reverb10

December 19 – Healing. What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011?

Huh. I guess it's kind of funny that this is the prompt today because I am sitting here with a kleenex stuffed up my nose and a split lip from too much mouthbreathing. Not a beautiful sight. So? What healed me this year?

Adrenaline, mostly. I got a wisdom tooth pulled while I watched and spent the rest of the day spitting blood while debating the nature of dissent. I muscled through three days of exam hell, wrote two conference papers, and finished up three whole term papers without getting sick or losing my mind. I just kept typing.

I tried to make 2010 my bravest year ever and I think I definitely succeeded. I watched a DVD of butoh dancing when I had no Saturday plans and did not feel bad about it. I went to the desert and when Adam locked my car keys in the trunk I didn't whine or scream. We climbed rocks and sang. It was great. I went on blind dates. I joined ukulele club. I picked up the phone.

So thank you, hyperactive autoimmune responses, for providing me with these amazing moments of heart-pounding, time-slowing clarity. I guess my body knows how to take care of itself best when it is standing up to fight or running like hell-- which is how I have spent the last several months.

In 2011, I want that yoga-studio cool, an aware patience not because of looming panic but just because. If this kind of kickass devil-may-care attitude can become part of my personality and not just a way to fight off the specters at the gate, maybe in 2011 I will take the most terrifying risk of all: letting them in.