psychologist. She found all the reasons why she was wrong, and what she could do to be right again. Yes, this was the answer she had been seeking. Now she had a strategy, she would work on herself, and then her drop would feel like it fit in this expansive world.

Months passed, and as much as she worked on herself, “demons” would keep coming up. Maybe I’m just too messed up, she thought….

When she was 20, she started to meditate. This is what I’ve been doing wrong my whole life, she thought. I am chaos because I let my thoughts run free like wild dogs. I need to tame my thoughts through careful practice. But not force them. Yes, this makes sense. My mind is a rushing waterfall crashing about the rocks, and that is why I am lost and alone. For months she meditated, everyday. She told her friends about its wonders. How it centred her; calmed her.

Yet no matter how much she tried, her lonely ideas isolated her. When she was away from friends and all she had to pretend to, the truth in her heart bled out through her eyes.

When she was 25, she would find the answer. Her friend took her to a shaman. There in the space in the entangled woods, amongst 20 others, she would find herself. Some herbs were crushed in a wooden bowl and prepared into a drink. It was her turn to drink. Her stomach churned, but she kept it down. Body don’t betray me now. And then her world changed, and her centre was everyone’s centre, and she felt at peace as all the questions melted away and everything was perfect just as it is. After that, she realised she needed to make amends with her mother. Yes, that was the epiphany. That was all that was wrong in her life.

At first, they visited more and shed tears and had a heart to heart. But as weeks passed and even the memory of the substance faded, so too did the relationship fall into its former despair. As did her confusion, isolation and disarray.

Her whole life was in search of answers she would never get. And as her life began to slip away, at the age of 87 in an old age home, she felt herself sink into the earth. As she sank deeper, she started to feel as she could no longer discern between her body and the world. She felt calm as the questions faded and confusion unknotted itself.

She called to a youthful nurse nearby. She held her close to her fading breath.

“I am the drop just as I am the ocean. Be like the child who plays but poses no questions. You are everything and everything is you; that is all you need to ever know.”

And so she breathed her last breath, but the ocean continued to wax and wane.