Tīrtha - transition

 

My therapist says I am undergoing an existential crisis. Again. What a trope. I feel like a caricature of a human being.

For weeks now, I have been trying to make sense of life and death. I've been thinking a lot about transitions lately. I hate instability. I hate change. I'd much rather be instantly transported from Point A to Point B than have to suffer through the uncertainty and instability of the in-between. I keep thinking about butterflies and what a short time they live. Did you know that those pretty yellow brimstone butterflies only live 2 days? What a fucking tragedy.

As an English teacher, I feel like my mind only operates in themes, so I've chosen one pose a month as a yoga focus, and then every class is a variation on that theme. January was lunges. February was binds. March was Mermaid. April was figure 4's. May was core-focused. For June-July, we did splits. 

And then came August. Like many of Life's lessons, I didn't know what I was writing or learning until the thing wrote itself. I started sequencing for headstand, but as it turns out, we didn't actually do a headstand at any point during that month. Instead, I labeled it Updog. But really, it wasn't even that. Somewhere along the way, it ended up not really even being about Updog. It became about the transition between chaturanga and urdhva mukha svanasana. 

In Sanskrit, tīrtha is the word for transition. It technically means "crossing over" or "ford," which makes me think of the River Styx in Greek mythology, and the other-worldly being who ferries souls over to Hades. See? Even mythology transitions are dark as fuck. 

Here's chaturanga:

To get from there to Updog, you roll up and over the toes, which requires a lot of core strength and foot engagement and looks like this:

How the hell did I get from headstand to this? I don't know. It does not even make sense. I started with a very specific pose in mind. Not only did we never get to that pose, we didn't get anywhere close. We ended up in between poses, in a transition.

I fucking hate transitions. Chaturanga to Updog. Old job to new job. Christian to ...??? I hate things that are unstable and unnameable. I want everything to have a box and to fit.

Here's a picture of me with some of my favorite students, years after I taught them. I think Elle's 20 there and the other girls are maybe 19. They had all shown up to help me pack up my shit and move from Hazelwood to a new district. This picture was taken in 2016. Elle's then-boyfriend came to help us move, and he took the photo. They ended up getting married, so maybe I inherited his labor.

I remember this day very specifically because my helpers looked at all the pictures on the walls of the new building and said, "Damn. This a bunch of white kids. It's gonna be a lot of kids named Theodore and shit." And I studiously waited for said Theodore to show up over the years, and he never did arrive. Apparently, Theodore is not a common name in this county.

Anyway. All that was years ago. I love this picture. All of us look happy.

Then, 10 months ago, I got a call during 2nd hour Creative Writing. It was the girl to my right in the picture, and she was in hysterics. Her dad had been in an accident while driving. He had died on impact.

It was awful. Watching someone I loved navigate that transition from daughter to ...??? I had taught this girl the use of metaphors when she was 13. I had helped drag her ass through college. She had done her teaching observation with me. And now she was in this weird, horrifying in-between place where she was still the mother of a toddler, but only half a daughter. It was terrible.

And then a few weeks ago, I got the same damn message again. Again. This time it was the girl on my left. 2 a.m: J is dead. There was an accident. They say he died on impact. It was her husband, the sweet then-boyfriend who took our picture. The one we'd just been talking about 3 days before, on our sunny September bike ride.

This is a thing that they don't prepare you for in teacher training: how do you deal not just with your own painful and challenging transitions, but with those of your people, the ones who look to you years after you taught them? Even 17 years into teaching, I still don't know the answer to this.

I cried through my whole last therapy session, for no reason other than the fact that I fucking hate transitions. I was already in a painful depression, but then Elle's need shocked me back out of it, into the world of relative normalcy. We couldn't both be depressed.

So now I'm not depressed. Now I'm just in that weird ether. That weird in-between where I'm waiting and watching for something to make sense. I don't even know how to help, so I just send her different-colored hearts on different days and hope they somehow keep her alive.

"Who is this other girl in the picture?" Elle asked when we went out for depressing drinks.

"Briana. I'm not in touch with her any longer," I replied. "My rule is that I'm as involved in your life as you want or need me to be."

"That's a good boundary," said the still-in-shock Elle. "Let's crop her out of the photo?"

"Good idea," I nodded. "If we don't, probably someone she loves will die next year."

"We're basically doing her a favor."

That was a week ago. The shock is starting to fade now, and there is only a great chasm of grief where it was. 

And for me, there is only the rawness, the pain and discomfort of transitions that feel like forebodings, but that I don't know how to heed.