Let me put it another way. All my life, I have been afraid.

Sometimes I feel snarling and wild, an animal backed into a corner. Fight or be eaten. My claws come out. I hate this. Rage hurts. It burns like fire.

Sometimes I feel like hurling myself down a deep dark hole, never to be seen again. I think this would feel peaceful. At least, I think,  the pain would stop.

Sometimes — most of the time — I just push most of me inside. I am in there somewhere, in some tiny safe place deep inside. I feel small and helpless in there, but being bigger feels more scary so I stay in the familiarity of smallness.

I am afraid to come out. I am afraid I will hurt. I am afraid I will be shamed. I am afraid I won’t be enough.

The irony of all this is that there is a man who loves me. Over and over he says he loves me. Over and over he shows me he loves me. Most of the time I believe him. And yet sometimes I can’t take it in. It scares me. For him to love me, I have to let the wee scared self out from that tiny safe place within me, and it feels so scary to do that. Sometimes it hurts. My man is only human, after all, and sometimes he hurts. I feel his hurt and I hurt. I am scared by his hurt and I hurt feeling scared. Sometimes all I perceive is hurt.

Over and over he tells me he loves me. Over and over I plead with my eyeslipshands do you love me until I am afraid of the asking, afraid that one time the answer will be No, I do not love you, or worse, I did love you but you kept asking, and now, no, I do not love you, I tire of you asking, or worse still, Of course I do not love you, you have dreamed it, I never did love you. But I cannot help but ask. I don’t know how to go from asking to knowing. Trusting. I fear so much because I do not trust. Once upon a time I learned that trusting was risky. People get hurt. I got hurt. So I went inside and shivered.

I bought a new book at the airport bookstore this week. I like buying books in airports because I connect those books to my travels. Life of Pi, for instance, was read one long overly air-conditioned day in the Philadelphia airport. There was nothing else good about that day or any of the days around it so I lost myself in magical realism and I still remember how I felt that day, reading about tigers. My new book has tigers, too. My head hurts now from the places where I tried to use the tiger to beat the fear from its wee hiding place. I pride myself on keeping books pristine and new-looking, but this one now has dents and crumples.

I shiver now to wonder how many actions, large and small, I have taken because I was afraid. Almost all of them, I think.

I tell people to walk down the roads of their deepest fears. Take a friend with you on this journey. Remember you are not alone. I whisper this to the wee scared woman inside me and she beats her books over her ears and does not listen, and instead tries to wedge herself into the deep dark hole she thinks will comfortably swallow her into nothingness.

I am almost afraid to hold resolve in my hand. I should get up from this crumpled heap on the floor. I should follow my own advice and walk down that road of what scares me. I should because I know it will help. So why am I still afraid?

Let me start right off by fully owning that what I am about to write is not fair. I know this. In fact, let me just step into my Petulant Whiny Little Girl persona, okay? Because that is where I am right now.

I hate you. I am angry at you. I wish I was never born, never had to go through all the shit that my life has been about. But you know what I am most angry at? That I can’t seem to step through the fog in front of my face in order to get to where the good stuff is.

Because I believe there is good stuff. I think it’s right here, beside me, waiting. And I can’t see it. And I am so angry that I am too blind to see what it is or how to get there.

I am angry that I have a soulmate and I think too much about how much it would hurt to lose him and his love, rather than resting in how beautiful and goddess-y I feel when I am with him.

I am angry that I keep wallowing in the pain of everything-that-has-come-before instead of opening to the beauty of what-is-yet-to-be, or even more beautiful, what-is-now.

I am angry that I feel pain.

I am angry that I am angry.

I am angry that I am not perfect.

I am angry that I want to be perfect.

I am angry at my self judgments.

I am angry that I am not kinder.

I am angry that I have a lifetime of knowing and no one knows about it but me. I have done this. I have hidden myself.

I am angry that people don’t like me.

I am angry that I care whether people like me.

For a long time now, I have believed in a Magic Bullet. One thing, one process, one shamanic journey that would Change My Life Forever and release me from all the fucking pain I seem to be so fucking fond of (otherwise why would I hold onto it?).

I am angry that I believe in a Magic Bullet. And that I am waiting to find it.

I still believe I just have to get through the fog that I feel covering me. And on the other side is all the Good Things I ever dreamed of or imagine. On the other side is my strong self, the one that walks confidently into a room, enjoying it rather than wondering what people think of me. On the other side is my goddess-y self, the one who isn’t afraid. The one who wears her sexuality like a comfortable, soft, revealing kimono. The one who loves her soulmate with her open heart. The one who sees her own gifts and shares them freely.

I am angry that my belief in the Magic Bullet might be keeping me from enjoying all that I have.

I am afraid that all that I have isn’t real, that I have dreamed everything up and that it might disappear. I am afraid that the good stuff I imagine is in my Someday will never happen. I am afraid that there is no Magic Bullet. I am afraid that I will always hurt. I am afraid that I will always be afraid.

I bring this to you, Universe, because it hurts too much to blame myself. Even though I suspect I made all this happen, and like a finger-snap could just as easily make it un-happen.

