CW: Sexual violence.
I left Sena with no cell service and a slight concern that I hadnʻt listened to Timoʻs instructions well enough. I thought I might end up in Pueblo rather than Santa Fe. I asked myself why I struggle to pay attention when informed people give me information.
Along those first turns leaving the valley, I kept wondering where the forks were. The road away seemed so straightforward. I got overly comfortable.
As soon as service returned, I called my tita. I love the ambly conversations with her that allow me to wander while she picks her blueberries of thought.
As we talked, I saw these mountains I recognized. I felt I had been there before. And sure enough, I hadnʻt. But driving through the desert is an old friend. As is being overpowered when the right level of trust reveals itself too late.
I rappel down into the sharpness of the desert, and listen to it as a teacher.
Where else can we go to overheat, dehydrate, starve and move swiftly upland from streets and pathways when the sky opens with rain? I lost my wallet at a gas station between Barstow and Vegas once. I found it on the way back, nothing had been stolen. But we came back to a dead dog. Thatʻs how the desert operates. There is abundance and poverty in stark contrast. And the naivety of inattentiveness could cost you what you have.
I walked back to the hotel room that night and was able to see pō mahina. She had been elusive on the trip thus far and I enamored at her re-emergence. I was overconfident in the familiarity.
Healing work is similar to working with children. And so the stages of life feel familiar. There is an openness to it, a vulnerability and connection that is welcome and received. I was riding the high of being in mutual trust with others, and feeling into the possibility of opening my heart, as Rosa offered.
I donʻt remember how he got in the room. I donʻt remember much, falling on to the bed, him on top of me, trying to put my clothes on faster than he could take them off, feeling him persist and look past my humanness to indulge his own. I remember feeling the surrender coming on, followed by the fight, and back again. Like two versions of me, a different kind of sisters, looking for the appropriate move to survive. I remember thinking of his friend and reaching out, as if another stranger in the desert would stop to help me.
When I woke up, I was re-clothed, alone, disoriented. I still hadnʻt processed what had just happened. There was a glass of water next to the bed. I donʻt know how it got there. I donʻt know how I got here, to safety and quiet.
I stumbled to the bathroom and looked for evidence, looked for him. He was gone and there would be only few answers to come as the fog within me cleared.
I attribute the confusion in part to the lack of water.
The aridness leaves no drift, no room for correction. Thereʻs no humidity in the sky to soften the glare on the eyes. The healing found in salt, comes only from within when it makes its ways out of the body and streams down our faces. The desert air provides starkness until the sky opens up and releases all it holds away from this land.
Indeed, ʻanakala. I do miss the Sea.
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