By Stephanie K. Hopkins
I wake to rain beating against the roof. It’s been beating all night like a fervent heartbeat. I slept inside this heartbeat, waking from time to time in a panic, thinking the rain was in the room. It wasn’t. Just the sound in the dark that makes it hard to discern where inside meets outside.
Two weeks since I’ve seen my Boo, and I feel unanchored. Morning now, and I lie in bed listening to the rain and don’t know what to do with myself. There is plenty to do—too much—but my inner compass that tells me which of these things matter is askew. I don’t feel like doing anything. I feel like doing everything. I don’t know where rain begins and I end.
I often float like this when I am by myself. To avoid such limbo, I attach myself to others who have a plan so they can give me structure in the oceanic mystery of the days. It’s not that I am lost. I have a sense of purpose and clear goals and a rich world that offers up many possibilities, so many that I can sometimes drown in them. How to be, what to do, where to put myself next.
I think about how, at the end of every yoga class, we die a little death. Savasana—the corpse pose. Relax the tongue against the back of the throat. Let the eyes sink into their sockets. Release the muscle’s grip in the legs, the arms, the hands, the neck. Feel the weight of inner organs as they soften. Surrender the sense of self.
This practice helps us make friends with the nothingness we fear. The body is still. We detach from our senses, let everything go. We stay in this nowhere. Then we come back to life. Wiggle the fingers and toes, stretch the arms and legs long, feel the sensation of everything re-awakening, and here we are again, but with more awareness. The whole of the body reclaimed from daily disregard.
Then we know that there is something on the other side of death. And because we have gone through it, we are more alive then ever.
I resist the sensation of floating. I spin and spin in a frantic attempt to attach to something. I make lists; I chastise myself for wasting time writing lists with no discernable order. I should at least make the rain stop so I will have accomplished something, but here I am, in the throes of nowhere.
Maybe I need to surrender, give into it. Maybe it doesn’t matter whether I do laundry or go for a walk or write this column or drive to the city or stay here in bed while the rain beats steadily. Regardless of what I choose to do, the day has shown me an essential truth: That underneath all love, we float.
When my Boo returns—soon, soon—I’ll be able to relax, find focus. I’ll ease into the self I know in relation to her. She’ll have ideas about what we should do with our day and I’ll have opinions about those ideas. We’ll take down our Christmas tree, finally (I know, I know, it’s February already) and get busy with our winter plans.
Photo Credit: Frank Slack
Stephanie writes short stories, non-fiction, and young adult fiction. She recently finished a young adult novel, "Edge of Seventeen," and is working on a memoir about her adventures as an ex-professor turned bartender. You can reach her at stephaniehop@gmail.com and follow her on Twitter @stephaniehop1.
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