So there was the constant running,
Years of it
Frightened…but not sure of what
Angry…but not sure with whom
I dwelled in the space
Where eternity lies
With the stars and dreamy nothingness
Of the other side
The here and now
Routine and cycles
Of life on earth
Terrified me… to the point of
Dragging my two young children
Across the globe
Just to be sure
That we could always hide
Or move on….from
That which reminded me I was alive
In a physical body
With an earthly life to lead
A life that had lost its sense
Somewhere along the way
Couldn’t find the place
Or the forgotten meaning
Searching I did
Whilst running wildly
Hunting for safety, love and a home
But a home can’t be found
Home is where the heart is
But as the heart was in shreds
The homeland was unrecognisable
From the start…
But run and search I did, in all the wrong places
In the drugs that made me feel
So connected…to the disconnected world of lost souls
In relationships that intensified the feelings of loneliness.
To India, where the reflection of self in the eyes of all,
Spun me around and shoved me back into the arms of what was not yet finished
To my horse and cart and the seeking of sense
in the windy lanes that the gypsies had trod.
Until with age and the turning of Saturn
I made the first tentative steps to stop running
And face the job of building
Something more stable
That had structure and form
That I could say was mine
And that maybe I would even belong
But life cannot be forced to
Supply stability
At the wave of a hand, the making of a decision
And so from running to illusion…I built sandcastles in the sand
I created a persona
That had many friends and an exciting life…in foreign lands
And the frightened me who ran away
Looking for a home, buried herself deeper within
Given up fleeing
Hiding now in the theatre piece of a life
that was animated and dynamic but
resting on a bedrock of dust and emptiness
Until the day I signed on the dotted line
I boarded the train
That would take me on the journey
Inwards…towards a reanimation of the lost soul
It was to be the most intense adventure of all my travels
Layer by layer, like an onionskin
I peeled slowly away, each hurt, illusion,
And out-dated survival technique
And slowly I could feel the breath coming back
To my aura, to my being, to my heart
Hesitatingly I looked in the mirror
And told myself I loved me!
Slowly I made sense of the past
And even the generations past
I performed symbolic acts
To heal the unconscious mind
I learnt to dance my dance
Sing my song and feel
Feelings were the key…
I stopped running from and faced them
What we resist persists
I let go, stopped barricading
And my body processed intelligently
Much more so than the mind (that likes to think its intelligent)
And gently as I learnt to believe in myself…and love myself
the outer illusions started to flake away
And deep in my innermost
A subtle process of going home began… yet unbeknown to me
And the universe helped the subconscious
As together they created situations that nudged me nearer
To the place where I had come from
To the place where I had fled from
Inner and outer intertwined
I was getting nearer to them both
Closer to home, back to the hearth
Feminine, masculine, the union of both
In my inward and outward lives
Harmoniously, magically, beautifully reflecting each other
I had stopped running and begun caring
For myself, for other, for the whole
And in an instant, twenty five years later
The two ends joined
I had arrived at the same place
But recognised it for the first time
I am going home!
Cathy Skipper 