I bring this to you, Universe, because it feels comforting to believe that there is something out there greater than myself, something benign and loving, even, that could lift this fog from my eyes and help walk me into what I hope lies on the other side.

I bring this to you, Universe, because it feels like a beginning and an ending. Something might be closing today. Something else might be opening.

Six months later the ghost escaped into the bright sun. The bare walls could no longer contain the ghost and she no longer swallowed handfuls of pills hoping to not wake up. Was it an escape, really? Or was it out of the frying pan and into the fire? Twenty-four years of fire.

This week I read words penned nearly two years ago in a tumbled fresh April when there was sureness, and fire, and direction. I remember now what that felt like. Strong. Brave. Beautiful. And I feel sad, oh so sad, that I had forgotten. I had forgotten where my center was. I had forgotten the voice. I had forgotten what it felt like to gently surrender into a world of goodness and hope. I had forgotten, maybe, where I came from.

This week the ghost came back. A warning, perhaps. I feel its breath at the back of my neck, waiting. Twenty-four years ago I ran. This is not then. This is now.

I know my task. To gather in close. To open my eyes. To listen. To remember. And then to sing.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Yesterday the myriad circles of my life’s past came together and met for the first time. Old friends greeting one another, perfectly fitting together as if there had been some long-ago and half-forgotten plan that just now was remembered. The beauty and strength of that moment was palpable. Tears told the story of completion, of a Rightness so vivid and visceral that I knew in that moment all my long-asked half-answered questions about Why I Am Here.

There are no longer any regrets. No longing for roads not taken. All my long-ago roads have come back to me, and from here I can see how right it was that I not take them. How right it was to take the less traveled-by roads.

This morning a not-taken road emerged unexpectedly. I made a choice over 20 years ago to walk away from something, someone. And I have wondered ever since if that had been the right choice. It felt incomplete. 20 years ago I glimpsed a possible future. What I saw then scared me. Today I received completion. In a Facebook photo I saw the road that sprang from that moment. And the road had become exactly as I pictured it more than 20 years ago, only more so. How often do we get to see that our fears in a given moment really do come to pass?

Releasing the energy held in regret of my 20 years ago choice has infused me, enlivened me. I am now even more present to the life and love I am living. There is more of me to love and to be loved. It is as if a piece of me has returned, welcomed home.

I will never again regret not-taken roads. Those roads can come back if we let them, if they are Right. I will likely regret individual actions, words said in anger or fear, or words unspoken, actions to learn, grow and evolve from. But never again will I regret choices not lived. I have found the magic within that lets me voyage within my unlived choices and give life to them now, as I choose. Today I feel so full, so firm in my foundation of my convergence of myriad circles, that from here I only see one beautiful rainbow stretching into the sunset. One arc across which I will walk, hand in hand, with my beloved. One inexorable fountain from which springs all that I have ever been, am, and will be.

At first I felt resistance to the idea. Who would want someone who was broken? We throw away the broken things. They are unwanted, unloved, undeserving.

I decided to take my resistance as an invitation. Go deeper, it whispered.  Okay, broken. What is broken about me?

Every step for the past seven months has brought pain. Literal steps bringing literal pain. The cartilage in my hip joints is not what it once was. I am a young woman for this to be happening, but it is. I suspect there is little cartilage left. Hip degeneration is in my family. When I began a deep martial arts practice seven months ago, I had no idea there was anything wrong with my hips. I had no pain. I had no idea about being broken in this way. I quickly found out, when my hips were asked to move in ways that they hadn’t in a long time, that I was not in the condition I had thought I was. Broken.

My practice will rebuild the broken parts inside me, but it will take time. Perseverance. Acceptance. Pain. Love. Compassion.

Connected to this broken part of me, the part that connects the upper me to the lower me and binds me to the earth, is my idea of beingness. My femininity. My sexuality. Those things are broken too.

This week on Facebook, a video made the rounds. Orgasmic childbirth. I remember rolling my eyes about this years ago. Me, squatting in a warm pool of water in a darkened room with a midwife, at one with the experience of exquisite deep pain and fighting for control in an uncontrollable process. Giving birth. I had heard about orgasmic women and thought they must be broken.

Now I know it was me.

I have been fighting my body a long time.

I know I created protection for it. I have deep compassion and love for the small child who was so successful at hiding herself so she would not be hurt. The hurts were many. Deep. Insidious. I am trying to have compassion for the young woman who was sexually abused, raped, used. For the mother caught in an emotionally abusive marriage. For all the ick ever experienced around being a woman. Being a sexual creature.

The walls I built around me as protection made me fight. Resist. They helped me think of myself as broken. In my desire to not feel pain, just like with my hips, I denied the fact that I was broken.

I am so very, very sad. I did this. And I can get out of it again.

Today in martial arts we practiced a Dragon form. Coiling, sinuous movements that engage the hips and lower back. Twisting, coiling, striking. I have come a long way in my practice in seven months but am still a beginner, seeing my lacks, feeling the way my body should move but does not. Broken. I cried in class as energy rose through my pelvis. Hot anger, cold fear. If I opened this part of me, I heard, I would be hurt. It was my walls talking. I heard them. The Dragon could not surmount these strong walls that had been in place for so long, thinking they were protecting me. After all, I let the walls be there. I did this.

