Walking into the abyss

I was on my way down the bayou this morning towards City Park and I ran into a friend who has been having some troubled times. He said he is coming out of an eight month hole via medication. Now he’s trying to put the pieces of his life together again. Only, very similar to me, because he and I have had these discussions walking in the park for years now, he really doesn’t want to go back to who/where he was before and so now he has to figure out where he wants to go, who he wants to be.

It’s this art of becoming that arrives without a blueprint that seems overwhelming. If you are like me you would like to be becoming too many different people and so you get dizzy from your own depths and heights, plunged only in your imagination, but all leaving you sort of exhausted before you even begin.

I ran into another friend yesterday who tagged along on my walk and she said that sometimes you have to let the universe just take you. And take you it does, even the best laid plans can be wiped away when the universe decides for you what your intentions are. I believe this, and yet I fear it.

I keep an image from a magazine I cut out once with a woman balancing on a large oak branch that says sometimes the best place for a woman to be is out on a limb. And so, here I am. For better or for worse.

2 Responses to “Walking into the abyss”

  1. Anne Says:

    Oh Rachel! How eloquent! Timely! We’re in sync! Only that until reading your post, I was still trying to duck under a hedge, lower my head, plow through somewhere, somehow. You’re giving me hope that letting the universe take me may be the way to go here. Great title. Thank you!

  2. Rachel Says:

    Anne – I think they call it burn out in other industries, in ours let’s call it “stop trying to plan your future and let your future unfold” – how about that as a mantra?

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