Poor me, I'm rich.

Healing from grief

I wrote this on a plane ride home from Mexico. After a couple of years of back-to-back traumatic experiences (a suicidal spouse, a divorce, two car accidents, and the death of my father) I had struggled to feel present in my body and comprehend time. I wanted to accept the things that happened to me, but not let them define my identity. Mexico was an important piece of this healing that helped me separate myself from the trauma.

I make my world small.

I shrink into the already small apartment 

And when I leave,

I shrink into an even smaller box

And drive to bigger places where I still feel small. 

I make my world small.

I eat the same meals

And never finish the same coffees

I watch the same shows,

Usually with my eyes closed

And miss the same appointments

Until I forget I’m disintegrating

I make my world small.

There are 2.8 million men in Colorado

But I spend my mind ruminating on three

I make my world so small

That I can eventually fold it into my mind 

And my mind feels so big 

That I somehow feel even smaller

This small world has one small circle with only four stops

Time, money, sex, and doubt 

I take the same route

But it always ends with me looking up

Lost for a way out

I make my world small,

But I never stop looking for bigger things 

I meet a woman at a bookstore 

And we immediately feel important to each other

She tells me I have to go to Mexico with her

I say I want to,

But–money, time, money, time.

I’ll try

I get my own apartment and my world feels enormous.

Until I remember that it isn’t

My father dies

And I make my world smaller

Because I shrink into unexpected mourning.

He was a giant looming over me my entire life

And now he’s gone

So why do I feel smaller than ever?

I meet her again the day after he dies

This time she doesn’t ask if I’m going to Mexico

She tells me, “You’re coming to Mexico”

It is a crack of sunshine that lights my small world

And heats my small home

From March to July

Four of us enter a villa in the small city of Teotihuacan 

Lavender grows everywhere 

We are served a Four-course meal 

Every day at three

And there is a never-ending supply of cinnamon coffee

I am rich.

We walk to the pyramids often

And I realize I am witnessing something 

So old, so grand, and so wonderful—every single day. 

The world feels big and I am expanding

I am sitting in a temazcal on a cactus farm 

With the other three 

And an elder we just met. 

We are topless 

I’ve rubbed fresh aloe steaks all over my body,

Sweat over hot stones for hours,

Smoked his sacred peace pipe, 

And cried enough until I could not speak.

My world is thawing out and opening up.

I am rich.

I am staring at a painting

That has stunned me silent and left me open-mouthed

Guadalupe dripping in honey

Not only is it beautiful, but it is unreleased and unfinished and I’m seeing it

While next to the artist that made it 

I’m stuck in a moment that few will witness

Glued there by the honey 

The bees on the canvas stretch my world open.

I’m rich.

In a hammock

I hold a fluffy Siberian cat with big blue crossed eyes.

Clutching my new favorite book in one hand 

And petting him with the other. 

We are spinning behind a flower wall 

And I can't stop thinking,

I’m rich.

I've descended down into a tunnel under the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent 

Receiving a private tour of one of the greatest archeological findings in history

This world is so much bigger than I’ve ever imagined

I realize this is the closest to the earth I’ve ever been and probably ever will be.

They let me hold an ancient artifact to my breast and I can’t stop thinking,  

I am rich.

I’m terrified, but I take a deep breath and declare

‘I won't die because life is a dream, a beautiful dream.’ 

From the balloon, the world has never looked bigger. 

The specific scent of the air over that sacred land on that early morning 

With those specific people brings tears to my eyes.

Until I whisper ‘I’m rich’

We are still on the tarmac 

But a child on the plane asks ‘Are we on the sky?’ 

And I smile to myself

I am rich.

Maybe it was the therapy

Maybe it was the mushroom capsules

Maybe it was the friends that fed me to the brim with deep belly laughs

Maybe it was all the animals I held 

Or all the prayers in my name

Maybe it was finally being able to hug my family regularly 

Maybe it was all those long walks with Carol

Maybe it was the stones I held and inhaled

Maybe it was the best sex of my life, beginning in my thirties

Maybe it was the free concerts 

Maybe it was the hours spent in the hot springs 

Or the Trazodone

Or all that time alone 

Maybe it was finally making somewhere my home.

Maybe it was my week in Mexico 

The sacred spaces 

The steam in the temazcal

The stone doll

Frida’s house and her blue spilled everywhere for miles

Maybe it was the poetry

But I no longer see my life as ‘poor me’

I am rich.