Raspy Little Fingers

Death anxiety is driving me crazy! Simply put, I need my soul friends. Its been a long time since I visited here. Life has been full of paradox, upheaval, settling... the wheel continues to turn. After an extremely difficult yet deeply fulfilling year (including the birth of a child, three moves, a traumatic accident, long and full recovery, addiction, to name a few events) I have returned to school to deepen my commitment to living out a sense of purpose and destiny.

The joy of destiny thinking is a sense of comfort, support and inner confirmation that what one truly loves is simply meant to be a part of one's life; the horror of it is that when this faith in life is shaken, it can shatter if its too rigid or melt if it is too soft. Temperance is the key to defining and building a foundation of faith from which to thrive. I am in this melding step, you see.

This semester I decided to return to school after incurring a nasty upturn in the anxiety department. I had a potentially fatal accident involving my 5 month old baby girl, which was a deep look into the eyes of the beast. I am taking a psych. class on death and dying, seeking healing for my broken bones, spiritual and otherwise. Shattering was the name of the game for my faith blasting experience... too rigid, simply too rigid was I.

Let me be clear that death and I are not strangers to one another. In my adolescence I attempted suicide numerous times. In spring of '10 one of my best friends committed suicide. I have had an ongoing intimate relationship with the core of the ultimate self-destructive drive- to turn off my own lights.

Thankfully, it has been a long time since I desired death. And that's the problem. In healing that part of me that wanted to forever call it quits and escape the pain of living at the time, I have come to love and appreciate life deeply, fully, whole-heartedly. I enjoy my life, and feel I have so much to do before my body expires. Perhaps my desire to die was fueled by my fear of loss, pain and grief.

One of the tragedies of this connection to living my life fully after coming from death consciousness, is that I never expected to live this long. I am closely approaching 29 years old and I never thought I'd make it past 25. So now what?

I used to say I had nine lives, long before I knew what a Leo rising was or that I had one. I may well have lived all of those. I recall the experience of driving down the freeway in my '83 Monte Carlo with leaky T-tops and worn down brake pads while chopping and snorting lines at 7 am. The morning commuters had nary a clue as they hum-drumly raced past. I remember thinking that this was freedom- to stand on the top of a mountain and race down, greased and guzzly, ready to burn the fuel of life away completely. This car was the ultimate metaphor for my life; tired, fast and with a nearing expiration date.

I think back on those cold San Francisco nights when I would tease death and trauma. I would walk three blocks to my car in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco at 3 am. I did this in 6 inch stilettos, a short dress, a giant heavy duffle bag over my shoulder and $600 cash in my purse. There was not one person on the street who didn't know that I was coming from the strip club around the corner or what I was carrying. I cringe at this memory. Nowadays I don't even like to be home alone with my daughters at night in sleepy midtown Sacramento.My mind asks, "What could I possibly have been thinking?" I remember that my logic was running on numbed pain. I was thinking "take me, life!" while my heart pitter-pattered to the rhythm of cocaine.
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But things are so very different now. I love my life and I love being alive. I emerged slowly from that living mortuary. I am changed. I have desires, goals and an overwhelming sense of purpose. There must have been some good reason life kept me from death's grip even when I taunted it so. I have two beautiful children who I want to nurture to capacity. I have so many dreams and visions that cannot be executed in a matter of months or even a few years in some cases. I need time to build the empire of love and soul nurturing that I envision. I need to know that life will not take this dream from me before I see it swell to crescendo.

And what reason would I have at all to feel such fear at this sort of thought? Life challenges my newly gained strength. It has asked me how agile I can be, and I am panicking.

Having survived such suicide attempts as throwing myself into the Pacific Ocean on a stormy day, overdosing on scripts, taping a plastic bag over my head and taking a bottle of vicodin followed by a hot bath, along with at least two accidental drug overdoses that I can be sure of, run-ins with murderous underground sex industry types, dangerous drug dealers, and the like, I developed the perspective that I was here to accomplish some great work and the Universe would not let me leave until I did. This perspective gave me hope and deep joy, along with an excitement in my heart upon awakening each morning.

And then...

In March my fiance and I took our kids to walk along a paved trail by the Sacramento River. We stopped to throw rocks into the river when our 5 month old baby Sage's stroller went rolling down the side of the levy toward a small rock quarry punctuating the bank. Without a single thought I threw my body down the levy to reach her after running several feet behind her. I reached her at the last minute, and miraculously, she was unharmed save for a small scratch above her right eyebrow despite her stroller bouncing face first on the jagged rocks and boulders. I caught the handle of her stroller and she was safe. I, on the other hand, was not so fortuitous (although this, too is a matter of perspective- my baby was alive and physically unharmed. Can't beat that!) My left ankle dangled off to the side pointed perpindicular to the rest of my left leg. I felt faint. My mind was in and out of consciousness, and all I could hear was my baby screaming in a fit of terror.

We did not have a cell phone to call for help, but fortunately a woman came walking down the trail a few minutes later and Chris, my mate, called for help. From down on the river bank I could hear Emma, my five year old, crying in fright up above. Too injured to move, I held my baby girl and did the only thing I could think to do to comfort her: I nursed her on that treacherous river bank and I looked deep into her eyes and smiled and told her everything would be okay. Once the firefighters arrived they took her to safety and I passed out.

It's been a long emotional recovery. First the shock moved through me as I underwent surgery, hospitalization and treatment for my concussion, lacerated liver and badly bruised and cut up body. Then there was the challenge at home of synthetic opiate withdrawal, daily blood thinning injections and immobile vulnerability.

The process of getting out of the house in a wheel chair, then crutches, and on to walking on my own has been extremely quick and shown me my own physical resilience in a way I had not imagined before the accident. The emotional processing has unveiled a crisis of faith; what if death takes me before I'm done? There is still so much to know, to seek, to understand, to do, to share, to live. I can't go yet! What if death takes my children? How would I ever cope with that? Am I really strong enough to not crawl back into the crevices of depression, drugs and suicide? Don't my children provide me with the very light and fuel of the sun itself? Aren't they angelic gifts from the Universe?

Like I said- Leo rising. I know my children did not incarnate just for me, and yet I also know I did not for them. Then comes more anxiety- am I selfish for wanting to live my purpose out? My children are wonderful but every dish I do is another paragraph that does not get written. Every game I play with my daughters is another class outline that does not get created. Every night I spend cuddling with my mate creates another day of the anguish of biting frustration.

I can't do it all well right now, and evermore I fear death waiting right outside my door. I wrangle my fear daily throwing myself back and forth between emotional expression and some all-encompassing distraction. I walk, play, do my makeup, my homework and chores too, I even laugh and smile. Still, behind it all, I am afraid my time will end before I can live every last drop of it. This is what tugs at my soul now.

take good care of your spirit~

V