Vessels for Magic (revised, longer version- APW Scholarship Submission)

Last Tuesday, on February 8th, I celebrated my mom’s birthday without her here for the second time. It goes without saying that birthdays aren’t the same as they used to be; my birthday is February 1st, we used to celebrate our birthdays together. This year on her birthday, I woke up around 6:00 AM, and I was in tears within minutes of my eyes opening. I woke up and realized there was no, “Happy Birthday, Mom!” text to be sent, and it wasn’t because I had already sent a text at midnight like usual, it was because the phone number I used to call to reach my mom belongs to someone else now. There would be no gift to buy, no celebratory lunch, no looking around for gluten-free treats because that was all she could have. Last Tuesday, on February 8th, I woke up and felt ravaged by an unforgiving ache;I felt as though I awoke to a nightmare. I gasped for air as the sun came up, the day seemed to be an opponent far too formidable for me.

​I decided to get out of bed, to eat and take a shower, because I knew my mom would want me to do at least that for myself. I got ready for the day slowly, in a daze, plagued by an immense pressure to make sure to honor her on her birthday; I feared, what if the things I do today aren’t good enough? What if they don’t honor her enough? A silly notion really, my mom feels honored when I feel joyful. I decided I’d drive to a nearby town, Jerome, just for the day. I had been planning to go for about a week prior to that, and I decided a little road trip to somewhere new would be a fun idea for her birthday. The day was fun, as I predicted, but I didn’t predict that the day would be so formative in regard to my identity and my outlook on the world.

​ I hopped in my car and hit the freeway, already excited to be heading somewhere else, and heading there fast. I came to the windy road that leads to a tiny town on the side of a mountain, surrounded by trees with the sun beaming through my windshield, and I drove up towards the big tall mountains in absolute admiration. I looked at the mountains to my left, and I was struck by the overwhelming beauty of being so small physically but being capable of feeling such big feelings. I drove up towards the mountains with my grief in the passenger seat, and I interacted with it the whole way, which proved to hold so many powerful lessons.

​ For my whole life, I have found such a fascination in things like mountains, and oceans, and the sky; they always provoked such mystery, as they seem almost endless. As a child, they were magical because they were mysterious, and I didn’t want those answers anyway; I always knew it represented something bigger than any answers anyone could give me. Now, as an adult, I don’t claim to have the answers, but I think I understand why they are fascinating to me. Mountains, and the ocean, and the sky are fascinating in a child-like sense that they’re big; so much bigger than any of us physically. When I was young, I wanted to feel as big and important as those mountains; sometimes I’d look at them and wish I was right on top, all by myself, and maybe then I would feel big.

​ Then, last Tuesday, the sense of feeling so physically small became the idea of feeling completely endless. I suppose I’ve spent a lot of time since my mom’s death believing that making her proud would be about things I do and goals I accomplish, which felt so incredibly daunting as I am nowhere near some of those goals. The goals I speak of relate to education, a career, the things that were never the only trademarks of my mother’s pride. As I looked around me in wonder, at the trees which breathe and the sun that glows, I realized it was never about creating magic or anything else at all; I realized the magic exists all around me, and it’s my job to act as a vessel for that magic.

​ I began to ponder the idea of the chain reactions we create and witness every day, and the power of those chain reactions cannot be understated. I once heard the phrase, “Hurt people will hurt people,” and the words stuck with me then, but have only increased in power as I grow up and witness this in my day-to-day life. If I look back, every person who has ever hurt me, was dealing with their own hurt too. And while I mourn for them and I recognize their pain, I also recognize I didn’t deserve to be hurt just because they were hurting. You see, we all hurt sometimes; it makes us human. What is not human, however, is denying the presence of that pain in hopes it will disappear. Pain never disappears, it manifests; luckily, we get to choose whether it manifests into more pain or not. If I carry my pain into the world with the understanding that it’s anyone else’s burden, this false understanding will only serve to create a negative chain reaction. If I ruin someone’s day, and they carry the pain I cause them around until it ruins someone else’s day too, the chain reaction continues, and that pain will spread like wildfire.

​ Love and kindness, however, cause chain reactions that are far more beautiful. Before you begin thinking I’m speaking words I read on a Valentine’s Day card at the grocery store, this notion is different because it’s much bigger than a card for that special someone. The example from the prior paragraph still stands, but the latter is much more effective: If I carry my pain into the world with the intention of manifesting beauty from it, it doesn’t only benefit my life and my world because it benefits all of my neighbors on this planet with me. If I smile at a stranger, and my kindness makes them smile too, perhaps they will also feel motivated to share kindness with someone else.

Now, before I make the mistake of sounding naïve, I also understand that not everyone sees the potential impact of a singular smile; so, I smile twice as much for those people. Or, maybe they do see the impact, but the heaviness of a sometimes-grim world robs their soul of those smiles; so, I smile for them too. I smile for them because my mom created me to embrace my role as a vessel for magic. If I absorb the negative energy around me and return it back to the world, I surely can’t go to bed saying I did my part to see and return the beauty around me. I often reflect on this concept, seeing and then returning beauty, because the idea of ‘returning it’ makes my role as a vessel seem easier. It’s not always about what I create in a day or even the impact I leave, sometimes it’s about the way I mirror what’s around me.

