BY Chiedza Nzembe I WANTED to be the sun. But I was the tiny black rock buried underneath a mountain. Don’t ask me how I knew it was a mountain, I just assumed from the weight I felt. So, I waited for somebody or something to come dig me up. Just maybe, that someone would eventually come and dig me up. Just maybe if I saw the world from the surface, then I’d be happier.
So, I waited, waited, waited, and waited. Intoxicating agony! Hope barely clinging. I thought to myself in the process “Why me? Why here? Why must everything thrust its weight on top of me? I am so small and cannot bear it all. If only I could dig myself out, but I know I can’t, I’m way down.”
It didn’t take time before death consumed me. This was, as I would come to learn, the first of my many deaths. I don’t know how but in the depths of that death. Seemingly aeons away from the definition of anything, I heard her, I heard the wind, I felt her sweeping across and back again caressing my very skin.
We were speaking in our own language, waking me from a deep slumber. Next was confusion and fear hugging tightly around my existence like a piece of wire around the neck of a struggling animal.
Yet nightmarishly cornered, I could feel and see something. Not with my eyes but with my being. There was a presence so overcoming and electrifying pouring through everything. This energy was beckoning me, buzzing love and trust towards this tiny black rock. She was light. Remembering her familiarity washed me with a multitude of emotions. I felt parts of me peeling off so softly, revealing a new kind of beauty in me, on me that I never knew existed.
Turns out in my death slumber, I learned to trust the process, and everything worked in my favour without me even asking. As awe-stricken as I was, nothing, absolutely nothing prepared me for the sight of my hero! The one I looked up to.
I couldn’t look at her for the simple reason that she spat fire and shone like nobody`s business. There she was, glaring on top of everything. Smiling with eternal joy, beauty, and confidence. She was the sun.
Finally, I would be happy at last. I had rare sights kissing my eyes every day! Rain stopped by and brought with her coldness, gloomy clouds, and detachment. What an awakening. She rolled me off the top of “my” queendom down a rigid raggedy trail only to bury me again. Insecurities like a sea on noisy coins roared and suffocated me once again. It hurt. Not wind, not light revealed themselves to me like I thought would help me. Sun was too majestic for such a chore. Death reacquainted my spirit. Except for this time, I did not know whether I was under her spell, or it was all in my mind.
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If it had been minutes, decades, or galaxies later I would not know but overpowered in that foul sickness and darkness, I saw someone. I saw someone who looked exactly like I did. Small and black. What puzzled me even in that darkness was her light. No, it wasn’t a visible light like you, and I practically understood it.
It was a mysterious kind of light. She exuded life, joy, contentedness, a wildness, and freedom about her! It all caressed and buzzed taciturnly through to me like soft teasing waves. But how? Under here and small like that? Yet, there she just was…
I began to wonder what it would take to be exactly like her. “When will you learn?” I heard a voice. The voice seemed to come from nothing but echoed through everything. Who might this be I thought to myself? “I’ve been speaking to you since time immemorial, but you chose not to listen to me”.
Déjà vu struck me on fast forward mode, and everything began to dawn on me who this was. She was process. ‘You do not want to be like her you’d hate it! Just be unashamedly yourself.” It took some time to understand the construction behind that enchanted statement.
So, process and I became very close friends. She taught me a lot. It was a hard becoming but nevertheless an adventure I craved my whole life. Somewhere along the line I surrendered to my existence and being. I disintegrated and I mean completely and irrevocably. Piece by piece, mind, body, and spirit. Each piece of me seemed to fade away into oblivion like screams underwater. Yet in that drowning oblivion still a part of me.
It was the art of letting go and raw healing. I was still deep under, lounged with darkness. The weight around me was a thousand elephants. But all felt like a void once I stopped caring. I shared stories with the roots of the trees. Befriended the soil.
Felt my own energy changing younger versions of me hugged tightly around me. I was everywhere and deliciously gripped by it. I flew high and above with wind. Saw the mighty eagles diving powerfully for fish in the glistening waters down. Felt the sweet warm love from dear sun.
The smaller I became, the more I grew. I felt the velvety soft kisses from light embracing me and I blew them back to her. Life, what a paradox. There is more to her, an invisible outrageous addictive magic.
Here I was a tiny black rock amidst it all. A small part to a bigger picture. This was the bridge of goddesses filled with existence, adventures, awakenings, and lessons. A passage that changed all.
- Chiedza Nzembe is an environmentalist, climate change advocate who loves to write! For comments, please email to: [email protected] or reach her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009323364134
