Dear Sally

I am sitting in Sheree’s living room, having my forth cup of tea for the day and eatting toast for lunch. It’s been a lovely day of buying bikes and generally enjoying having nowhere to go and nowhere to be, for the first time in almost twenty years.

I was listening to a podcast about community and connection, to other people and nature. The woman spoke about how indigenous people had, and still have in some cases, an ability to converse with their environment. That we all have this ability, but we have to be open and learn it. As I was thinking about this concept, a sense of fear and grief welled up inside me. Because as much as I know there would be profound messages of connection and joy, I knew there would also be messages of sadness and pain.

I learnt early on to shield myself from things that would make me sad. When I encountered a situation where people, animals or the environment was experiencing some type of pain, I felt compelled to do something about it. To fix it in some way. However, I figured out quite early, that in many situations, I couldn’t help, but I’d still feel their pain. I didn’t know how to process it, so I would numb the feelings with books, television or daydreaming. To be present, was to feel pain.

This strategy worked for a long time, until it didn’t. But that was for the best, I was forced to learn to deal with my own emotions, that they were like waves in the ocean, which rose and fell, never staying the same. However, what I haven’t yet confronted, is how to deal with other people’s pain, without letting it take me down. I created very effective walls to stop me feeling too much, when other people are hurting. I will help to fix the situation if I can, and if not I will retreat.

I talk about desiring to connect more deeply with people and the environment, but questions are then raised within me. Questions I don’t have answers for yet.

What happens if I take the walls down? Stop shutting people out?

What happens if I start being present and listening to what the environment is trying to tell us?

Will I be able to handle it?

I don’t want to drown in this world’s pain. But I know, that by shutting out the pain, I am also shutting out the joy and connection that I so deeply want in my life. This world is one of polarity. I can have it all, or none of it.

So I choose to have it all. The joy and the sadness, the freedom and the pain. It will be clumsy and I will fuck it up. I will take walls down, only to put them back up when I’m feeling things too intensely. But I’ll learn, and I’ll be living, connecting and loving in the way that I have only glimpsed, so far in my life. It’s why I’m doing this trip.

I love you.

Love, Jess