Jaime Mathis and The Words

The space between me and the end of this 500-mile pilgrimage. The calm between skin diving into waves rippling my uterus down and a new human breathing air. The last time I took his face in my hands. The second before I forgot who I was and now.  It’s nothing and nowhere between two points, just a firing of lightning and elements fornicating in my brain. But it seems so real. Realer than the hangnail that tore white from pink skin, got infected, and screamed at touch. Realer than her black rimmed stare that sneered my 8-year-old heart into the corner. Realer than the cardamom main line from chai to nose on November mornings. Realer than the “F” I will receive if I write instead of read.  It’s just time and space, memory getting confused with all the parallel universes. But it seems so true.

Disease, discontent, illness, depletion, exhaustion, pain... chronic...these are states that  many of us embody whether it shows up in ongoing or acute health challenges, addictions, mental disturbances, existential crisis, or an undefined sense of something being not quite right. We are depressed, anxious, overweight, lonely, hypertensive, apathetic, disconnected, and discouraged.  What is going on? Why are so many of us sick and tired and unable to feel well? In my experience, these many faces of imbalance and diminished vitality are visible across political, racial, economic, and gender lines. As a systems thinker and big picture explorer, I am constantly looking for the path that connects the dots between seemingly disconnected proofs of an internal world in flux. As much as we have been taught to pop a pill or buy a product to soothe a symptom from headache to feeling frumpy, the quick fix never lasts because we do not live in a vacuum. We are, like trees, deeply intertwi