I always listen for the cracking

Today i wake up and i push my body out of bed, it is the right thing to do. Also i need to pee and make coffee and if i stay in bed all the bad thoughts will come. I think of my feet first, on the mornings when i am lazy like i was this morning, i only rotate my ankles a couple of times, when i do step on them i can feel my fascia stretch unhappily. I always listen for the cracking. A long time ago, and i can say that now because it has been over 20 years, i listened to the voice in my head that said: you have no ambition. I am relieved, i have relieved my-self, from joining the race. For the most part, it has felt good and right and continued to make sense, but there are times when it is really hard and i cannot escape the question: what am i doing? This question is most pressing when my life is summed up in driving in traffic, worrying about my clothes, and fixing the plumbing.

I do not seek to be profound or successful, i do not seek, period. But i do not want to pass through only concerned with the details, scratching but the surface of what this adventure could be.

We try our best ola says. I have very little energy. Sometimes i terrify myself with thoughts around my energy level. Perhaps i am really sick? Something dark living in my gut eating at my store of excitement and initiative. It is the heat perhaps. And the worry. I have to eat more protein perhaps.

I am taking a moment to reset (razan would like my use of the word reset here, technology concepts to understand life), i am taking a moment to attempt at focusing, i need some time to sharpen or acquire some tools to bring myself out of this rut. I will keep my regular exercise, i think this has become a foundation for me or is it a structure? Whichever, the fact that i give myself to this and have maintained it despite the unfinished business with renting the tla al-ali house, gives me hope in me. I am planning a long hike along the sinai trail in October, in preparation, I will try to go on a day hike every week.

Indeed there is pleasure in going with the flow, but what i think i am missing are goggles to see underwater, trust in my muscles to climb a tree if one comes my way, and an openness not to pause too long at the fork, and a sense of dedication that stops me from stopping by the curb to fix the tile or pick up the plastic or hover over a seemingly in need person who has not even asked for help.

Replaying this useless role everyday, arriving at the end of the day a failure. Paralysis in the repeated motion. I am suffocating. Ok, so i sit with this feeling, i try, i say it: i am suffocating.

Freedom. We are all seeking our freedoms. (oopsss. i thought i shall not seek, maybe i can change the verb to find or to be? We must all find the freedom which one can argue is already within, intrinsic?) I have been thinking lately that i have had it easy. I let them be, those soft shackles of good girl and consideration and everyone has been happy. Except not really. Maintaining the status quo has not hurt too much i suppose. Except it has. I feel detached from my-self, estranged some what, further from my-self than i want to/need to/must be. I have worked with and befriended people who have given up everything, everything they know and own and love, to be closer to who they are. I know what seeking freedom can look like. And what it can cost. And what it can bring. I want to [seek] my freedom. How?

To start with:

I want to break free from the patterns i have designed for myself.

I want to break free from my roles (unsolicited, overwhelming, unappreciated).

I want to break free from expectations (unsolicited, overwhelming, unappreciated).

Get closer to nature, closer to my nature, the nature within like breath, love, muscle and sex, and the nature outside like heat and cold, seasons, insects, mysterious sounds in the dark.

And my hair, i think i have to keep it short.

I do not know how to do any of that but what i need to do is try.

Diala

27 August 2019

I only hope that i will have the strength, patience, love and trust to honor your desires.

I can promise that my support to you will be in me continuing to seek my own freedom.

You told me yesterday that by seeking our freedoms there comes pain and that is ok. i will trust that. You also said that we inhabit different emotional plateaus, i am still trying to understand what that means, but i think it’s an important difference that i need to embody.

I will provide my guidance only when asked for.

I will keep an eye from afar and will always think of the insects protecting you from what you fear and reminding you that you are trying.

And sometimes i will fail, and that is also ok.

I do believe that true love is the love that helps us fly higher and higher and when we need a place to rest or “reset”, it’s there without the unsolicited, overwhelming, and unappreciated expectations. Remember that.

And it’s hard but the easy bores us anyway.

And yes your hair needs to be short for now.

Ola

28 August 2019

Dear Reader,

This blog will be on a break for a few months, it too needs to take a moment to reset. See you in 2020.

Love,

the rocca family