On Friday night at 10 minutes to midnight sitting in my parked
car outside my apartment building, I was scrolling through Facebook on my
phone. I usually do this as a 'before
getting out of my car at the end of the night' ritual. I don’t know why. Like I’m getting a few minutes' alone time before I
go into the house… but I live alone... with a cat. … so… In any case, I came across a post about that evening's blue moon, looked quickly at the clock and exclaimed, “Shit!”
I shut off my phone, dashed out of the car up to my
apartment. I took off my heels, slipped
on flats, grabbed my loaner tambourine and climbed excitedly and nervously
up the stairs to the rooftop of my building.
Pushing open the door, I saw before me a whitewashed roof with long pipes and what look like abandoned solar panels. Dropping my keys by the door, I carried my
tambourine to the center of the rooftop, shielding myself slightly from the view of neighboring buildings, and turned around to see the full, audacious moon before
me. Then, I began to jangle the
tambourine, and finally I began to sing.
As I’ve come to the part of my recovery/internal work where
we are instructed to “Humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings,” my mentor
asked me how I’d done this step in the past.
I told her I usually get on my knees and say some kind of prayer.
“Get the fuck off your knees!” she replied emphatically.
You see, I have a habit of being small. Of minimizing myself,
diminishing myself, down-playing and ignoring my own needs out of fear and, mostly now, out of long-grooved
practice. This habit of deprivation and
hiding causes many problems in my life, mostly because I am surely aware that I
am not “meant” to be a mouse.
Being a mouse, though, often looks like me withholding my truths, not
admitting what I really want from others and from myself and from life. Things like. … I want to get married. *gasp!* It was near torture to say this aloud to her
when we were discussing truths I never tell anyone. It feels embarrassing
to say it. To feel it. To want it.
“I'm a modern woman, proud brave able!
What a simpering, waif-like desire to have!,” goes my internal
monologue. And I wither to admit it to anyone else.
My mentor and I spoke at length that day, and she finally
suggest-/insist-ed that I get a tambourine, dress up in something exciting and
shout this truth, and all my others, to the heavens.
*Gulp*
So on Friday morning, two weeks after this suggestion, I
finally obtained a borrowed tambourine (you’d be surprised how few there are around!). I texted my mentor that tonight was the
night! And then I read online that it was also
going to be a full moon, a blue moon in fact.
This seemed most auspicious. (For
a woo-woo hippie shit chick like myself!)
The evening found me on the roof of my apartment building, fresh from a salsa lesson/live
music dance in the city, in a hot dress and pulsing with feminine wiles, furtively tapping this
noisemaker in my hand, trying not to feel embarrassed.
And then I began to sing.
I started softly and whirled myself into a
crescendo, abandoning decorum, delighting in the jangle and thrill of the truth. Gyrating, gesticulating, twirling around the rooftop, I sang loudly all
the secret desires of my soul and my heart, echoing a refrain of, “I let go of
being small!” and hammering wildly on the tambourine, an elegant, alight grin
streaked across my face as I hopped lightly over the pipes, spinning around the
roof until all my heart’s desires, all my tiny wishes I’m too ashamed to speak, had poured out of my throat and into the moonlit darkness.
Laughing, giddy, adrenalized, I headed back to the entrance door, calling brazenly to the bulbous moon: “Peace out, Blue Moon.”
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