Finish Line

Come on sweetheart
Let’s adore one another
Before there is no more
of you and me.” ~Rumi

The first day she sat in a circle of women and one guy who seemed a bit awkward and didn’t stay.
The room was cold and had a nursery rhyme rug and a piano.
And she wrote-never much and never a very far step away from a bunch of cliches-but she wrote.

And she listened-
to relationships ending,
pieces being picked up,
sometimes pieces just being moved from one pile to another.

She witnessed fragile beginnings,
at times watching the sapling grow into a strong beautiful tree
and other times getting mowed over before the roots could really sink in.

The safety
the prompts
the non-judgment
the space
allowed her to dig into her own pieces
and rooms
and dreams
and dark places
and relationships.

Crying was ok,
laughing was ok,
not responding was just as ok.

She thought when working in the nursing home that people were so much more real right before they died. There was a vulnerability and a lack of needing to prove or protect oneself. The relationships were fast and deep and cut to the meaningful shit real quick. She used to mourn that that only happened at the end, when the person was dancing or stumbling out of their (and her) life. She wished to find that without the death.

That space was her writing class for 3 years.
Or was it 4?
Who knows, really?
It’s one of those things measured in experiences,
not duration;
Quantified by how deep it penetrates and changes,
not how many classes have been attended.
____________
I was told that the truest truths have no words and, once again, I don’t have the words for what this class and teacher and my fellow students have meant to me and the impact on who I am today.  I wanted to write and hand them a diamond, but this feels more like a couple of pebbles in comparison to what is in my heart.   But I have reached a “for now” finish line.  I’m ready to not run, but cautiously and reluctantly cross that line and be open to what is on the other side.