1111

Numbers, letters, and lunar signals at a time of grief.

This was written around April and May of 2022. A time where I experienced tormenting amounts of pain, grief, loss and physical weariness. As challenging as that time was for my wellbeing, I surmounted the suffering by creating. And so this essay was born out of several journal entries I wrote with the intention of capturing the strange occurrences I was experiencing leading up to a spiritual awakening.

April, 2022 - The Itch

For the past few weeks I have been telling people I have an itch that needs stratching- in my reading, in my writing, in my sexual life. All of me, mind & yes, my body need a release of deep-felt energy, some sort of energetic discharge from within.

The music I have been listening to, the lyrics of songs, or the excerpts of anything I have been reading feel like signs, following me around, well hidden but unable to be ignored.

You could say something is in the air, an unfamiliar smell which's scent somehow sparks memories in me. Memories of a past life, an awakened feeling of ancestry.

I recently got told my soul reeks of an ancient tint. That although I look young on the outside, my inner core has an age. Recently my body has felt tired, weary, fragile. My eyes have swollen up, shriveled and wrinkled.

I’m becoming scared of how aged my face looks, how little energy and motivation I have to wake up in the morning and perform chores of the everyday.

May, 11th, 2022

It’s been a year of tumultuous healing. A year of constant illness and farewells. I’ve thought more about death as an escape than seeing life as an opportunity. I’ve had to learn to let go even when it doesn’t feel ‘right’. Or maybe it did. The repetitive notion of having to believe that something better lays ahead feels daunting when everything around the present moments seems to be out of reach. I’ve been exhausted and sleeping long hours. I’ve broke down crying in public so often that it no longer feels embarrassing. I am surrending to the inevitable.

May 14th, 2022

I picked up a book about grief out of the depths UCD's endless bookshelf halls.

Once every week I go into the library after class and scavenge through the thousands of titles and fonts. I caress unworn covers, and the ones about to collapse. I pick up one at random and check the dates from when it was first borrowed. If they are 50+ years old I feel a tinge bit of excitement. If I happen to see my birth date on one of them (which happens more often than I expected), I feel a small sense of ownership. Today, Didion sat in the returned section waiting to be put back on the shelf. Before I knew it, I had travelled all the way from the American poetry section, past the English Literature and Theatre and into the returns. I walked out of there with Didion under my arm and nothing else.

May 15th, 2022- At night

The moon tonight was a soft yellow, covered between black clouds. A large beautiful full moon to which I exclaimed and yelled my love for from the top of a pedestrian bridge at the N11 road of Dublin city.

The moment was alive. Everything in that moment was awake and breathing. As I was basking in the glory of that moment, the 111 bus went by. A few minutes later, the 11 passed by.

Time is of the essence. Something is shifting.

May 17th, 2022 - Synchronicity

On the 15-16th of May there was a full moon followed by a lunar eclipse happening on the sign of Scorpio. Bear with me, I am still just starting to connect the dots about astrology myself.

According to readings from Rising Woman, a network of astrologers, researchers and healers who write in depth blogs with information on each astrological occurrence throughout the year. They described May 15-16th to be a season of rebirth and transformation. Of holding onto the new, exhilarating you and as consequence having to experience grief and learning to let go of something that used to be with you.

Life lately has surrounded me with grief.

Of a friend's dad. Of my college years. Of past friendships. Of now gone romantic relationships. Of old patterns. Of my current home. Of old projects.

Anything and all that simply does not serve me anymore is dying with the old me. Strangely, this has worked simultaneously to awaken the most ancient me.

It’s also a time of the yearly, traditional birthday. A taurus born on the 20th of May 2000, on a Saturday. I've always love the sound of a Saturday. It's the better Sunday.

And for the past few weeks leading up to the celebration of my birth, although truly in the last week I have noted the emergence of an omnipresent cipher - 1111. Everywhere. At the gym I work at, 11:11 staring at me from the robotic looking timer clock that sits high up on the wall. While I sit on the toilet mindlessly scrolling through social media and I look at the clock on my phone - 11:11. Sometimes as I go to unlock my screen or for some strange reason get the urge to check the time as I am about to leave the house, there it is again, 11:11.

On the 11th of May, at 11:11, I sat at a doctor's waiting room to check on the state of my body. I was told I am suffering of a bad sinusitis infection and it is manifesting through the dauting looking wrinkles on my eyes. And although it has been reminding me of my mortality, of my liminiality in time, the repeating cipher 1111 sparked life within me.

So I did a little research.

