I fell...

I fell

    Day two of meditation. With a clearer idea of what to expect the nerves were gone. They had been replaced by a mixture of adventure and emotion. I wanted to know what part of me I would find today. I kept repeating in my head that the purpose of meditation was to count my breath, while your mind went blank. But I couldn't stop thinking about my little self that had previously found me. Maybe I wasn't meditating but I was getting to know myself better. Anyway, for me, it was a profit. It was 6:00 pm, the room was full, there were more people than the previous time and among some, there were new familiar faces. I rushed to take my place and there it was. Waiting for the little girl to peek through the cracks inside me. To my surprise ... I was meditating. I had somehow silenced the voices in my head and only the 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... resonated as I breathed. After about 20 minutes of sitting, something catches my attention.

     I didn't feel my right foot, it was more numb than usual. I couldn't move it and I didn't feel it when I touched it. I went into a little panic and repeated the words we were told on the first day "Nobody has lost his foot because of a little meditation." Without any success, I tried to accommodate myself so that the blood would circulate again. But thank God the bell rang announcing that it was time to stop. I try to move my leg without any reaction. I need to stand up. I'm still sitting while everyone around me waits for me to stand up. "Take your time," said Dr.Davis, but I knew that if I don’t stand up my leg would not improve. I try to stand up for the first time, and I can't. They tell me to take the time I need so I wait a few minutes to try again, but my foot fails, and I fall to the floor. Without waiting much, I try again this time getting to stand up. Time passes and we have the second section of 25 minutes sitting on the floor. I sit down again, but this time the voices in my head were no longer silent. A combination of shame and laughter led my mind. But then between so much noise, I understood.  That was the Adventure of life, falling but keep trying until you get it.

     In Milton's poem entitled "When I consider how my light spent" He tells us about how his world is full of darkness and low light, enclosed in his limitations and thoughts, trying to please others. Believing not to be worthy of being worthy. He tells us about how his fire goes out and with it his life, by trying to hide his limitations, hide his defects and show what the world wants to see in him. And being a slave to its limitations and defects is something that I am no stranger to. A world where I have won the hate lottery because being a woman, obese, Latina with bad English is the worst. Day by day we die and that becomes our talent, our only talent. Where every minute we kill a part of our being to please the world, we strive not to see our limitations, our defects but falling anyway and even harder. I could see it today. Why did I hurry to get up when I knew that my bodily limitations prevented me? Why did I want to be like others? Like all those who stood around me. Why did I want to hide my limitations, my defects? Simple, I wanted to show that I could because once they see your defect that is the only thing that they see and it only led me to a shameful fall. But even when I fell, even when I was full of shame, even when I knew that the world was made to be against me, I got up. And we see in the poem how God answers that he does not need perfect people if not people who are willing to carry his cross, step by step, allowing herself to fall but not stop, knowing that behind each storm comes a rainbow. So like today I fell in memory of every limitation and defect that society has put me in, getting up reminded me of how perfect I am for God.

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