crickets

I hear crickets. The even hum of them, the inhale and exhale of their sound. I hear them beyond the air conditioner in the hall, and my fingers on the keys, and the traffic from 83. I hear them as I fall asleep at night, I hear them when the evening sets and the sun sets. The comfort of childhood and the reminder of rhythm.

I sat across from a mentor last week and he told me each time we fall apart we recognize the dark faster and we are able, somehow, to find our way back out quicker. We can allow our eyes to adjust to the dimness without a panic that will kill us. We can acknowledge that we are not the same person who went below ground. We are new, and that is painful and scary, and in a lot of ways, not what we wanted.

But we don’t always get what we want.

Often times, we get something else entirely.

This time, I certainly did.

Do I regret what my life is right now?

No. I can honestly say that I do not. And the pain and loneliness and unbearable moments of pain, agony and depression.

Worth it, to get here. I may not look it, externally, but I feel both stronger and lighter.

I still don’t have my concentration back, I have a hard time reading a new book. So many sit on my shelf begging for me to pick them up. But that part of me is not yet healed. That part of me is touch and go.

But I can write, I have been writing, and I find myself in new places writing on my iPhone, in my journal, in my text messages.

That is something.

And I laugh every day, sometimes it is a giggle and sometimes I have tears falling down my face in tiny streams because something is so funny.

And I do so, somehow, believe that all of this will be a beautiful bright wink of time. This healing will fade, and the scar will not burn as much, my brain, which is now tougher and stronger, will know that we can do anything. My heart will not close it’s self but open more fully. I will bounce back, I will crawl out of the dark more keenly, I will be different. New. Strange to myself at first, as I am right now, but then- familiar again. What grace there is in both options.

After all, I do hear crickets. And they remind me that home is here, in the rhythm of my heart, the thankfulness in my breathe and the glow of the twinkle lights above my bed.