Honeysuckle & Sage

We sit in a hallway in a circle of wooden chairs, beyond the correctional officer's desk, the door is open to the slow, steady rainfall that is hushing the outside world. We talk, in Spanish and English and Spanglish about power, about violence, about the possibilities that exist to change a situation, to intervene. We talk about the complications of status, of parole, of the systemic racism that erases the option of calling the police, of white privilege. We talk about what makes us defensive and we practice listening and expanding our empathy over and over. It isn't easy. We sit and we describe a time we've been a victim. We describe a time we've manipulated or exploited others. We remember, we reflect, we practice communicating and working through frustrations and we play. I always forget how much play builds trust and companionship. We laugh-- and for a few transcendent moments we aren't in a prison but a community. Conflict still makes my heart beat fast and ...

This "intermission" period has been the gift I didn't want-- wide gashes of time and the salt of loneliness. A few weeks ago, I went to a doctor's appointment and checked off too many boxes on the depression/anxiety analysis checklists leading to gentle questions about my state of being. I assured my doctor, and myself, that this was temporary, due to transitions and boredom. Yet, I teared up walking home feeling overly sensitive to kindness and the strange weight that feelings gather when they're named and spoken. Melancholic states have been a consistent shade of my moods. I recently spent some time reflecting and perusing old journals and realized I started writing about sadness when I was ten, and it was born from the sparks of boredom and loneliness. Though there are multiple components, I have been finding calm in faith that there is meaning enough in the ordinary.  I haven't yet articulated for myself how but I learning a deeper honesty within mysel...