Expansion and contraction

It’s a weird sensation, being relieved of pressure that was so much a part of the everyday that now it’s finally lifted, I’m feeling freer than I have in many, many years but am also strangely unnerved by the weightlessness, by the lack of boundaries.

As I move through these first days of my sabbatical leave, surrounded by the beauty of African landscapes; distant horizons and those huge skies I’ve craved; pure air that smells of heat and salt; the hum of breezes through grass, singing crickets and the shush of the sea; stars that go on and on… and in the company of people who allow me to just be amongst them without expectation of daily performance, I find that I am moving between moments of deep elation and undeniable trepidation.

I want to dance and float and bounce and sing and laugh out-loud. I’m not really known as a dancy, floaty, bouncy, singy, laugh-out-loud kind of a girl. Not because I don’t feel these things (or even do them) but because I'm most true to myself in this way on the inside, or when I’m alone, or with the very few individuals who get close enough to see past the reserve. If ever there was a time and place to be like this though, inside or out, it must surely be now? I feel sometimes completely high on the freedom of the weeks that stretch ahead and the pleasure of the here and now. It’s intoxicating.

And still, I’m held back by something that doesn’t completely trust this state yet and is unsure how to use it best, or to surrender to it. I feel ill-equipped now to deal with the properly integrated, dancing girl, although I know that the purpose of this exercise is precisely to (re)discover her. I find my eyes filling with tears because the emotion is just too big to be contained – relief, gratitude, love, calm, contentment, anticipation, excitement… they all race through me. And also, fear. It creeps up on me, takes a bite out of the experience and makes me shrink back. I worry about things that should not be of concern right now, things I cannot control or change - people I’ve left behind, what the distant future holds… the responsibility of using this freedom most responsibly and wisely. I find these things surfacing and inhibiting my ability to be fully, unreservedly and joyfully in the moment.

Or is it just habit? I have been operating under sway of my Peg persona for so long now that she’s reluctant to let go and the others are struggling to take their turn. The cautious reservation and focus that has been necessary to drive me through the past few years, and especially the final six months, has become deeply ingrained and it’s surely natural that only a week and a bit after landing on this side of the Equator, I’m still bound to some extent by these habits? By a need for them to feel normal, until the boundaries of normal redraw themselves and I adjust to those? I don’t want normal to be normal anymore but the change feels strange and yes, scary. I don’t know. I’m trying to just go with it. Observing myself. Attempting not to over-analyse (although it is in my nature to be future-focused and meaning-seeking and I cannot deny that either so I’m not over-analysing the need to over-analyse) and just see where the tides of thought and feeling take me. I am looking out, beyond myself. And I am looking in, within myself. And both of those seem right.

I can say that, after a blissful week in the African bush, yesterday walking along the shoreline in the sunshine, watching a pod of playful dolphin and a surfer swim by just beyond the breakers, and the banana and cinnamon waffle I enjoyed (when a salad might have been the more sensible choice) were all moments that left me feeling nothing but happy, expanded and expansive. My other alter-egos all came just a little bit closer to the surface, and it was good to feel them there, uncurling and stretching awake. Peg had to let go and let her sisters out for while.

I’m sure they’ll be coming out to play more and more…. they never can resist the dolphins!