Sarah J. Blige

I’m dying. I must be dying, because my life is flashing before my eyes. Well, “flashing” is not totally accurate: my life is floating before my eyes, the landscape of my memory refusing to fade, not forgetting any line or curve, nor any corner or edge. Scenes linger for longer than is comfortable, rebirthed and imprinting themselves on my consciousness.

But why can’t I get a nice flashback on which to float along blissfully for a while? All that comes up are the painful memories I thought I’d successfully vanquished years ago, buried deep in my subconscious, their haunting appearing only in the subtleties of my existence, no one the wiser.

And now, here they are, confronting me at a moment of vulnerability, reminding me that a turned cheek does not erase a point in history.

Here, in fr0nt of me and showing no signs of fading is all the sadness, fear, confusion, and anger from my past that I’d tried to keep locked away, creeping in without invitation, challenging me for a reaction. I know they’re not going to disappear without my acceptance, so I halfheartedly invite them to stay.

I say hello to these old memories and tell them to make themselves comfortable. But they don’t budge: they just hang there — moments suspended in time — until I accept them each completely and unconditionally as an important part of my personal road map and move along to the next destination.

In savasana, dead body pose, these are the thoughts that race across my mind. For so long I’ve been blessed with peaceful, calm, clean meditation, but it seems I was only going so deep into my subconscious and not properly exorcising my demons of the past. I finally make peace with this old shit storm of emotional attachment that has been (unbeknownst to me) changing the course of my life, and I ride the wave of change, liberated and energized.

It’s this shadow side — the part of me that I try so hard to disregard, to write off as a minor defect — that has gripped onto the ragged corners of my life I’ve left hanging about and refused to be ignored.  It’s this shadow side that I’ve refused to accept and acknowledge until now, that I finally understand in this moment. It’s this shadow side that illuminates and liberates the peace and freedom of spirit that has been almost-there-but-not-quite for so long, and can finally go all the way, through forgetting and remembering; through forgiveness, no longer begrudged; beyond phony peace and forced silence, banishing that terrible guise that kept it all under wraps, ashamed.

In this moment I watch peacefully as all the pretenses slip away and the armor falls down into a heap of junk metal, no longer useful. I begin to rebuild myself, armed now with patience and acceptance, a soothing confidence that everything is okay just the way it is, and pure, unfettered love. This is a new love, flexible and transcending, able to absorb all of time into one finite moment: this is peace.