Depending on how long you have been reading my emails and posts, you may know by now that I have gradually been befriending the dark, shadowy, kinky and unexpected aspects of myself. Today's share... well, it's in keeping with that journey, and the surprising way that a death fantasy turned my day around. Here's hoping that sharing this story might inspire you to befriend some weird, wonderful way that your brain works. I actually think this is one of the ways our soul speaks to us—not despite the dark and twisted moments, but through them.
Last night, as I was getting ready for bed, I found myself in a very dark place. The land of existential crisis and questioning is a place I visit pretty regularly. It's as if these questions are my warm fuzzy companions: "Why am I here? What does it all mean? Who cares, anyway? Aren't we all going to die?"
Just for context, my best guess about what is stimulating these feelings is metabolizing the grief and the intensity from being so close to Rudyji's death, as well as ongoing relationship challenges and also missing my Mom, sister and my kids, all of whom live pretty far away, and my deep grief about all the ways (both literal and figurative) that the world is on fire right now.
Here are some excerpts from things I texted to Allison last night:
"I have a permanent Void inside me that swallows all my positive emotions."
"We are all just dying anyway - slow motion somatic composting - so why not just make all of life poetry?"
"I am pretty sure I exist, but not 100% sure at this moment."
"If I was a drug or alcohol addict, this would be one of the moments when I would absolutely use one or both of those things to numb it all."
So I eventually fell asleep, and then woke up at 2:30 am feeling about the same, but with the added layer of the "witching hour" when the veil feels even thinner and things can get even weirder. I ended up having a long middle of the night conversation with a friend and one of the last things he shared with me before we hung up is that his fantasy about how he would like to die is wrestling with a grizzly bear. Hmmmmm.
Fast forward to waking up this morning, doing my morning meditation, drinking my cacao, writing in my journal, getting my day started. Then I realized I needed to call my Mom. Within minutes of getting on the phone with her, she had me laughing. We were talking about making plans for our birthdays. Mine is coming up, and so is hers. She is currently 78 years old. But she shared with me that she has been brazenly telling people, for a couple of years now, that she's 80. Her willful mistruth tickled me so much - the way she is giving herself permission to just claim something that's not true, but it really doesn't matter and no one even really cares, so why not just say the number that packs the most punch? The older I get, the more I appreciate my Mom and the sense of playfulness and humor that I feel like I inherited from her. The way she was taking this liberty with the truth reconnected me to something pretty important in myself - my own sense of agency. Why is it so easy to forget that I actually get to create my own inner reality?
When I got off the phone, I saw this text from Max:
Max: "I think I just need to drop out of life today, I don't want to deal with it."
Sarah: "I hear you. I feel the same. It's all too much."
Max: "Yeah, I'm thinking to leave the country for a year and come back when the house is put back together. Where shall we go?"
Sarah: "Somewhere I can get bitten by a venomous snake that will instantly take me out of my misery. Not a rattlesnake or a copperhead, too slow and painful and boring. It needs to be one that has a potent neurotoxin."
Max: "Caged creature, fed to the snakes. But you are a national treasure so we can't let you die, really."
Sarah: "OMG I want to be put in a cage with a cobra, black mamba or a krait. And then I have to either make friends with it or I get bitten and die. I love that."
Max: "Premium content for sure. I think we can take you caged on the circus circuit and your handlers will make a lot of money off of you."
Sarah: "Yessss!!! People watching me in the cage! This is giving me life! You are saving my day today! Your imagination is the national treasure. Now I want to tackle the tasks I have been putting off all week, because I now know a way that I can die that doesn't suck! My pussy is getting wet, too!"
And so, my dears, there you have it. The moment that saved my day. I have now had the most productive day of my week. I finished the detailed outline for the Celebrating the Body Erotic workshop that starts next Friday. I texted four different clients about scheduling and what the plan is for our sessions next week, and now I am writing this post! I even had AI make the artwork for this, and I liked what it made on the first try!
What happened in that text exchange? Hard to say, really, because Max and I are just magical together, but the big shift that happened was that as I completely surrendered to the poetry of the existential dread, I was able to reconnect with my agency and my creativity. Wild, isn't it? Plus, laughing with my Mom really helped.
My soul rarely speaks in sensible sentences. It comes through my attraction to the hidden power of venomous snakes, an arousing and impossible fantasy, or an old woman who has simply decided she's eighty because it feels more fun.
Sarah Belzile
