The part of you

that doesn’t believe

you can do it

is wrong

I wrote this on a magenta colored post-it and I stuck it on my bathroom mirror a week ago. It was a period of lucidity, a couple of days when I felt lush, momentous. When I stood at my kitchen counter channeling a flood of prose and music. These times come and go. I wake up and I start singing. My whole body feels light. Everything sparks creation. And so I wrote myself a note. A breadcrumb. Like a reminder to pick up milk from the grocery store. Just a simple reminder. “The part of you that doesn’t believe I can do it is wrong.”  Don’t believe yourself when you feel worthless, Leigh. Don’t let days pass in sorrow.

Two days later I sat crying in a salon chair as I was getting my hair cut. And when I arrived home I saw the note on my bathroom mirror as if a stranger had written it. Like a breadcrumb gone stale. Pick up milk from the grocery store?! I don’t even drink milk!  “The part of me that doesn’t believe I can do it wrong?” It meant nothing to me. I felt at that moment that I am two different people with one set of shared memories. I stood and looked at the note and then I watched myself cry for a while.

Last Sunday I saw a close friend perform the lead role in a production of Sarah Ruhl’s “Melancholy Play”. Wherein a woman suffering from depression (although it is never referred to as such) turns into an almond. Her friends drink tears, think sad thoughts until they themselves turn into almonds in order to rescue her. “It is not enough to ask someone how they are feeling, you must go where they are and get them.” my friend spoke on stage “it is up to all of us to save Frances, it is part of the social contact.”

A friend invited me to Thanksgiving on Thursday. I cried again as I applied make-up, as I dressed myself and I wasn’t sure I would figure out how to get from my apartment to hers. But I made it. And I sat around a table dedicated to gratitude. To abundance, to the act of nourishing oneself and others. To taking extreme time and care with something that is ephemeral, perishable. I drank wine. I smiled. I am not kidding when I tell you I ate the most perfectly cooked turkey I have ever tasted, and a piece of pumpkin pie with hand whipped-cream which I tasted with my whole mind and whole body. I smiled.

I smiled as I heard stories of Spain, of organ music, of tea in Siberia, of riding ones bike through Italy and magically having a stalk of broccoli raabe fall off of a produce truck in front of you. I smiled. The waist of my jeans felt too tight suddenly, but I felt cozy. Cared for. I biked home in the darkness and felt a sweet peace, there were hardly any cars on the road, I knew that I was safe. I mean, I was keenly aware that everyone on the road was probably a little bit drunk, but in a sort of large way, I felt safe.

Another friend took me hiking yesterday afternoon. “I’ve got a good spot.” he said. “I’ll pick you up.” We drove to La Jolla. Where all the homes cost millions of dollars, and are somehow all sort of built built into the landscape and everything bow westward towards the ocean. It is extravagant, and subdued simultaneously, it is how the 1% prefers nature. The trail head was unsuspecting, it looked like a fence in someone’s multi million dollar backyard. Then we turned the corner around the fence and everything opened up around us, a steep drop off, layers of canyons and foothills. And the ocean beyond them. “I’m sorry, where is the trail?” I wondered as my hiking buddy began descending down the rocky hillside. “oh . just straight down then? Sure. sure.”

The terrain alternated between a smooth sandy rock face that was just enough at a horizontal angled and with just enough footholds that you could shimmy down. A silty, wet clay, and compacted dirt. Part of the trail was a canyon crevasse where, I kid you not, we had to brace ourselves between rock the two parallel rock faces and shimmy sideways. I heard that mantra returning to me: “the part of you that doesn’t believe you can do it, is wrong.” and it fueled me. It fueled me, and seeing my hiking buddies enthusiasm and certainty fueled me. I guess anything is a trail if someone says it is.The crevasse opened, we stood on a plateau of rock, and we gazed at the ocean. There are things that nature does that cannot be put into words.

A shadow moved over us, I looked up as a parasailor passed silently. A whole flock of parasailors, a rainbow of differently colored sails, gliding towards the ocean, gaining lift from the wind off the surf, and circling back above the cliff side. This maneuver was enough to keep them afloat all day. Another floated right along the cliffside so close to us that we could see the face of the person steering it. Hanging, reclined below the sail, beaming like it was Christmas morning, and he had just opened up a gameboy.

The final jaunt down to the beach was along the rock front, covered in clay, there was a knotted rope tied to a tree trunk and we belayed down the final couple-dozen meters. I stood on the beach and watched the parasailors weave slow, silent figure eights in and out of the pacific wind.

The part of you

that doesn’t believe 

you can do it

is wrong.