Song of the Day: Whole Wide World – Wreckless Eric
No one needs me to tell them that friends are amazing. The best ones are those that you can call out of the blue, reach out across miles of mountains and ocean, across years of silence or sporadic conversation, to be right back where you once were. Comfortable and easy, safe, excited, relieved.
These last few years have been hard on my psyche. Thought-worms carved villages in my brains, keeping me scared, confused, angry, anxious, and frenzied. Amidst the ongoing fight to wrest my brain from the grips of my trampled, aching ego, a miracle happens.
She: I have a favor to ask you. It’s really big.
Me: Anything you want.
She: I’m starting a goat farm co-op. I just rented a cottage in the middle of nowhere. My house needs to be blue and I need a place to put the goats. Wanna come help me?
Me: (is on her way to the airport)
Shall I mention that this sunchild’s cottage in the middle of nowhere is also on an island (one of a grouping) that is the furthest place from any other landmass you can go to? If I needed to get away (which I definitely did), this is the furthest from everywhere that I could get. Maui.
I left in time to watch the sun setting over the ocean on the way to LA, and arrived at the island in pitch darkness before making the long drive along unlit expanses of highway. It felt like some surreal universe-transportation journey. Enter darkness. Add time and wind and when you wake up, you will be in paradise.
In paradise you can lounge. You can eat ice cream any time you want, and siesta time is whenever you choose. There is a universal whirlpool bath that tumbles you around, with built in bath salts and natural foot pumice. The sun seeps through your pores like syrup and turns your skin the color of glowing. The wind sings to you wherever you go and braids your hair and blows you home again. 
We would wake up at dawn, our most productive time of day, and be done with all our work and at the beach by brunch time. We ate when we wanted, slept when we were tired, talked when we felt like talking, and kept silent when our thoughts started to flow. There were happy days and bad days and it wasn’t until the last few days that I felt something inside start to change.
All that chatter, the anxiety. The what, how, when, who, by what means. The “am I happy now? how about now? how about now?” started to fade away. I started to feel more at home in my body. I started to feel like there was something in this world I could enjoy. I started to feel like I could do anything again. Because I could.
We didn’t work a lot. But we pounded posts. We planted seeds. We made a home. We cooked and cleaned and hung out laundry to dry in the sun. We made green smoothies. We listened to our hearts. We were honest. We rested. We recognized what was coming in and what was coming out. We talked and realized we were both equally crazy. And in that realization, it had less power.
Sometimes friends can save your life, but it’s much better when you can save each other.
And now I feel excited. Relaxed. Optimistic, but mostly just open. Free. The chatter is gone and I am so thankful. For you and me, for everyone, for time, for place, for nothing and everything all at once.
