Cleansing the TL
exit through eclipse portal (again)
I had major plans for this week's* letter.
I was going to go see the eclipse, and have this transcendent experience, and then come back with wisdom and peace.
So, I boarded a small boat south of where I live, to head even further south.
Found a spot on the beach, shaded by trees but I could still see the sun.
Lit some copal incense, trudged into the water, stepping over coral and other unseen growths in the sand.
I said some affirmations, and then, just when I was thinking I should probably stand somewhere else a bit safer for my feet, a small wave knocked me and I stumbled, grazing something sharp in the water.
I eventually climbed out, looked at the new, small black hole on my big toe.
I pressed on it, feeling pain.
Not long after, I saw a pretty shell, one of those round ones that look like pin cushions. Turning it in my hand to examine in closer, the dead and stinking guts on the inside, and the few remaining spikes on the outside.
Oh, a sea urchin. This is probably what I stepped on.
I appreciated the ocean offering clarity, and then remembered a conversation I had had with her maybe a day or two before, swimming into deeper waters, where my feet don't touch the sand.
Feeling sad about leaving the ocean, and not being sure if I'd see her again anytime soon.
Shall I give you a little scare, make the leaving easier?
No! I thought, pulling myself in closer to shore.
I appreciate dark humor, and I laugh, one of those fake ones where you're like, I hope you're joking! But knowing they're probably not. The ocean will tease you, the trickster energy is heavy and rolling.
**
I am leaving Costa Rica, and I am sad.
I also am ready to go, but that doesn't make me less sad.
I saw a graphic recently, from this woman I once interviewed:
It helped me accept the paradox of understanding I was ready to go and also that I was sad about it.
These are crying times. I have cried almost daily, a semi-catharsis for me. Though I long to really wail and heave, I'm grateful for the small progress of letting silent tears roll down my cheeks. For a while I had stopped crying, socialized into a level of intellectual aloofness that prevented me from the catharsis of feeling my feelings.
It is okay to feel my feelings, i told myself, while crying.
Leaving is not a bad thing, but it is a sad thing, even if it's what I want to do.
I give space for the complexity of my feelings, I acknowledge the contradictory nature of being a human.
**
Things that make me excited for the future (not in order of importance):
1. Seeing friends.
2. Cooking soups.
3. Hot showers (I have been without hot water for weeks)
4. Full body hugs with people I have deep connections with.
5. Considering getting a new car (this surprises me -- i am a car person? i guess)
6. Going to Toronto and LA and Palm Springs and DC (in reverse order, actually)
7. The holiday season
Things that I will miss (somewhat in order of importance):
1. The ocean
2. Sloths
3. The tiny geckos that wiggle around on the stucco walls of my house and seem to laugh on cue to punctuate whatever thought I'm having. They also eat the bugs. I appreciate you geckos!
4. Feeling the hot sun on my skin
5. Leaving the house half nekkid and riding around on my scooter
6. The food! The fruit.
7. All the animals and trees and bugs (but not the annoying ones, tbh) and sunrises and starry nights
***
I am leaving Costa Rica, and I am not sure whether I'll be back.
It will always be here, but in a since, has also already left. My life feels so different than it did when I first came here, even if it doesn't look different at all. The people have rotated out, the mood has changed, the novelty worn. I miss the honeymoon phase, not that this was a fling, and maybe I will circle back down the road, but the fingers are pointing to the door, and I know better than to overstay my welcome.
Good things are thataway, and yet I am taking my time to feel the sadness of leaving all the alternate futures I imagined for myself here. Maybe one day I will open a seaside roller rink in costa rica. It could happen.
*I wrote this last week, but the feelings were too big to feel safe to share.