Over many years and lifetimes I have had to give it away. My sense of self, identity, relationships and things.
It is the call of a nomad, a gypsy or a wanderer. Tethered in some way to this earth, but holding on to the tether daily to not float away.
All things I loved, will be lost or said goodbye to. They will be asked to leave, abandoned or dropped off at goodwill.
I have a few items I keep, some rocks, some old skull bones of pelicans, my favorite mugs, my sheep skin, a few clothing items that have managed the moves and ultimately my most prized possessions could be thrown out in the garden and biodegrade into their environment of organic matter.
I packed up my whole life into 3 suitcases already when I was 19. I did it again and again over the years and lived in a van, where for each new item acquired, one item would have to be rid of.
Space required being a minimalist and a non-consumer.
Things to me have story. And it gets harder and harder to let go as over the time, certain items have made it through the triage of letting go and saying goodbye. Each item has more and more value, a story, a face behind it.
Ultimately the one thing I will never have to say goodbye to at least until the very end is my body.
I’ve always felt comfortable in this space. Even though it would be a myriad of sensations and emotions and discomforts at times, it was the only thing I had to lean back on and make sure I brought forward into the day.
My body. She’s the largest storage I have. Hello dearest friend. I admire you daily in the mirror, you’re so beautiful, your lines, your muscles, your skin, your coloration, and the pleasure you bring me.
You move me through life, you dance me on a dance floor, you let me experience the feeling of levity as we move through the vibration of sound, contorting, jumping, rolling, waving into the music that dances us.
I experience the pleasure of love making. The orgasms that fill my entire body and every cell with a glimpse of god. I experience the waves of oxytocin filling my system with deep connection to my lover. I feel the possibility of abandonment, in my body that allows itself to be played with, revealed, unveiled and permeated.
I feel your strength as you run, hike, climb, swim. I undulate my spine as I mermaid through the coral reefs, holding the one breath in my lungs. I am a fish, I fly in that moment. The water caresses my skin, tantalizing, sensual, alluring and enveloping.
The sun caresses my skin, I melt, the serotonin rises, feelings of happiness and connection. My skin changes color, golden, scintillating, my eyes gleam with the sun behind them.
She clamps down, clenches, writhes, throbs, pulsates, shakes, to let me know something isn’t right.
She tells me in all her ways, you’re not looking out for your needs, girl. This hurts my lungs, my heart, my vagina… Come back to me, come back to your presence, come back to care.
She tells me to take a break. She gets all hot and flushed, trembling and cold, and sends me to bed. Rest child. Rest.
If I had anywhere I needed to go, it would be right home. Right home in the safe place of my body.
At times she frustrates me. I don’t understand her signals, I don’t understand why she’s acting up. I don’t know how I hurt her or what psychosomatic impact I’m having on her, but she’s unhappy. She gets inflamed.
She told me to stop working doing bodywork. She let herself get twisted easily, right in the middle joint of the middle finger. And she played incapacitated for an entire year. She really wanted me to stop working so hard. I became a somatic therapist online instead. I have her to thank.
At the moment she is torturing me with a UTI. It’s very unclear why. She’s making me stop drinking, sexing, swimming, coffee-ing, and making me wear cotton underwear and drink a gallon a day. I feel like she’s punishing me, we are at odds.
I decided to listen. I gave her a full hour. We delved into the past fucks and misaligned sex stories of the past, rid them energetically of our body, screamed and yelled and stomped to renown our own agency and care over what we put in our bodies.
If anyone would have entered the house, they would have though there was an exorcism going on.
I sobbed, cried, groveled, released all the inappropriate, forced, unhealthy men’s penis’ from my body.
I gave her a new image, a beautiful water colored bowl filled with golden stars, named Love Abides.
Only love enters here.
She makes me do these sort of things every so often.
I watch her now as she is 46, aging. She still feels vibrant like a young one. She experiences her body even more so than ever before, I delight in her and more and more grateful for her daily.
Yet I know, one day, she will begin to fail me. I see the lines on her forehead and her neck. Yes, she’s showing the signs of memories and experiences well spent and emotions well lived.
She has a gray hair or two, we will call it signs of wisdom for now, but one day she’ll have a full head of gray hair.
People that age begin to lose their differentiation, they begin to all take on similar faces, wrinkles, gray hair and their definition is lost to the aging process, slowly turning back into the unidentifiable form to return back to the earth.
I hold on to her, I want her to be beautiful forever. I want to feel the pleasure and sexiness and sensuality she gives me until I die. But this quiet voice says, one day you’ll have saggy skin, wrinkles all over your body, saggy breasts and a saggy face. You will not be the plump apple to bite into, you’ll be the old wrinkly apple that no-one craves…
It’s hard to deal with this transient relationship. I thought she was the only thing I could hold onto forever and even then I know one day, I’ll have to take care of her, accompany her in the best way, as she leans towards the other side of life.
She is the safest home I’ve ever known, the one that got up and went with me wherever I had a whim to go. She never forsaked me, abandoned me or betrayed me. She is my closest family, when she’s unhappy, I’m unhappy.
I silently grieve the inevitable, one day she will leave me, she won’t be able to supply all the joys she has thus far, she may even aggravate me to no end, make me work for her, care for her and ultimately leave me.
Impermanence. I face the impermanence of this relationship, I relish the gift I was given to be with her, to experience her, that she has treated me so well thus far, and I thank her daily. Thanks for still bringing me so much joy. My heart fills with utter gratitude with a foreboding nuance of deep grief in the distance.
Photo ®Carly Ko & Robert