Back To Normal

The house is silent. I take a deep breath. And another.

Tears of gratitude trickle out. It’s been nearly two months.

There is no boom of inner excitement or burst of joy. Nothing wild and celebratory coming out of me.

I experience a sense of relief and a quiet calm. Peace.

I note the wreckage in the kitchen and I don’t care. Life, in all its messiness, is taking place in this house. I’ve decided I love the mess today and officially label it a good thing.

Another deep breath.

I hear… “We are all okay now.”

Then…

“And we always have been.”

Hmmm

At the core, at the deepest levels of being human, I know we have been okay the entire time.

Beneath Kyle’s broken bones, my worries and fears, living in the hospital for ten days, the surgery drama, the doctor and nurse drama, the caregiver drama, the rest, sleep, and exercise deprivation,

was well being.

Understandably, I lost touch with my sense of it. But like a tiny jewel, it sat in my core. It was my power source for connecting with deeper intuition and wisdom.

Back to normal?

I have a sense that I am. But not really. Because my normal will never be the same as the normal before the night I received the phone call about the car accident.

The me of two months ago is not the same me as the one today. I got tossed out of my comfortable life boat into some really cold, choppy water.  Startle. Shock. Surprise.

Each time I felt pushed below the surface, I eventually popped up again. Surviving and even thriving.  Resilience, a beautiful feature of the human design.

And then there is intuition. A human GPS of sorts.  Sometimes I didn’t hear it. Sometimes I didn’t listen. But it was always there, yelling, nagging, whispering, nudging, waiting.

Back to normal?

I’m questioning the concept. And my insistence on wanting it.

What if…..

normal is a myth and the idea of getting back to it is simply a resistance to feeling a certain way? Or having to deal with certain things? A strong desire for life to be as it was before. Feeling and caring about the same things in the same way. Flowing in the same stream.

What if….

normal is right here where I am now? And in all the moments to come? Not in some past that only exists in my memories, my thoughts. It looks to me like the more I strain toward normal in my mind, the less I notice what’s right in front of me. Hmmm again.

Going back to life as it was before suddenly feels stale. Like eating leftovers that are a couple of days past their prime.   Why would I want to do that when I can look to the oven and pull out a pan of fresh hot bubbly food? Perhaps with some new ingredients and spices.

As I sort this out, I see that there really isn’t anything to get back to. The past is in my mind, my thoughts.  There’s only what’s right here. And what comes next and next and next.

The puzzle pieces of my life and who I am have been reshuffled and spilled out on a big canvas. Some are missing and many sit askew or upside down, waiting to be put together to create something fresh.

Squinting, I begin to see a new picture…. normal.