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I awaken at 4am: An early morning jaunt  Alissa M. Lukara

Excerpted from Riding Grace: A Triumph of the Soul (Silver Light Publications, February 2007)

Authors note: This piece poured out of me two weeks before I experienced a complete healing from Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS).
 
I awaken at 4 a.m. with such anxiety that I cannot contain it. I try to hold it in some way, but find that I just want to die. I cannot live with this much anxiety. Hell, I don't want to live this way. At the same time, I no longer just want to be rid of it, to give it away to God or anybody else, push it away, take a pill for it, contain it.
 
So I dive in and let it carry me like I've heard a person should do with tidal waves. One way you might possibly survive the wave is instead of running away, dive right into it. If you run, it crashes on you and kills you. If you dive into it, you may drown, but you might instead be carried through the wave, carried behind it and out onto the smooth ocean behind it. Then, tidal wave receded, you can swim back to shore.
 
So I dive in and find myself screaming and tearing at my clothes and hair. I am running through the streets of my normally peaceful, small town. I am a failure, I scream. I am crazy and a failure and nothing in my life has turned out how I planned. I am a wild woman. I am not this nice tidy package of spiritual loving aware woman that I'd like you to believe I am. I am a holy mess of a woman with twigs in my matted hair and mud smeared all over my breasts and belly. I am torn and tattered and I have allowed life to split me open-wide, wide open-and I don't fit in to the containers of houses and jobs and roles anymore.
 
I come now from the nunnery of the wild woman, where instead of wearing nun's habits, I wear patched together garment rags as sack cloth. Each day, instead of doing good works, I rip and wring apart these rags until they lay shredded everywhere upon the cool stone floors of my black hole sanctuary. And instead of praying, I foam at the mouth and rant and scream the cries of cosmic pain and rage and laughter. Then, every night, as people sleep, I piece my bits of rags together, and start the entire process over again the next morning.
 
But I can't even rest in the nunnery anymore. It's no longer my place, and it's just too damn hard to hide who I am from the world. So I run through the streets and just let everyone see the woolly wildness of me, the holy mess of me, the rough edges of me. The failures and mistakes and sticky illness and deadness and can't get it together in my life-ness of me. And I just get it over with-just let it all out, confess, so that all the citizens of my small town will know at once who I am.
 
And I stop running outside the home of a couple I know. Their lives are full of good values and responsible action and spirituality and ease. I want them to like me, and I fear that if they see me like this, see that my life has not come in a proper package and has been an outer world disaster, they won't. But I stand outside their house anyway and let them see me screaming and ranting and foaming and tearing away.
 
You are contributing, in the name of love, in so many ways, to the planet, I yell to them, my voice carrying loud and true. Yet, I contribute in another way. I contribute by living on the rough edges for you. The Christians say that Jesus died for our sins. Well, God knows, I'm not Jesus, but I live on the rough edges, ride the rough-edged path so that others don't have to. And I'll have you know it's a razor sharp edge that cuts right into my butt, slices right on through me, if I sit down too hard or try to rest too long on it. I am learning this way this time around, just as you are learning your way. We're all experiencing a part of the whole picture and all of the whole picture at the same time. Even if I don't have to stay on this edge forever, I do need to learn it. And I do need to express it.
 
So, I say, this is who I am. This is the truth of me. I am a mass of rough edges. I am healing a split so wide you can't see the other side and witnessing that split from the inside out. I don't really live in this peaceful town like I told you, even though I have an address here. Now out of the nunnery, I go to live in the underworld with my mate, where we gnaw and tear at the bones of the dead. We serve each other up gourmet dishes of our dark sides-taking the ingredients from every void and abyss of the sooty center of the earth. We make dishes like salad drenched with tears of pain and sadness, duck a la rage, wild woman fried rice, blood and guts sausage stuffing and fear à la mode.
 
But there is more. Another side. As I stand fully letting out all of me, my heart and body split wide open for everyone to see, I let this couple, the townspeople see that this messiness is also my path to love and spirit. And I allow them to see that love. Experience the bounty of it. The love pours out of me without me doing anything, so much love I cannot contain it. First, it's love for me and my wild woman, savage that she may be. I love that I have ridden her edges and survived, and I recognize lovingly that I can never stray too far from those edges, for they are my roots of passion and creation.
 
Tears of sweet love pour out, a nectar of compassion for myself, love and compassion for my mate and friends, for my mother, and family, for the couple, but so much broader. I have so much love to share in this moment, so much love that only comes from having touched these deep pits and warts and oozing sores of me. This love goes beyond the personal and extends to the whole world, to every living being on this planet, to every saint and murderer and all the muddling souls in between, to each plant and animal and mineral and water source, to air and fire, to every atom and quark and infinite space in between, and beyond space, to every spirit being.
 
I am the love that arises from being all of it, the love and the hate and the never-ending pain and joy and sadness of it. And I no longer concern myself with the couple's acceptance or rejection. It's no longer an issue. I love and appreciate myself for being just who I am. I have no more shame or self-judgment in this moment of pure love. It's not even about forgiving myself or others anymore. It is purely and simply acceptance of myself and my tumble of a path, which in the world's eyes may look like a bust, and which may never be a perfectly plotted life, but which is perfect for me.  

© 2007 Alissa Lukara. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author.