Feeling Myself
I hardly slept last night. I wasn't mad about it. It's been happening a couple times a week these past couple weeks. Again, I'm not mad about it. Sometimes I think I am just teasing my sleep hygiene routine by watching TV later or not reading, meditating, or journaling right before sleeping time. A number of times I'm connecting with friends on phone calls or video chats later than I normally would (none within 2 hours of sleep), but that's a decision I'm happily making right now. Sometimes I wonder if my brain is just too active, not with worry, which we commonly think about keeping us about at night. Last night I wondered if I'm just growing and changing too much right now to sleep every night. It's like my brain is going through cycles and doesn't want to stop learning something. It will make up for it the next time with 10.5 to 12 hours of sleep. This is sabbatical life, friends, and I'm not mad about any of it!
So this morning, I think I fell asleep at 7 a.m. for 2.5 hours. When I awoke, I was a little groggy, but more ready to get up than I was ready to sleep. I determined to set into some action for the day. After all, I could always take a nap later in the day. Before you get too excited and think: here I am napping all the time. I'm not. I'm just not good at napping. I'm not good at the stopping, laying down, and the closing my eyes, which all seem to be quintessential parts of sleeping. But today I was okay to go out and about from my COVID case (yes, COVID-19 finally got me 2.5 years later, but I had to go back to a life of seeing people and doing things at some point.) So here I am alone in Mexico, sabbaticaling it up, having quarantined and, according to CDC guidelines, ready to roll back into the physical, communal world, albeit while masked for a few more days. (CDC please talk about hand washing more, come on).
Even without significant REM time, I entered the post-sleep period with stoke today. I felt different. I was feeling myself, and it felt good! This is the kind of embodied, swaggy, internal knowing that I had in 2005 and 2006 at age 26. I could feel my inner sexy oozing out. It was essential me. (There is a sexy essence about each of us. I don't think I'm special in this.) I was not trying for it at age 26. I was just being myself. I just found myself in that state.
Today felt so reminiscent of 15 years before, but with the added bonus of hard-earned mid-life wisdom. I had a sense it could be sustained. Sexy is not something I'm trying to be now, but I am trying to be more embodied. This embodied journey means that I am increasingly not afraid to be seen as sexy and to view my body as wholly good. I am letting things fall away that aren't me and letting things that arise that are. Curiosity is playing a big part in this. I didn't have these extra layers at 26 - extra layers of knowing and knowledge, so today while tipping its hat to that special time in the mid naughts felt different today and pointed towards progress.
I loved how I felt this morning. There was a calm, confidence as I went about my morning routine in the airbnb. I did the usual tea, meditation, and journaling up on the roof. But I didn't feel should. I didn't feel like there was only one right way. I felt like I was noticing and savoring details - the gardener two buildings over, the hummingbird hovering by to take in my scene, the clouds streaking and strewn across the brilliant blue heavens likely taking no notice of me, the green grasslands in the distance between the layered picturesque urban buildings and the mountains in the far distance meeting the horizon, the mild exciting and comforting breeze on my bare skin, the sun's rays enveloping and caressing me. In the not should-ness, I thought some kind gentle yogic movements in the breeze, in the sun, with the stimulation view would be so delightful and it was!
After spending the late morning with myself, I merrily headed out in the early afternoon sun for some lunch and tasty vittles to punctuate the uninspiring home cooked meals of the past few days, before purchasing a few groceries and flowers and returning home. As I walked the streets, leisurely, while smiling and making eye contact, I stopped to take pictures of vistas, streets, churches, doors, cars, plants, decorations, people. I was there. I wasn't surviving. I was very aware of being alive. I was taking it in, as much as I could.
Being so alive is so sexy. That feeling, that confidence is something else. Life is sensual. It's just that we are so often turned off to our senses, to our bodies. We are more existing than living. We are more coasting than progressing. We are more passive than participating.
Today I was feeling myself, and because I was, I was fully in the moment. Now isn't that sexy?
-esb