(Temporarily) Silenced by Gratitude

One time I had an Indian warm oil Abhyanga massage—I still think about it when I’m having a hard time sleeping. If heaven had two hands and gently warmed fragrant oils and it put itself all over my body…well, hopefully you get the idea.

The other day, it was like I had in intertal Abhyanga massage. I lay in bed as gratitude washed over my bones, my heart, my kidneys. It warmed my skin. I had been thinking about my brothers being dead, and then, like that, I felt a flood of gratitude for my own heartbeat. My heart felt like a darling, persistant animal that was there to take care of me. And I was there to take care of it.

The more I thought about the fact that each heartbeat could be the last and the fact that, again and again, something decided, no, we’re going to beat again, the more my mind began to feel like night sky.

I spend so much time thinking and writing about what could have been, what should have been, what might have been. I spend so much time thinking and writing about what is wrong and painful, and for very good reasons. The other day I watched three crows attack a hawk. These birds don’t mess around. I don’t know what happpened, but I do know that last summer I found the leg of a raven in the backyard.

Life can tear you apart.

And.

The heart can decide to beat one more time.

What’s so great about that? The more I look at everything as a miracle, the more appreciate the one more beat. I mean, come on, how can the palm tree and the turtle and the Rocky Mountains and Michael Jordan all exist? If someone offered me a trillion dollars to create any one of those things, I wouldn’t even try. I know impossible when I see it.

Every beat lets me see one more thing, lets me notice this amazing system I am part of.

This may all read like cliché to you, but oh well. This is why I haven’t been writing.

There’s a lot of talk in the adoptee community about how predictable and infuriating it is to be told we should be grateful for what we have. I have written long rants on the subject. You want me to be grateful that I lost my mother, my culture, my sense of self? Shut up. While we’re at it, gratitude is a feeling, not a being, and you can’t tell someone how they should feel because that’s just stupid. Feel your own damn feelings.

I let myself tantrum through writing for a solid ten years. Not grateful. Not grateful. Angry. Angry. Hurt. Suffering.

I started to notice that the more I focused on not grateful, the more life delivered things for me to feel not grateful for. I didn’t feel happy. I felt imprisoned by the rantings of my own mind, but I couldn’t seem to change direction.

And then my brothers died.

And I lay down for hours and hours and hours and did nothing but let feelings of grief and despair and terror wash through me. I felt and felt and felt and wondered if it might also be my time to die. I felt weaker and weaker and cared less and less for the world around me. But I just let it happen because I’d run out of tricks to keep myself up.

Caroline Myss gave me some advice that helped open new doors in my mind and, at the same time, a friend did something extraordinarily kind for me, and, like that, I changed. I don’t know how else to say it. It felt like I’d come to a fork in the road and went in a new direction. I was open to gratitude. I was open to life. To being myself.

I went to give the horse on the property a carrot, and I could feel the love and gratitude flooding out of my heart towards him. I couldn’t separate the two emotions. They are both so large and warm and uplifting. I felt sloppy and out of control. I had the urge to slam my chest shut, to knight myself up with a suit of metal. Who would I be with all this love flooding out of me? I wouldn’t even really be a self anymore, just a wash of energy headed for another being. Where is the safety in that? What’s the purpose of that?

But we weren’t created to be individuals, armored up against each other. We couldn’t make babies that way, for one thing. What if the point is to let myself go and feel?

The cells of my body love to feel gratitude because it’s a spacious, relaxed, connected feeling. Gratitude gives my cells room to breathe. When I’m fisted in fury, my cells are also fisted, and they look forward to a change of pace so they can stretch out and be their fully realized selves. Fury is a great emotion, by the way. What good is gratitude if we can’t also get pissed off? A piano has 88 keys because it can play that many notes. What great piano player only plays one key? I don’t know how many feelings my body has.

But I’m starting to take notes.