In Greek there is two ways to speak of time;

Cronos - the linear, almost unmoving and factual (calendars, clocks).

And Kairo - the ripeness of time, the perfect timing of moments, of a leap of faith, like the perfect timing of a long longed kiss.

On this week of May after the lunar eclipse, I have become aware of the lineality of time- the things that cannot be avoided, that must be faced and lived. The bit of life that is already been determined.

And yet, the instinctual, intuitive feeling of having to make a terrifying and righteous decision that brings forth monumental change has become everpresent.

I have questioned the signs, the moments of pain and illness I am currently undergoing. I have prayed onto the skies at 11:11 for whatever is to come, claiming that I am open, I am ready. I have been constantly writing, almost manically and all related to self improvement, self questioning, self discovery. I know this sounds lunatic. I have felt lunar myself. Crazy and delusional. 'Dramatic and delusional' as me and my friend Hope have decided this phase of life has felt and will be. And yet, I’ve never felt more in synch with the cosmos. It speaking to me, for me. The repetition of numbers, the encounters with difficulty and my fragile physical state are happening simultaneously without coincidence. It’s a divine intervention and I must listen.

May 22, 2022 - On the book I’ve been reading.

‘Life changes fast.

Life changes in an instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

The question of self-pity’

Joan Didion, Notes on change.doc, May 20, 11:11

I am currently in a state of delusional thinking, of daydreaming beyond the rational- acessing the most creative and unreacheable of dreams. I have been imagining a life of cosmic good and alignment that right now seems laughable and impossible, but it is the only thing saving me from this pain. I can barely read these words as I write them. My eyes have swollen to an extreme, my tears feel like acid against my burnt skin. I don’t recognize myself in the mirror, but my mind is staying lucid.

The timing of it all, the ciphers that have unlocked some answers have continued to conmmunicate something beyond the rational, beyond the physical. A call of faith for myself.

I searched for something new and fulfilling to read and ‘A Year of Magical Thinking' by Joan Didion today sits infront of me. I didn’t think twice before holding onto to it.

I’ve read Didion over the years, essays, extracts, articles. I have studied her in my creative non-fiction college module and have had many interesting discussions of her work with my professor. Didion’s connection with language, her life experience and manner of expressing was of instant connection for me. Sometimes I like to think Didion and I would’ve shared one too many wine glasses and dinners together, a friendship arising from creative connection and becoming one of a lifetime.

I ended up walking out of the library with a book that scratched part of the itch. A soft back rub and soothing scratcher that brought ease and a better sleep.

Because the signs have become more prominent, more recurrent, I decided to trust their power and so, I followed them. This is what I found;

The first page of Didion's Magical Thinking begins with this entry:

'Notes on change' last edited May 20th, at 11:11.

My exact birth day, and the continuous presence of 1111 appeared again.

This obviously made me gasp and let out a small yelp of excitement while on public transport. My madness,the fire within me was sparked by the first lines of this book.

Continuing the read, I came to find that the first part of the book is based on the loss of her husband and the slow recovery of illness from her daughter - and her encounter with grief in every corner.

She studied grief scientifically, spiritually, read the greatest literature and poetry on the human experience of grieving.

She finds that a grieving person loses their rationality, sometimes becomes completely numb to it all or at times every emotion, moment and thought is highly heightened that the person becomes easily triggered and out of control.

In search of control the minimal tasks become highly important, the focus on the specificities, the attention to detail becomes manic and obsessive.

Didion relived her husbands death over and over again- trying to keep him alive and finding a way to comprehend the irrationality and briefness of the moment. She focused on the factual, the kronos of time, what had to be done (laundry, paperwork, donation and cleaning).

And as that slowly faded then came Kairo and timing became crucial. The urge to investigate about grief, to write about it, to gather excerpts of poetic works that touch on the subject of death was her motor.

As I read through Didion's process on grief, I couldn’t help but to question my own, What am I grieving ? Why is everything so fucking painful right now ?

May 24th, 2022

It’s 4 days after my birthday and this morning I was again sitting at the doctor's office, trying to understand what is wrong with me. I thought receiving some medical answers would ease some of my anxiety. All I can think about is the scared and panicked look the doctor gave me when he saw me. I travel with sunglasses everywhere I go now. People in work have started to ask if I’m sleeping alright. Everything is blurry. The urgency to inject me with steroids and sedate me with antibiotics felt like something was clearly not right with me. And yet I have no clear explanation on what is happening with my body other than, as the doctor called it, “an allergic reaction.”

