Well, I’m finally home from this trip…home…

It’s been a long stretch of not really knowing where to call “home.” 

In spirit, I moved to Mexico last year. 

In practice, I’ve been back and forth and all over. I miss Mexico every day I’m not there, but something else is happening.

3 weeks before my first trip to Mexico, after boldly declaring that my chapter in Los Angeles was complete, I met Ike.

We kept in touch, got to know each other deeply and built a connection that has humbled me to my core.

We communicate seamlessly, we do crazy, tantric energy work that catapults us into our highest selves, and, oh, we’re one soul split into two bodies somehow. (Not soulmates, twin flames. Look it up, it’s wild stuff.)

After my most recent trip to Mexico, I moved out of my apartment and into his…in LA. 

You may be thinking, “I thought you were done with LA.” Yeah. Me too. 

But also, moving in with him felt right. It was easy. We fit together.

Ike feels like home. And Mexico feels like home. 

I’ve been grappling with that for a year now. Trying to figure out what to say when people ask, “where do you live?” Well, I live in Mexico, and the person containing the other half of my soul lives in Los Angeles.

It’s not simple or conclusive. It doesn’t fit into a tidy box when I’m asked these questions at cocktail parties.

But maybe, that’s not how life works. We don’t really know what the fuck is going on. We just get out there and do it. Get dirty. Forge a new path where there wasn’t one because your soul demands it. 

The last year has brought the most aliveness I’ve ever felt.

I’m about to go back to Mexico. I will miss Ike. It hurts to pull apart. I’m also excited. To swim in the ocean every day. To sweat in the oppressive heat. To soak up the spirit. To grow my friendships. To keep embracing the wilderness of the unknown.

Home is where my heart is alive.

It won’t always make sense. But I FEEL IT. And that’s what matters.

This time last week, I was struggling. 

Writing to you now, I am on the other side of the breakthrough I couldn’t see, but trusted was coming.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been traveling around the East coast, where I lived before I was ALIVE. For most of my life, I had no faith, no self-trust and no will to live. I thought I was broken with no chance of repair. I hadn’t tasted true intimacy or unconditional love. I didn’t know my soul. I hadn’t discovered how powerful, how deep, how sensitive, and how worthy of love she was. 

I’m currently visiting New York City, where I lived from 2012-2018. I was miserable when I left. Suicidal, working in a field I had just gotten a masters in, but no longer had the mental or emotional capacity for. I had already been on antidepressants and in therapy for years, self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, keeping myself alive on obligation to others and the imagined peace of being dead. 

In 2018, I moved to Los Angeles as a last-ditch effort to see if happiness was possible. I didn’t have faith, but there was nothing to lose. 

Fast forward to 2023. 

My five years in LA gave me exactly what I needed. Happiness, healing, spiritual connectedness and purpose in a deep, unshakable way.

But this trip to the East coast resurfaced the depression I worked so hard to heal.

On Monday, I went on a walk through one of my old neighborhoods and stopped in a spiritual store. I love them. I can’t get enough of them. Let me touch all of the crystals. Anyway. I decided to get a tarot reading.

It was a much needed affirmation of what I already knew. I was doing the right thing. I was on my path. And the emotions I’m feeling are guiding me. They’re telling me what supports my aliveness and what does not.

My soul knows that my next chapter is in Mexico, but I’ve been trying to hold onto the partnership I built in LA.

Unlike leaving New York in 2018, there’s a lot to lose this time. So I’ve been keeping one foot in as I poke the other out, doing everything I can to see if it’s possible to have both.

I still don’t have the answer to that question. But I needed to be clear about one thing.

My soul knows what it needs to be alive, and I’m not willing to sacrifice that.

I had a difficult conversation with myself. And I had a difficult conversation with my partner. Setting that boundary freed me to lean into the uncertainty of the present moment. To weather the emotions. Trust myself to listen. And enjoy the ride.

Tell me, 

what is alive in this forest?

Where is the ripest fruit?

I cut down every tree growing green,

searching, swiping, staying 

on the surface.

I take a bite, 

and spit it out.

This flesh is bitter.

I know there’s something else that’s better.

