This time last week in Miami. It’s 6AM.
It’s dark. I’m sitting alone on the beach, listening to music. Breathing. Ready to experience a beautiful sunrise. So ready to get enveloped in the ocean breeze, let its healing sights and sounds caress my soul. After two days of vacation, I felt so ripe for whatever I need to feel and gain from some time alone, just me and God’s morning painting.
The sunrise itself didn’t fail. Deep and bright and slowly spreading over the horizon, in harmony with the washing waves and poetic birds. Absolutely gorgeous. Pristine.
But me, I felt anxious. Irritated. Distracted.
And two hours later, after so much alone time on the beach — something I was deeply craving back in my regular life back in New York — I walked away feeling judgmental of myself for how I felt anxious, irritated, and distracted.
Why couldn’t I sink in?
Why am I not fully open?
Why did I keep reaching for my phone?
Why are my thoughts racing?
Why didn’t I do a meditation?
Why isn’t this even doing something for me?
What that something is, I don’t even know.
But I’m seeking. And I didn’t find it.
Have I come this far to not even be able to be present to a morning sunrise on the beach?
In the more gentle crevices of my mind and heart, I know not to expect so much from one experience. But my more cognitive voice is judging, assessing, and summarizing: and it feels like I’m a lost cause.
Who knew you can be alone and open hearted on the beach, with no responsibilities, watching the sunlight increase and envelop the world, and walk away feeling so agitated, so defeated?
What’s…wrong with me?
Flash forward to yesterday, and I’m having extreme fatigue that triggers a low grade anxiety attack, that lands me at the doctor. Not pregnant. Not Covid. Not dying (yet!).
Usually when you rule it all out, what’s left is anxiety. I’ve had enough experience with this to know.
But why? Now? I don’t understand. Life is good. Calm. I haven’t had this in years. Why am I so exhausted? Why am I so anxious?
Just like after the sunrise. The questions.
I find myself talking to people I trust, who love me, and sharing with them what may have triggered it. More socializing than usual. More small talk. Being off social media and feeling more internal silence. A school event where I observed how different my daughter is from her peers. Some worry around this and that. Some family stuff. The list went on and on, once I started.
But still, exhausted and anxious?
Am I this fragile?
Or maybe that question alone is what’s tripping me up.
Maybe its more like…am I this repressed?
Because the truth is, even when things are so good, there’s still so much. And sometimes we are so focused on all that’s right, that we’re so grateful for, that we forget how much we carry.
I’ll stop saying we.
I.
I forget.
I forget how much I carry.
We all know that a little light dispels the dark, but what about how sometimes for many of us, a little light actually invokes the dark? Things are good and then we are waiting for the ball to drop. Our relationship feels smooth, and then anxiety kicks in about how much better it could be. We take some much needed time alone at a sunrise, and that’s when we face the gunk. Or maybe we experience clarity and inspiration, and that’s exactly when we find we are more depressed and negative. We have a newfound consciousness and then it’s replaced by more questions.
Sometimes a little light and goodness makes us feel lonely, especially for those of us who have suffered loss, or are searching for our soulmate, or wanting to have another child.
Or what about when there is so much light and we don’t feel deserving, like we need to catch up to the goodness and miracles we’ve been lucky to be handed?
Light isn’t always easy. Sometimes light is heavy. A little light dispels a lot of darkness, it’s true. But it can also cast a sharp shadow.
Chanukah is all about light conquering the dark. But no one talks about how hard it is for many of us to see the light, feel the light, feel light. How sometimes we are numb to the light. Or how often it IS the light that makes us feel scared, out of touch, or sad. Or sometimes it feels like it’s mocking us, and we crave just going back to routine, where we aren’t being “forced” to see the light. All the poetic euphemisms and glorious Instagram posts included.