And the portal opens…
Deep down, I fall into the depths of me. Disappearing into darkness. Into the pit of my pain. The abyss of emptiness.
I reach the hard, cold floor, and before I can catch my breath, it gives way and I drop deeper still.
And I’m disintegrating in this void of sadness. Dissolving into tears of desperate loneliness. There’s nothing to cling onto, to reach out for. I’m reeling through space and time. Nothing but the dark, endless night. I’m silently screaming, as my soul’s sucked under the weight of this tidal wave of tears that don’t stop churning above my head.
The underworld. Messy middle. The void. Chrysalis. The hole inside me.
Words can’t draw a map to this place. It’s fucking terrifying.
Hello, from the chrysalis.
Can you hear me from way down in here? Does my language translate from this primordial ooze?
It doesn’t get easier. Recovery is quicker, but I can’t outrun this place. It’s ever-present, in parallel to where it feels good, and I could slip in at any point. It’s unavoidable, and the cycle continues. Part of the process of my next becoming.
I’ve called these periods my mini-deaths. When I no longer perceive myself to be who or what I thought I was, but dissolve my perception of reality and identity. I am incubating. Percolating. Marinating in the nothingness. Waiting. How I hate waiting…
And if I claw out too soon or am snapped out of it, dragged up from it, then I’m an unearthed corpse. A falling flesh zombie, vulnerable to a world of vultures. I hide to preserve myself. I mustn’t come out of my larvae state too soon. I’m not fully re-formed yet.
Rapid change is occurring from the inside out.
I’m metamorphosing.
In my butterfly becoming.
It’s the time of terrible rest. Of nocturnal nurturing. I yearn for a cocoon of silky, soothing but it’s slippery here in the in-between. I am not as I once was, and not as I am yet to be. It’s so dark here. Non-verbal. In the beginning, before words. Before formation.
Who am in this complete inertia?
Not what I say, or do, or will myself to be.
I’m out of control here.
Unbound in my undoing.
Suspended in the vacuum of the ‘is’ that isn’t yet.
The in-between realm of possibilities.
Thrust into the pummel between each heartbeat. Pounded back into kneaded doughy rawness. Not so delicious now, sweetheart!
Particles of me vibrating in a new frequency. Shimming in the inky darkness.
I can’t see what’s next, can’t think my way out, just feel my way through here.
Breath here.
So many feelings settle into my unsettledness. Nothing is happening, yet everything is rapidly changing from the inside out. Getting comfortable with my ‘uncomfortability’. Allowing this place to move and churn and excruciatingly merge into me. I can’t escape the contractions of my rebirth.
Hello from the chrysalis.
Stillness.
Weaving and grieving growing pains here…
Soon it will be time to venture into adventure once more.
The portal will open back up, and light will dissolve the darkness.
I’ll see my way through.
Rise to spill out onto the other side.
Reborn once more. Bigger, brighter, bolder, braver… a more beautiful butterfly.
From feeling stuck and small and so sore, to ready, willing, and able to soar.
But not yet…