Tonight as I shared some of what emerged for me with the Dragon today my dear friend Rebecca suggested I do a moving meditation connected with Golden Tara. She could not describe exactly what she had in mind for me, but it connected to the pose that Golden Tara holds. Hips open. Wide. Birthing something, perhaps, or in closeness to the earth. Hands strong. This is a powerful position. The moving meditation also connected, Rebecca said, to the gurung, a traditional ghatu dance in tribal Nepal. I watched the dance, entranced. Two women, moving slowly, deliberately, sinuously, beautifully. I would do this. I could do this. I sensed what I needed to do.

I took the Golden Tara pose, made it mine. Then my body began to move. Side to side, slowly. My stance deepened. I was one year old, just learning to walk and wanting so deeply to dance free, but tied down so that I could not. I would be toilet trained if it killed me, my mother said. One year old. My sighs became wails, releasing energy through breath and sound. My child self wept, wanted to walk free, to dance. I danced her pain for her, her anger.

Broken things fly, too.

There is irony here. My beloved adores me. As I am. I ponder this when I see his eyes smiling his heart into mine as he sits across the room, laptop in hand, having just clicked “Like” on my Facebook status update. My beloved loves me. Broken. Wanted. Loved. And oh so deserving of this amazing brilliant man who lights up my heart.

Tiger has come to me. He first made his presence known in a ritual that emerged after weeks of Bagua Chung, a circular practice that feels to me like part dance and part stalking meditation. Tiger kept appearing. Often I rode on his back in the last minutes of the Bagua walk, and he stayed and spoke to me during my meditation afterwards. Eventually I received the message to welcome Tiger more formally into my heart and being in nonordinary reality. I was to give up the power animal who had protected me since ever I began walking in dreamtime with wide-awake eyes, and to embrace Tiger, now calling to me daily, insistently, powerfully.

There was indeed a ritual, and Rabbit retreated to make space for Tiger, now Magical Tiger because, well, there is Magic.

And I have since then waited for other changes to emerge in me as a result of this shift, to make themselves known to me so that we too can be friends, these changes and I.

I cannot now separate a time when Tiger was not my protector. It seems to have always been so. Rabbit? That animal belonged to another person.

Tiger is also my lover. This is, undeniably, the strangest and yet most compelling nonordinary reality relationship I have had. And yet there is also nothing strange whatsoever about it. Tiger is my lover, and in loving I become Tiger.

Tiger is sister to the Moon, symbol of passion, of power, and of sensuality. I can feel the Tigerness awakening in me, and I am comforted in knowing that there is a path to walk in this meditation we call life, and that I have allies to walk with me. I am not alone.

This

O my father

guardian of this watery green

and low bluegray

on weary feet.

O my father

this, this blink

this gasp

this wonder.

This is why we come

and sing our dreams

into the graycloud skies.

This man, the one I see my sunset with, the one I see in my dreams, the one I felt and knew and received months before we were ever even in the same city. This good, loving man. He feeds my heart, nourishes my soul, calls me to be my magical self, receives my inner being, my warrior queen nature.

And oh, how I love this man.

It happened in the evening. I was in Houston where a client had flown me to work with her and her clients for a week, Houston where it was still summer and still humid. I was in Houston still processing the recent formality to the inevitable slow painful unraveling of the previous three-plus years spent with a boy-man that morphed into ten teary shower minutes feeling what it might be like to be me if I had always felt loved. I was in Houston feeling my Self for perhaps the first time, my Self tall and pale among the Chinese community I stayed in and shopped in that week that cemented the sense of alienation and solitude I had brought with me.

It happened in the evening, in Houston. I was sleeping on the hard hotel bed and awoke, hard. I was no longer alone. I felt something with me — someone? — and it felt wonderful. A palpable presence. An energetic force. My heart twined the feeling into arms and lips and I lay curled on that hard bed, no longer alone. Loved.

The feeling followed me home.

I thought it would dissipate, disappear, disintegrate, but it did not.

Weeks went by. Then more than a month. At first I was determined to attach a face, a name, arms and lips to the feeling but after several wrong turns and missteps I decided to let it go. To be content with the feeling, the ghost-arms, the love from somewhere, and to continue moving on and being me.

After that it didn’t take long for him to find me.

One year ago, my heart opened. One year ago, I began to believe. One year ago, I wept from feeling beauty. One year ago, I started walking to where I now stand, hand in hand with my soulmate, embracing the feeling, wanting more and more.

And my Soulmate writes this on my laptop — yes I am allowing him to contribute to my writing for the first time — “I love you with all my heart and Soul – and it is scary to even write this… but I am WITH you, Soulmate!”

One whole year he has been with me so far. And we are. One.

I try to remember to breathe, but my chest weighs too much. Nothing is the same. Everything hurts. In my mind I see the upside-down car pushed to the side of the freeway today. I see the tremendous splash it made, a fountain of millions of stinging needles. I wonder what it was like. I wonder what to do now.