april 30, 2012

it's my very last night staying with the lovely lili k. tomorrow i move into my own place. i don't know where the time went, but i've already spent a third of the year here. wow.

this has been a safe, warm place to cocoon. a place to come back from numbness and despair and start to be who i am again. it's not an overstatement to say i've come back to life here. it's been my cozy cave. a place to giggle and cry and sing silly songs and complain and worry and cook and dream and write and freak out and talk about things. i'm so grateful to have lived here with one of the most loving humans i've ever met. i know that i'm safe and loved and welcome here in a way that's unmarred by doubt. that's a rare and precious thing.

thank you, lili.
know that i will shelter you anytime.
in any way you need.

in thinking about the year so far, i realized something: these last four months, i've been mending my happiness. it was tattered and sagging when i arrived at lili's at the end of 2011. now, while i'm certainly still marked by what i've lived, my happiness is whole again. and growing. it's happened so slowly and steadily, that i hadn't really noticed the transformation until today.

this afternoon, as i was packing my things, i came across a tassel. it belongs to the pillow pictured above. when i bought the pillow at a small buddhist store on bank street a few years back, it was supposed to be a reminder about spiritually-oriented happiness; to aim for contentment rather than gratification. one by one, all the tassels on the pillow have fallen off in the last year – symbolic much??? *laugh* when i left my ex's house in december, it was sudden and without most of my things. but this pillow was one of the essential things i grabbed on the way out.

the pillow says:
happiness. when one's spiritual needs are met by an untroubled innerlife. happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.

that's the kind of happiness i'm talking about.
a kind, joyful, calm, centred, engaged peace.

tonight, i'm going to put the first tassel back on the happiness pillow. as i unpack and settle into my new place, i imagine i'll find the other tassels, which are tucked away in boxes somewhere. and i'll sew them back on, one by one. it seems appropriate somehow: a gradual process merits a gradual mend.

here's a picture with the first tassel sewn back on:

wish me luck in moving my life out of storage tomorrow!
life life life. thank you.