On a rock in the forest

I sat on the rock and looked around me. I didn't expect it to hit me in that moment but it did. I could see the undefiled purity in every square inch around me. Everything just was. The rocks were covered in lush velvety green moss. The mist rising from the waterfall sparkled like glitter in the sun. A tiny Benwick's Wren serenaded from the middle branches of a nearby alder tree. And the water... The water was the clearest, cleanest, most beautiful color of glass with the faintest tinge of green. Everything was simple and beautiful and whole and organic and lovely in it's own way. Nothing needed to be added. Nothing needed to be taken away. It just was. I asked myself how it was that human life could be so different from the scene on display in every direction I looked. How could it be so difficult, so jagged and unforgiving? Why was so much effort required? I began to cry as I let it soak in, the immensity of what I had recently been through. I hadn't yet allowed myself to step away from it that far- to stand back and look at the entire picture of it head on. I had only been surviving moment to moment, but now... now I strung all the moments together and took in the entire timeline. Sometimes when things are immeasurably right {like sitting in the sun on an emerald rock deep in the forest} you realize how immeasurably wrong they've been. The contrast was overwhelming.

I once heard a quote, by Johnny Depp of all people, that said "People cry not because they are sad, but because they've been strong for too long". I did cry. But that wasn't the only reason I cried. In this incompressible convergence of emotion I cried out of grief and weariness, AND I cried out of joy and strength. I have come so far from a place that I'll never go back to. There is both joy and pain in that. It's like leaving the only home that you've ever known, and coming home to the place where you know you belong. I don't know how else to describe it.

The full unveiling of what was lasted only a few seconds. It was so big that I could only look at it head-on for brief moment, but in that brief moment I quickly gathered whatever bits of love that were left, and whatever slices of grace that remained, and I carried them off into the future with me. I hopped off the rock with the intention of healing.

And that's how I will move on.