Mind Like Water

Tonight I can't sleep. I found myself in bed, being fully spooned by Seth, but unable to relax. I feel his overly hot knees tucked firmly into the back of mine. I feel the slight kink in my neck because his arm is under my pillow. I feel the tight wrist braces on my hands and realize how they are more necessary than usual tonight. When I feel insecure I curl my wrists more. I feel the cool breeze from our barely cracked window. It makes me tuck my nose under my blankets and I find myself unable to breathe deeply. I find myself unable to doze. Unable to stop thinking.

I tried to focus on something else. Work was an easy path for my mind to wander to. Yet thinking of work didn't help. All week I have been eating, sleeping, dreaming of nothing but the fund-drive. While I am having a great time it has been very tiring. I don't want to dream about work all night tonight. Then I start thinking about work today and how hard it was. Public radio listeners, like me, are all very opinionated and vocal. They are the people that will email or call you if they have something to say. While normally I appreciate it it inevitably will sometimes it gets to me. Today was just too many complaints. Too many mean words. People going out of their way to call us horrible things like "godless and baby killers". I couldn't sleep over rash words on Facebook and so words like that keep swimming through my head. I can't think about work.

I heard my phone ting and buzz against the kitchen counter and got quickly out of bed. Certain I would hear some not so great news. It wasn't anything, just a birthday gift idea from a cousin. So here I am, out of bed and blogging. Hoping that writing will clear my head. Normally I would just turn on TV and try to doze off while watching an episode of Sex and the City. Not tonight though, tonight feels too serious.

I'm dying for a distraction. I'm dying to log onto Facebook to see what meaningless banter I can engage in. But I won't. Because what if someone has posted something rude - or something insulting. That won't help me sleep. It'll just make it worse. Why do I let things bother me so much? Why do I take things so personally?

While texting Seth some of my "woes" earlier today he responded, "Be like water." Apparently Bruce Lee of all people said,

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.

Oh that I could be like water and simply empty my mind. I would put myself into a tight container and seal myself up. I would take away all sounds and distractive thoughts. I would just be. I wish that I could let things easily flow through me, drip off of me. That I could be the person that lets thoughts or feelings enter and leave as quickly and easily as it came. Water doesn't fester. Water doesn't linger. Water always flows. When I think of water I think of crashing waves on a beach. I think of the sound of camping next to a river. I think of bubble baths and hot showers on a cold morning. All thoughts surrounding water bring me peace. I need to be like water. It seeps through cracks. Water always finds its way. Water brings peace. Water brings calm. I need both. I need to be like water.

Tonight for the first time in months I knelt down before bed and prayed. I don't know what I expect to find in prayer anymore. Answers? Perhaps. This time I asked for my intuition to be spot on. Peace? Ideally yes. Although with what I am praying for I am not sure I am ready for peace. Help? Not for me, but for someone I love dearly. Did this prayer help? Well not really. What did help was Seth was able to see my agony and instead of doing when he normally does (offer solutions, talk pragmatically to me) he just held my hand and said, "Everything will work out. It will all be perfect. I'm sorry you're hurting."

The idea of perfection is interesting to me. Not perfect in the sense that everything will work out the way I want it to work out. But rather, everything will turn out just how it is supposed to turn out. That's the perfection. The rough road and the lessons along the way will apparently make me see life in a new light, eventually.

Look perfection, I'm onto you. I'm onto you and frankly I am NOT liking you right now.

Feeling helpless is always hard. When you are a control freak like me, it becomes nearly unbearable. I think that my family the last 5-10 years has seen me as the "strong one". While I don't feel this way personally I do feel a bit of a burden to lead the way. And in this case I am stumped. How can I love someone so dearly and worry so much about them and yet realize that overall my hands are tied. I can't make a grown man do anything I want him to do, no matter how clear and how obvious the path is to me. All I can do is hope. Hope that perhaps the prayer tonight will give me some much needed intuition I seek. Hope that I will find some peace among the sorrow. Hope that help will find a way to him. Maybe that form of help will be me? I think the only help that will make any sort of progress is unconditional love. Really, what more can we possible offer those around us?