“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” – C. S. Lewis

Water cascades down stone tiles, there is certificate upon certificate in frames on the walls, and a background of piano keys that do nothing to stir my soul. I’m waiting on a leather sofa across from a wooden screen. It looks Asian, but I’m as unsure of this as I am of the knee-high boots and yoga pants I’m wearing. The assistant is doing a checklist of all my supplements, poking her pinky around an iPad. I’m immediately defensive because I know how I’ve been slacking.
“Well, I take fish oil every other day.” She reminds me about the benefit of a daily intake.
Yes, I know. Should I take this while my oldest snarls her acidic tongue at her brother or when my youngest begins to scream like someone has pierced her with an arrow? Just wondering, because really, I’m grateful to be out of bed.

Some days I can’t bear. Period. There is no fill in the blank because it’s all of it, that is overwhelming me. The fake waterfalls, the operator music. This forced ambiance and I, we’re not clicking. I want the casket because everyone standing at my gravesite makes me feel heavy. Impenetrable? Yes, please. I think I won’t survive unless I lock up my heart.

I’m angry? Oh. I’m angry. Why?

My pen keeps going on the page, words are coming like crumbs dropped along a path so I find my way. I follow them.

Longing. I’m longing for something. Probably connection. It’s always that. And security. A place to let down. Somewhere that is safe, and all this Fung Shoo isn’t it. Give me the smell of cattle, move my neighbors no less than two acres on all sides, let my face feel the sun through a labyrinth of branches and the grass tangle itself in my hair until my arms grow goose bumps from the shifting winds of storm fronts. Give me country, where I most often hear the voice of God.

“Do something that makes you out of breath. Run up the stairs instead of walk, dance with your kids,” my doctor tells me. “Punch the mattress.”
This, gets my attention. I’ve learned recently that out of the three types of reactions: flight, fight, or freeze, I fight. I’m a fighter. So the coffin isn’t actually going to work for me. Maybe for a quick nap, because who can’t use one of those from time to time? And after a little rest I’ll kick back the lid, dig into the dirt until my fingernails are caked, and climb to all the relationships who love me enough to do death with me, to vulnerability.

Gloom and doom, we have some business to do.