the day the sky fell into my head

Six months in computer school, straight A student, National Honor Society, Vice President of the Web Club, Secretary of the Student Council, actually getting really good at programming in HTML, C, CSS, able to code websites and leap over tall buildings without a cape...

and the sky fell into my head.

I don't know how else to put it.  I was driving to school under moving clouds and sunrise with lots of traffic all around, and as I curved around to the right, I looked to the sky on my left and it fell into my head.  Everything got quiet.  Like a movie, really quiet.  I could still hear the cars moving on the pavement and the wind flowing outside, but it sounded underwater.  I sounded underwater.  And I couldn't really feel my heart beating.  It's not something you think about, your heart beating, unless you don't feel it doing so.  Then you think about it.  But I wasn't scared.  I was just as quiet as the sky as it fell clouds and sun and all right in the left side of my head, down my spine, and into every crevice, even my lungs.

I thought I might be dying, so I didn't really bother breathing anymore.  But I still wasn't scared.  I forgot everything.  I forgot where I was driving to, though I kept driving, and why, and where I had driven from.  Maybe that's what birth is like.  I just couldn't remember.  Anything.

And then, because I thought I was dying, I remembered to talk to God.  Raised in different churches, it kind of sticks with you.  So I looked around in my now-bigger-head trying to find a little guy with robes and a beard or maybe lightning bolts, but I couldn't see anyone.  Yes, I was still driving.    (Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...)

So I started talking to what "felt" like God.  I could only say, "Thank you so much for life, and I'm sorry I messed up so much."  But the feeling that was "God" was everywhere.  It was everything.  And it made sense.  How could the sacred possibly be one little man, magical and omni-everything or not?  God is everything.  There is nothing that is NOT God, there is nothing that is NOT sacred.  Everything has life and all of life is sacred.  Driving, stopping, coding, massaging, sleeping, remembering, forgetting, eating, peeing, climbing trees, messing up, forgiving, not forgiving, all of it, everything. 

The curve in the highway ended and my breathing started and my heart rhythm shook my body a little because I was not used to it.  The car sounds rushed right in my ears and the wind, too, and I remembered my daughters.  I remembered where I was and where I was driving to and the whole rest of my life.  But the sky is still here, still right inside of me, and I can feel it even as I type these keys, like little gods dancing through my fingertips singing about life.  And I'm just grateful.  I am so grateful. 

Maybe it was a stroke.  Maybe it was a transient ischemic attack or heart attack or panic attack (without the panic part.)  Maybe honu ea the sea turtle swims the seas because he can.  Maybe the sky fell inside of me because it can.  I know now what it is to have a calling.  I don't care that in two years more I would make x amount of money coding.  I don't want to code anymore.  I miss massage.  I miss writing.  I miss my client who thought she saved her husband's life by waking him when he was snoring strangely in a chair and I miss my client who complained about his wife waking him up from a perfectly good nap in a chair.  See?  It's like life, it's all one ribbon but we think we're just one end.

and that is my story about the day the sky fell into my head.  aloha nui mahalo.