Missing Person
A woman who went “missing” while on holiday in Iceland accidentally joined her own search party. According to the Toronto Sun, she was in a tourist group heading to the volcanic Eldgja canyon when they pulled over for a pit stop. She went to the bathroom to freshen up and change her clothes but when she came back, her fellow tourists did not recognize her. It wasn’t long before word spread of a missing person. A search party, including the woman herself, started scouring the surrounding area and the coastguard was notified. It wasn’t until 3.00am the following morning that someone realized that the person they were looking for was in the search party all along. You really couldn’t make it up.
Comical as this is, it has stayed with me all week long, and continues to arise as an awareness piece. How could you possibly know that you are the one missing, if you are not?
It’s like getting a massage. I walk into a peaceful room, filled with the sounds and aromatics of nature, feeling mostly fine. The masseuse says, “What would you like to work on today? Are you in any pain?” I pause. Am I? “Maybe my back is a little stiffer than normal, but mostly, I am fine. Just here for a tune-up.” Left alone to situate myself, I lay. I sink. The recorded gongs and birdsongs disappear me into a calmer place within, and I enjoy these few minutes alone. The masseuse returns. Speaking softly, and returning me to the outside of my body, it begins with a foot. I feel all the pressure leave that one spot. I feel the relief of release. And in an eighth note’s time, almost simultaneous to that first gentle rub, I feel that the rest of me is the opposite. The only part of my entire body that is not in excruciating pain now is that one foot. I stay there, respectful of the work being done. I have always imagined jumping up abruptly, and screaming, How long will it take for you to make it to my shoulders? But it hasn’t happened yet. How did I not feel this seconds ago? And why have I still not learned to just ask at the beginning, Do you mind starting at the top?
How do we find awareness to the degree that sees through the comfortability of a self that slowly grows into itself - by each centimeter, each habit, each thought? How do we feel our own pain when we have grown accustomed to it? How do we realize that we are the one who is lost?
Interesting how this funny story brought me to all these things, but isn’t everything a search for ourselves? To gently glide across every pain that we have forgotten, to rediscover what our younger body felt like, to see ourselves through a lifetime of instances that do not define who we are.
If I were the woman in the news article, I assure I would not realize that it was me that we were looking for. I imagine it would be quite impossible to describe me in a way that would lead me to myself. We’re searching for a caucasian woman in her 30s with brown hair of medium-long length. She’s wearing blue jeans and a red t-shirt.
Hmmmm... that doesn’t sound like me. Did you say, “Cawing Cajun?” I am that, of the palest kind. Caucasian is just a box I check because you guys don’t put my real culture on the piece of paper. Also, my shirt is green. And here I am, definitely not lost. While we’re here, don’t I still look very-late-20-something, but smarter? Can’t be me!
I am not, by any means, an observant human. My best friend reminded me of the intensity of this just a few days ago. She has a very good memory, and sees clearly what is in front of her - qualities that I do not possess.
Laughing her way through a story of my ineptitude for details, she began with the windshield of my car. This was many years ago. The windshield was cracked, and I called the guys who come to you to fix it. You have to tell them what they’re looking for, of course, which I did not. Because I didn’t know what kind of car I was driving. I was close. Camry, Corolla, what’s really the difference? Mostly the difference is clear, I guess to others. And even though my car had a broken windshield, they did not fix it that day.
She continued, “It wouldn’t be that funny a story if there wasn’t a second similar event.” I borrowed a friend’s car to pick her up from the airport in New Orleans many years later. She asked what I was driving. Dangit. I told her to look for a red Subaru, but it seems I was in a Volvo. And while she thinks that car was more of a brownish color, I don’t completely believe that I got that part wrong. I am good at color, but hatchbacky is hatchbacky, and I can see how I thought I was in something else.
In sharing a little of my story, a number of people have mentioned to me that “some parts are pretty disturbing.” While I don’t disagree, I think the information feels a little different to us. When we experience what we experience, it eventually seems normalish, and not so jarring. We begin to see it a little blurrier, as we move through the shock of it in its now. We find our way to whatever tools for survival we can find, and eventually it is a knot that we cannot feel. Until another knot begins to feel better, that is.
Living in restaurants for so many years helped me to lean pretty heavily on my survival tools. They were right there, discounted. And after a long shift of making cocktails for other people, it is a prize to have someone do this for you. Day after day after day. Shift after shift after shift. Year after year after year.
Until I found that I was lost. Stuck in a loop of every day’s routine. Up in a hurry to get to the people who I’d be happy to serve for some hours. And by the day’s end, exhausted of the smalltalk, it was my turn to be served. In a room full of laughter and friends and dancing, and more often than I’d like to admit, eventually the room darkened in my memory. The happenings here are not blurred - I could not have been there, it does not exist. Another tough morning to wake up in a hurry. And loop.
When I left the last restaurant I’ll work for, I drank less. Not immediately, but slowly. Not consciously, but coincidentally. It wasn’t all right there. I wasn’t spending my day looking at bottles, and talking about the notes and tongue tickles that would come. I wasn’t selling someone on this drink or that one, all the while convincing myself.
Little by little, I started to feel the knots. Because in the loop, there was no time. No time for myself, or reflection, or much more than a hurried mind trying to smoke a cigarette while speeding to the job. And I think that’s okay. I don’t know that I was supposed to start paying attention to myself until I did. I think the timing was probably right for me.
I don’t know that I’d call that version of myself an alcoholic. Maybe an addict though. I was addicted to not feeling pain. My methods did not, however, keep me from creating or being part of more pain. I wasn’t thinking. I was drunk, or blacked out, or hung over… for a while. And living inside of it, I could not see that there were only slivers of time when I was not one of these things.
As a human, I am drawn to what I identify with, what I think I understand. And because this was my loop, I chose what I recognized. People with stuff who didn’t want to look at their stuff - that was my type for a long time. I didn’t know it then though [well, I didn’t know until I knew, ya know?]. How could I have? I was the same - a person with stuff that I didn’t want to look at yet. The stuff looked different then. It showed up in anger and insomnia, so I medicated to chill out and to pass out. I can’t say that I fully understood what I was doing. It just became what I did. The routine of my life was NOT being aware, and hiding from all that was underneath. I didn’t mean to be selfish. I didn’t see that I was being selfish, although I definitely was. It’s not that I thought I mattered more than anyone else, but the opposite. I was sure that I didn’t matter at all.
I don’t feel like that anymore. I also don’t think that I am ever going to fully finish my search. I like that my routine has changed, and daily I offer myself space to see what there is to see. I have lots of stuff, and I am happy to rummage through it all. Always searching and often distracted by the wind, there is peace within - in every moment and event, in every acknowledgment and forgiveness. I will not find myself behind me anymore. I am not way ahead either. Just here, and happy to be.
Or… you know what you should really do? You should set aside a little fund for you to help find yourself, or travel, or go to festivals, or learn to ice skate, or do anything that is good for your soul. Yes, definitely do that!
I have traveled quite a bit, not realizing that I was with me the whole time. And here I am, right around timestamp :52 where the intro explodes, and I get to live in the expanse of this musical journey. I think I’ll dance about this now. Thanks, Wreckless Eric. You’re awesome!
Kindness is the sparkle that follows behind this talented soul. Lifted by the starshine that he brings to this world, I am grateful to have ever been in the path of this happy human.
