Rain Changes

I went for a very lovely walk in the rain yesterday. Thursday and Friday I was in a strange mood. I was agitated, disgruntled, stressed, tired, and bored. This does not make sense. I am, after all, happy and excited about where I am right now. Meaning: it is great being in California for the winter, living alone after about eight months of constant company(!), starting my private massage practice, going to school, finding friends, working on a few creative projects, living in a beautiful house, surrounded by gorgeous nature and so much more. Every morning I do my yoga thing while the sunrises and acknowledge how lucky I am.

So…
Why can’t I sleep? My knee-jerk reaction to this is, “I don’t know why I feel like this.” That, however, is bullshit and I recognize it as bullshit immediately even as I think it or say it. I just don’t want to think about it, I just want it to go away (because I “should” be happy.) It is true that I have been quite consumed by a very intense two-week anatomy class that left almost no time for anything else. As a result, I wasn’t exercising or interacting with people socially. The anatomy class certainly was awesome, but I was losing the “balance” bit of life. That is a plausible explanation for the whole agitation/stress/fatigue/boredom thing. Throw in the fact that I was PMS-ing and I’ve got a great excuse.

In a bigger sense, however, I think the last few months are sorta catching up with me. I’ve made some rather huge life changes, gone on kick-ass adventures – domestic and international, roved about the country visiting friends and family and all with little or no down time between any one activity and the next. I haven’t exactly been able to process much of it and in my mind I keep avoiding questions about or contemplations of “hard” topics that I won’t subject you to here. (Or am I just avoiding them again?) When arriving in Penn Valley and finally finding myself faced with the solitude and space for quiet reflection I opted instead to listen to music, talk to friends about trivial matters, watch football, get a little nutso with the anatomy and so on. None of those things are bad – they just added to the clutter and confusion inside and were clearly diversionary tactics.

So Friday class ended and I had until mid-day Sunday (when my Level II massage training started) to “clear my space.” I was resolved to just let myself be quiet and reflective. What did I do instead? I took care of things that needed to be taken care of. I knitted. I watched a new TV show that related to my old job that I’ve wanted to see. I talked to friends I’ve wanted to catch up with. I decided I could let myself just relax on Friday and resolved anew to let myself be still on Saturday. Saturday dawned, however, and I cleaned the entire house, sorted and reorganized all my files, did multiple loads of laundry, re-configured the TV/Cable/DVD player because Comcast had screwed it up when they installed the cable, knitted some more, cooked intricate dishes, talked to some more people, and watched half of the first football game.

Then I went for a walk around 3. It was quite rainy but if it is rainy then it isn’t snowing and if it isn’t snowing then it is quite warm. I didn’t have any real destination. I had a vague hope of finding a park with some monkey bars so I could hang upside down, but the park I found didn’t have monkey bars and I ended up just wandering around toward things that looked interesting or down a street with a nice name (like Golden Trout.) The hills and lake through the rain were lovely and beautiful in a dreamy way. There were no people and very few animals out so except for an occasional car things were abnormally quiet – as if the rain had muffled the sound as well. While we aren’t at a very high altitude, the air had that mountain smell. Perhaps it is a combination of evergreens, sharp winter rain and the occasional wood-burning fireplace. I don’t know how long or far I walked (90 minutes maybe?) but I was thoroughly drenched by the time I got home. It was soothing to feel the rhythms of the rain as it wavered between a light sprinkle, a mist, a cold, horizontal rain, a moment of dry, and then back to rain. You couldn’t even think about thinking about it. And you didn’t need to, there was nothing you could do one way or the other and it didn’t matter.

I felt much better when I got back. Quieter, calmer, happier. It seemed fitting that about five minutes after I got home the clouds parted and the sun snuck across from the horizon to wash the hills with that evening golden light. There was even a great big rainbow.

All is not solved, by any means, but I feel much better.