handfasting

My sister's getting married on Saturday.

She's committing herself to her partner in the park behind my parents' house, beside the river we grew up on, with a pagan ritual, surrounded by family and friends.

If I was the marrying kind, this is how I would do it, too.

When she asked me to call a direction I was so excited. She told me to choose the direction I wanted, and I said the first thing that came to mind.

Water.

My blogger name gives you a clue to the element I feel most closely aligned to, closely seconded by earth. Water and I used to be good friends. I was born a water sign. Up until we moved here, I've spent much of my life within a few hundred feet of the Thames River in Southwestern Ontario. My life was water - as a child I waded in the shallows, fished, canoed. I sat by the water and dreamed. I would walk through "the flats" at night, with the dog, feeling perfectly safe and at one with the darkness and the eternal flow. If I needed to cry, I would go to the river, knowing that she would hold my tears and carry my burden.

When I worked in Perth County as an adult, I would often stop for lunch at the TJ Dolan natural area - and spend a lovely 45 minutes walking the trails, and listening to the bubble of the river. Or I would meditate on the banks, knowing that at that time of day, I would find the solitude I needed.

The city I live in has a river of its own, on the outskirts. I have to drive to get there. I find places to go in my core neighbourhood where there are a lot of trees - there is a cemetery close by. The trees and the wind feed my desire for the natural world, because I cannot easily access water.

Water is emotion, it is essential for life, it is blood, it is tears, it is rain, it is love itself. The waters of birth crown our lives, it is the element of intuition, the subconscious, the family bond.

I have to write an invocation for water and memorize it by Saturday. Today is Tuesday. I haven't started. I haven't really tried to think about it. The more I think about it, the more I don't want to do it.

I am afraid that the water I invoke will unleash all the emotions, both positive and negative, that I have kept contained for so long. I feel like I'm wearing a shirt with a collar that's too tight. My throat is constricted, I can't express myself at all. If I don't take it off I will explode. This shirt is not a new one - the sleeves are threadbare with age, the stripes are faded with repeated washing. It's really time to recycle the shirt and choose another one.

Why would I hang on to something that no longer fits my life for so long? Fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of really feeling - love, passion, excitement. Fear of rejection.

My life at present is not unhappy. It's a little bit...flat. It has been this way for some time, for as long as I have been choosing safety over change, security over taking chances. Transformation sometimes takes you to places that are unexpected, and forces you to examine every aspect of your life. Who have I chosen to share my life with? Why?

I really don't think anyone is reading this blog---yet. If someone is, they may get the impression that I spend all my time thinking about myself. Not at all. But there is so much going on inside, that I need to write it out. Paper and pen is vital to my self-expression, but I also need to put it out there, share what I'm experiencing, shout to the world in my distant corner of nothing, just in case someone is listening.