F*ck an absolute duck.

note from the muddy trenches of my process

Fuck an absolute duck.

I don’t even know what I mean when I say that.

But I say it when I am standing at a wall that I’ve been banging my head against for a hot minute, and I have no head left to bang so I’m just slumped against it.

I have felt exasperated this week. Because I’m crossing a threshold and it’s really easy to make this location mean “I can’t relax because every time my body relaxes more deeply something inside me kicks up.”

Maybe you recognise that?

There is some grief when I sit with the fact that there is no version of me that exists in this lifetime without a hyper-vigilant threat scanner.

There was no “me” before the me who learned to stay on constant hyper alert.

So when my nervous system dials down another few floors, something flicks on and starts fidgeting in an attempt to reassert itself.

And honestly it is in moments like this that my mind feels justified in brooding over the question of how the fuck I am supposed to BE here.

The bodily realisation has been that I don’t need to behave myself. My destiny is not a product of behaving.

I know, obviously.

And yet there have been such profoundly deep layers of my body and nervous system that have taken on this conditioning, this belief that I must behave and be constantly checking myself.

And the deep, cervical release that letting go of that as a driver from every cell of my body created, resulted in an almost immediate kick back. A sense of WHO THE FUCK EVEN AM I without that thing driving?

Because if I don’t have to behave in a certain way, that thing that is constantly monitoring in the background, that has receded back almost all the way in the last couple of years, will fully disable.

And I can hear a small part of me that is like: I can’t let it go completely. Surely not. I need it. I need to be on watch.

I just can’t wrap my head around it.

And I know it’s not my head that’s meant to be doing the wrapping.

I know I’m giving in to the mechanism.

I know.

And if I let go of this, there is a level of simplicity that I open up to - a level of complete, abiding grace - and a part of me can’t quite believe it. Can’t quite believe it could be THAT simple.

I have learned to let God take so much of the burden off my heart over the last handful of months. It has felt like exhaling fully - emptying all the way, before filling back up again - for the first time.

But I’ll admit, I am fighting here. I am fighting for the right of the tiniest little shard of me, to stay vigilant.

I laughed to myself while pottering about the kitchen earlier when I realised that the reward for expanding your capacity to sit in the unknown is not, and never will be, certainty.

And the reason I’ve been grappling with myself here is because a small part of me was hanging onto the idea that if I sat in the dark for long enough the lights would come on.

You know, because “I’ve been doing so good”
I’ve been behaving!
Where’s my cookie?

She’s dying.
And she is PISSED.

And even as I squirm, I know it is already done.