jennifer
-- contributing writer --

I am 30. I work 40 hours a week. I make art. I crave the ocean. She comes to greet me, wave after wave. Sometimes she is furious and tosses me around, terrorizing me. She could devour me so easily. I am in love with the ocean. I yell at her and sing with her. She makes me a child, jumping up and down with the enormous sky. I feel unique and miniscule at the same time. She spits back at me the waste we burden her with. She is complex and so are we. I work to maintain compassion and strength in my activism and recovery from childhood traumas. I strive to find and present the truth that is between demonizing and minimizing. I remind myself that everything revolves around relationship. I cannot run forever from my pain and my body and my needs. Everything I toss far away from me comes back with ferocious demand. I drug myself with obsessions, chemicals, food and find books of depression stacked in every exit. Each book represents a neglected part of myself. My dreams are of the great flood. I am fascinated and terrified. Sometimes I drown. Sometimes I drive away in a futurecar. I see a power in nature that repeats itself. It’s in my body that works to repair itself by communicating through pain. It’s in my despair that alerts me of my needs. I respect this power and often I forget. I strive to remember so that I can fully be here, awake as much as possible because I chose to be here. I am afraid and I am longing. And then the ocean reminds me that I simply am, just as she is, wave after wave, pulling and returning. She says, "Be with yourself and be with me. Be afraid and be free. Healing is possible!

 

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