Journey of the Honeybee
(ongoing series)
1
I fled west… towards the expansive wilderness to suture my wounds.
“Do you have anything for heartbreak?” I sheepishly ask the woman behind the counter. I feel her desire to hold my heart as she smiles compassionately. Shying away instinctively, I lower my gaze, my eyes fill with tears at this stranger’s empathy.
I’m not used to pulling away…
“Pachamama,” she advises delicately. Mother Earth provides solace to those who seek Her embrace.
—the grieving honeybee
2
In the subliminal states before waking, I reach out in hopes it was all a bad dream and that you'll be there to wrap your arms around me, pulling me in and nuzzling into the back of my neck as we melt together before getting up for work. I blink my eyes open, expecting to see yours glittering softly back at me in awe.
Then I remember the void... the dreams we lost, like this sand, which now slips through my fingers.
I wander through the Desert of Time trying to find something, I don't know yet what, cursing as I stop on a cactus spine. Perhaps I'm searching for you, mirroring back at me in the Nature you so loved how I related everything to. Perhaps I'm searching for myself and the wild woman I lost somewhere along the way.
"Be strong," you told me, to never stop being my wild self. I'm trying, miodku, I'm trying.
—the searching honeybee
15
Is it okay if I just collapse now? I'm so very tired of feeling... everything.
Some days are for allowing things to be as they are. Not for identifying with the pain or forcing a narrative, but just for being. If that means lying in the sand and crying, so be it. I'll lie here until I am no longer electrified.
—the exhausted honeybee
20
The day that broke me... with that deafening silence on the other end of the phone.
I become so small again in this frigid rain, shrinking into myself. I yearn to be seen, cherished, and loved for all that I am, not just my sweet honey.
Please, hold me. The cold provides me no comfort here.
—the lost honeybee
30
The Way of the Mountain
The Mountain of Time transports me through glimpses of my life. Each moment I was ever sick or injured or hospitalised. Every medical trauma I have ever experienced.
click… click… click… click…
One snapshot after another, mirrored moments staring back at me on the shimmering rocks, showing me the weakest moments in my short, not quite yet 30-year, life.
click… click… click… click…
The ambulances, the doctors, the needles, the tests, the experiments, my parents’ worried looks, the screams, the tears, the never ending questions. Probing, prodding, piling on medications, wrecking my body and my precious mind. The endless years of excruciating pain.
click… click… click… click…
Over
and over
and over
and over
I fall.
…
I trudge up the Mountain of Time, trying my best to ignore the piercing pain as I begin to notice other mirrored moments looking back at me. The moments beyond the pain. The fierce determination and grit. The laughter. The encouragement. The kindness. The compassion. The love. The stillness after each storm.
The surrender to time.
click... click... click... click...
Life…
Beating me down until I am nothing…
And still I rise.
Trying to cripple me…
And still I rise.
Trying to kill me…
And still I rise.
click… click… click… click…
Over
and over
and over
and over
I rise.
…
“All that glitters is not gold.” And yet… these shimmering mirrored rocks show me something more precious than gold—the infinite, radiating a white-blue light, guiding me to rise.
…
This is the Way of the Mountain of Time.
—the infinite honeybee