The Chelsey Diaries

“This is exactly what you need.” I hear that a lot.  And while I know it’s not a false statement, because I do need time for myself, I do need to be gentle and accepting with my process. yes I need to find ways to have joy and love in my life. Yes I need to push myself out of my comfort zones. But what I really needed, what I still need, is the one thing I will never get.  I needed Lilee to survive. I needed that because I need her.  Doesn’t that count for something?

No, life didn’t work out that way, life was lost. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t need it. I did. Desperately. And now I’m stuck trying to figure out what I need to continue.

Half of me is completely fine with just living day-to-day.  Whatever comes, whatever goes, like the spring tide.  But then there is the other side.  The fierce side.  The side that says “HEY. You are meant for more.  You are meant for extraordinary. GET IT.” That side is all pep and minimal production. It’s easy to say “go for the gold” “chase your dreams” “shoot for the stars” whatever.  So easy. But to do it? It’s hard.  It’s hard to take out your laptop to write when you have been sitting at a computer all day. It’s hard to put yourself in a position to be vulnerable with someone else when the risk is so high. and its hard as hell to move forward, knowing that each day is one step further away from the last time you saw the person that meant the most to you in the entire universe. But I still manage. I write when I can, I get out and explore, and I try to make connections. But it still feels like there is something else..I always feel in between; like I am transitioning. I always feel like I am waiting for something to happen and then the light will turn on and I will be like “oh good. there it is.”
I had a dream last night that I was sitting in a restaurant waiting with a couple of friends (one was actually a guy from Pretty Little Liars-Andrew, who is NOT A. fyi- if anyone watches the show. Also, don’t judge, it was on last night and apparently I’m addicted and I  have always had very vivid, very odd dreams). It felt like we were waiting for a table to come available. So there we were sitting on the couch and the waitress came and began walking toward where our table would be and when I got there I turned around and bursting through the door was my sweet little girl. She ran into my arms as she often did when I hadn’t seen her for any length of time, or first thing in the morning, or last thing at night, or sometimes during the day from across the lawn.. anyway,  we sat and played, and snuggled and laughed and then I woke up.
It doesn’t take a oneirologist to breakdown why I had that dream (minus the part with a psycho, albeit smokin’ hot, guy from a teenage drama). I miss her, I want her back. end of story. But that feeling of waiting is a feeling I have constantly. It’s not fearful, or even anxious, its just…incomplete. unsatisfied. and to me, the most notable part is that I feel like I have zero control over it. If I felt this way because of something I could do, achieve, buy, whatever, then I would just be making steps to do that. But what i’m waiting for isn’t something i’m not doing and it’s not something i’m able to find. not on my own anyway.

But as this brokenness consumes me, I am so unsure whether my waiting is for Lilee, for the future, or its the feeling that is the permanent residue from the day my heart shattered.

I had the opportunity to go home at the end of May for the Child Run (THANK YOU to everyone who ran/donated/participated and LOVED team love for Lilee, we raised just over $10,000. WOW) and as I was driving home from the whirlwind weekend we had, I realized how important the mountains were to me. The ocean will always be where my heart is, I will end up seaside to spend the rest of my days. But spending time nestled between Cascade and Rundle mountains, sitting in the bow valley, going from peak (ish) to peak, and river to lake, I can all but feel my heart and soul mending. To what extent? I don’t know. I don’t know if the mountains will always posses this feeling of safety, of courage, of, dare I say it, hope. I don’t know if in a month i’ll feel like the rocks are crumbling down on me, crushing the very life out of my lungs. But for now, as my heart sits in pieces that are slowly finding their way back to where they once were, never the same and always with the lines and grooves of the day it shattered with some pieces lost for ever, leaving a hole where they belong, I can feel the mountains healing me, and then one day, maybe the day I am constantly waiting for,  the ocean will call me home.

Waiting and Wondering,

Chelsey xo

“Body, like the mountain
Heart, like the ocean
Mind, like the sky.”
-Dogen