I have almost no recollection of the last two days. I have been sleeping a lot. Didion stopped eating after her husband’s death from sleeping so much, from forgetting what makes a day worth eating for, bathing for, moving for ? You lose sense of living when faced with death.

On my birthday I purchased a ticket for a classical concert in St. Anne’s Church, Vienna. Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and Schubert filled every corner of that small place. I stared up at the dome and found my grandmother’s name imprinted on the ceiling. I cried. St. Anna staring down at me. I was unable to shake the feeling of ancestry as the violins and cello sang. It felt like I was staring at Death and all I could hear and see was light.

26th May, 2022

I can’t remember the last time I was fully sober. I’ve started to wear exceeding amounts of makeup under my eyelids, around my eyebrows. The wrinkles on my eyes have started to show more. My phone has been buzzing and ringing for days. I have missed work and I can’t remember the last time I spoke to my family. It might have been just a couple of days, but it feels like I have been in pain for an eternity. I started to have slight faints while teaching at the gym last week. I have stopped eating regularly. Any chance I get to myself I curl up in bed and sleep, otherwise I get constant anxiety attacks.

I have stopped caring about a lot of things. I’ve forgot about my dissertation, I’ve forgot about my friends, I’ve cancelled all plans, I’ve stopped exercising, I am mean to people and I talk to none of my housemates.

I’ve started to smoke a lot of marihuana, I get invited to parties I don’t even want to go to and only go to try all the drugs people offer me.

Cocaine, weed, alcohol is laying all around the house, I am alone.

Kanye West’s ‘Mother I Sober’ is playing in the background,

‘you’ve never felt grief till you’ve been this sober’ reveberates back to me from the speaker.

No wonder I avoid it- sobriety. Whatever the signs have for me, I am unable to receive it hiding under this grief. Intoxicated to lose sense of time. I am unable to focus on the basic, minimal tasks and I am too scared of facing decisions.

I am terrified of the dark corners of my mind. All I want to do is sleep, drift away - in my dreams, there is hope. Sometimes I see light. I think my eyes are bursting with pain from the heavy sadness I feel. I’m trying. Living feels heavy and I don’t think I can hold the weight any longer. But I remember how it felt to love life. I still love.

I just don’t know how to be good to myself again.

28th May, 2022

HOW TO BE GOOD TO YOURSELF AGAIN

I bought a new toothbrush. That was an act of self-love ( Amor Propio).

I am grateful for the moments of solitude and pain I have experienced.

The rebirth had been building up. The book was teaching me how to deal with grief, the numbers were reminding me the importance of breaking cycles, the moon heard me scream and my body did everything it could to survive this spiritual death.

4 days after my birthday I prayed to die in my sleep; I wrote it on the last entry.

Today, I cried of gratitude and fulfillness all because of a new toothbrush.

Who knew the minimal, basic tasks, the cleaning and caring of my own gums would remind me of the pleasures of living.

I am returning home.

30th May, 2022

A year ago today I was standing in the same place I am right now - in the midst of a hectic move, stressed and uncertain of what was to come. Someone was next to me to ease the moment. I was comforted, I was hugged. Today, I am alone and it hurts. I miss it all and it hurts.

I remember laughter, love and security.

Today is uncertain, lonely and strangely peaceful.

I remember and I let go -

I let go of all of this year,

All the certain and uncertain, all the chaos and the manic order of things.

I am at the end of Didion’s book, I am writing on the last pages of this journal, I am a few weeks away from submitting my last college project. I am saying goodbye to all that. To this pink house, to your blue car, to my unrecognizable face and to the unforgettable streets of Dublin - for now.

Today I had one of those tranquil, ephemeral moments of presence. I was able to breathe and admire the insignificance of my own existence. I stood between everything that lives and breathes with me and I knew. This is it. I made it out of the depths of despair, pain and physical weariness for this. To breathe and see. To hear and feel. It’s like the weight of what was dying has dissipated into the abyss and my senses emerged from that great space created. Nature is again reborn in the garden of our Killiney home. The air is light and pure. The sun is shining and my skin is no longer afraid of being kissed by its rays. Everything is ending and yet life is breathable again.

‘Have you ever breathed next to another?’

I find myself in an uncertain time of life - tired, scared and yet I am filled with vigour in body and mind.

I am grateful to be living today, I hope you get to read this someday.

What day is it for you ?

If this resonates with you, I applaud you for your bravery. If this is pain you’re experiencing now, I hug you with utmost empathy. I simply hope for this read to have been something of service, either for you or for someone you love. With All the Love I Am,