​I don’t mean to sound trivial when I say I don’t absorb negative energy, it doesn’t mean that I avoid or repel it either, it simply means I try to act as a mirror for what’s around me; I never feel that I’m surrounded by negativity, even when I’m surrounded by pain. Someone recently told me, “You seem like such a ray of sunshine all the time!” Internally, I giggled, because this was far from true. It’s nice to know that this person feels I have a joyful presence, but the reality is, this simply means they’ve only witnessed me in the process of mirroring something joyful. When standing in the sun, I absorb its rays and I mirror the warmth, because that’s my job as a vessel; I’m returning what I feel.

​ Now, sometimes I find myself thinking of grief’s waves of sadness like a tsunami of great magnitude. I think of the type of tsunami that devastates everything in its path, the type of tsunami that rains terror with unforgiving scrutiny. To stand under the wave of such a tsunami would not be beautiful, but it would be so magnificently overpowering. I would find myself in awe of such a force, powerful enough to bring mass destruction. The beauty of its power wouldn’t take away from the treachery of its destruction, however, and the reaction to such destruction is seemingly lacking in beauty but equally powerful; it derives beauty from power, too.

​ When someone told me that I remind them of a ray of sunshine, I giggled because they’ve never seen me standing under the threatening waves of the great tsunami of grief. They’ve never seen me on my hands and knees, digging for pieces of myself like rubble on the ground; anything to put my foundation back together after the storm. The notion of being happy all the time once made perfect sense, it lost its logic when I realized I was on the ground with bloody palms looking for pieces of myself that were actually pieces of my mother, and I’d have to find a way to live without them; they weren’t in this pile of rubble. I realized I couldn’t be happy all the time because in staring at my hands, bloody from rummaging for pieces of my heart and soul, I’m reminded of the times when I was a young child running too fast on the playground. If I got ahead of myself, and ran too fast, I’d tumble to the rocks and pavement for a quick but harsh reminder of gravity. My mom never made me feel silly for forgetting about gravity, she would wipe the tears that rushed from my eyes and place a bandage over my bleeding hands.

​ I’m not a young child anymore, I’m much older now, but some days I still tumble and fall and when I get up again there’s no mom to greet me with a hug and a bandage. I remember how her hugs would instantly stop my tears, her warmth radiated through me and soothed the ache. My hands bleed from looking through the rubble of who I was before her death and I’ve learned that bandages only help temporarily. Along with this, I’ve learned to not try to bandage this pain at all. When the waves of grief build and threaten to shatter my bleeding heart, I hunker down and I marvel at the power of devastating pain. I find myself in awe of a force great enough to destroy everything in its path.

​ This brings me back to the idea of mirroring what’s around me, even pain, because pain isn’t automatically negative. If I view the pain as negative, then surely, I will see it as such and return it as such. When the waves of grief build up like a tsunami, my reaction mirrors the power of the tsunami; the destruction it brings lacks beauty, but I find beauty in the magnitude of tragedy. In the same way I marvel at the earth’s ability to create such devastating power, I marvel at the earth-shattering power of grief. I let grief shatter the earth around me, I let it leave me on my hands and knees nearly broken, it wasn’t until I crawled on the ground with bloody hands that I realized some pieces don’t come back to us, and I learned to find new ones that fit. I let the storm destroy me, so it can show me which pieces fit best for me.

Even now, when I fall and I bleed, I’m reminded of gravity. In the way I fell as a child and my mom didn’t tell me I was wrong for crying in my pursuit to master gravity, I still fall in my attempts to master it and I realize now that she hugged me as I cried and put a bandage on it because those things weren’t supposed to immediately fix it, they were supposed to ease the pain enough to get up and keep going. She expected me to get up and keep going, with the understanding that sometimes I’ll fall and get hurt, and she expected me to never let my own experience of pain be a reason to cause pain to the world. In my journey of embracing pain, I could also mirror the gentle beauty of healing that may come afterwards if I allow it to. Pain is not magical, but the lessons it can teach us are full of magic.

​ So, last Tuesday, I drove up toward those big tall mountains, and I felt so incredibly humbled to be able to feel such massive feelings; I felt honored to be a vessel for magic in an utterly magical world. I looked at the sky and I felt more powerful than I ever have; for, the mountains and the sky are much bigger than I am, but I am capable of sharing love as big as they are. When I was a child, the ocean fascinated me because it seemed it would never run out of water; as an adult, I see I will never run out of magic to share because it’s all around me.

​ I find so many around me are afraid of their pain, and while pain is scary, I do not encourage fear of pain. I spoke with a friend the other day about the beauty in our generation’s willingness to speak about pain, but we also spoke of how this isn’t nearly half of the battle. Acknowledging the presence of pain is a vital first step in the healing process, but healing is a process, and I believe once we acknowledge the pain, it finally rears its ugly head. There is no opponent too formidable when we realize we are vessels for magic; I find value in days where the sun seems to shine brighter, and I find value in the days where I wake up with the feeling of a dagger through my heart and a slow, achingly steady feeling of all of the air leaving my lungs.

Last Tuesday, on February 8th, I celebrated my mom’s birthday without her here for the second time. I didn’t buy her a purse or earrings like other years, I didn’t buy her lunch at Wildflower, and I didn’t get to leave a voicemail telling her how much she means to me. While this writing is about beauty and magic, I move forward knowing there will be many moments to come which may not feel beautiful and magical, which is where the hard work comes in. I move forward with a vow to my mom and to myself that in moments of great joy and great sorrow, I will marvel at their power. I will let the waves of grief leave me on the ground with bloody hands, and I will get up again with the understanding that I leave the storm with the pieces meant for me. ​