I go on testing and discarding.

There’s no resting, 

cuz I’m starving.

Arms outstretched, 

eyes glazed over,

belly never full.

I’ve leveled the entire forest, 

and not found one worthy fruit.

What am I missing?

With sorrow and pity,

I fall to the floor.

Cheek to the dirt,

an earthworm squirms beside me.

Crawling, gnawing, writhing.

It eats and eats, 

longing for wholeness. 

Aching for more than it is.

Its hunger

feeds the soil.

Its struggle

completes the circle.

I started writing about some anxiety I was feeling - I call it “Ambient Anxiety.” Sometimes, it feels like it’s about something specific on the horizon, in my case, a call I have in an hour or so, then I have to get to the airport for a flight later. But there’s also an accumulation of smaller things, lingering from the past. I lost a crystal someone gave me last night. I tried to go to a different cafe for breakfast, but found out they don’t serve food on Mondays, blah blah blah. It doesn’t amount to much, but it’s hanging out there. (Update, as I’m editing this a couple days later, none of these things still carry an emotional charge.)

And yet, that little amount of “aliveness” never really goes away. I can usually find it when I look for it. And if I look for reasons, they’re there, too. Sometimes identifying reasons brings it on stronger. Thinking about that call sends a teeny spurt of “oh god!” energy through my stomach and chest.

I can try to think my way out of the feelings. I can try to convince myself there’s no real reason to be anxious. “It’s going to go how it’s going to go. I’m prepared. I’ve done these before. I trust myself to be in the moment and know what to say.” And yet, the feeling sits there in spite of my reasoning.

I can also remind myself that there’s an energy that comes with just caring about something. I want this call to go well. I am invested in what I’m doing. I care about the person on the other end. I can more easily accept this feeling as a natural byproduct of my attachment to what I’m doing. And I can have compassion for the version of myself that has these attachments, even though there may be a more advanced, more Buddhist version of myself that wouldn’t. But I’m just not there yet.

Here’s what else I know:

1) The Ambient Anxiety does seem to come and go. It’s unclear to me if it’s always there, waiting to surface when something triggers it, or if it’s triggered anew each time by an event.

2) I can close my eyes, focus on it and breathe. This helps me feel more “in control,” so to speak. It feels better in my body when I slow down, let myself sense it and accept it.

3) I am the one deciding that it is a “bad” thing (because it’s uncomfortable) and deciding what it means - that it’s about the call or the airport. That usually feels true to me in the moment, but looking back, those individual events no longer trigger it.

4) It helps to set aside whatever stories and associations I have, and be with the sensation itself.

“Okay, I’m noticing a tightness in my chest. It feels like my breathing is constricted. There is a warm pulsing around my heart. There is a concentrated tension in my forehead. When I bring my focus to it, the pulsing in my chest seems to intensify. My head feels heavy. Numerous thoughts compete for my attention. My stomach feels full, there is a churning energy that rises and sinks. My shoulders feel heavy. There is a wide, achy expanse across the middle of my back.”

5) When I take the time to patiently and non-judgmentally inventory the sensations I’m experiencing, one by one, as they come to my attention, they seem more manageable. I can be aware of them without fearing their impact.

6) There are things I can do to shift how I’m feeling (like writing about it, talking to someone about it, or channeling it into a physical activity).

Here’s what helps me most with Ambient Anxiety: naming it, observing the sensations it produces, and reminding myself it’s a sign that I care and am alive, even when I can identify other stories and explanations.

It can be helpful to list the stories, but it’s more helpful to set them aside and focus on the feeling itself. The stories always change. One day, I link my Ambient Anxiety to a phone call, the next, it’s needing to do the dishes. In a year, you’ll have 365 different stories, most of which will be behind you and won’t trigger the feeling anymore.

Working with your relationship to the feeling is where the magic is. I’m personally not expecting to wake up tomorrow without any attachment to life or feelings or events or people, so it’s unrealistic to think I won’t experience it.  Any time I can be that honest with myself and that connected to reality as it is, I feel more grounded, more self-trusting and just, better. I hope anyone reading this also feels better about their Ambient Anxiety. Bye for now…