I feel helpless. The largest, most majestic oak tree—the same one we only two days ago hung a swing from—its leaves are dying.
Is it the fungal disease Google says the tree could recover from? Or is it something worse, something fatal? I can’t believe how attached I am to that giant. Its branches stretch across 60% of the yard. Squirrels bound and chase through its limbs, covering distances that feel marathon-like.
I keep talking myself off the panic ledge: It’ll be ok. Whatever happens. I know, I know. And still—this tree has been like a therapist to me over the past year. I meditate on its massiveness as I rock in the porch chair, letting its strength hold me up when my own wavers.
Life feels like it’s in first gear right now. I’m moving slow. Low expectations. Case in point: I’m still in my pajama bottoms. Business on top, party on the bottom. One client even complimented my polo shirt, asking if I was heading to a golf tournament. Then, with the next client, I had to stand up to close a cracked door—and that’s when my pajama pants made their grand appearance. I laughed and admitted, “You were only supposed to gett business-me from the waist up.”
It’s hard to name this feeling. It’s not nothing—I’m not empty—but whatever usually anchors me feels absent. I’m a shell. Like the blackened guts of the egg I cracked open earlier today. Out of all the eggs the chickens have given us in the past few months, none have been bad. But that one? The smell was so rancid it made me gag.
Grounding, like the tree, is what I need. And yet it feels just out of reach. Inches away. Some days I wonder if I’m getting closer—or if I’ve slipped further down the cliff’s edge, past the point of return.
Two nights ago, I woke from a nightmare. I’d blacked out, cheated on Dave, and was falling down the rabbit hole, trying to make sense of a world flipped into the upside down. Even after waking and replaying the dream scene by scene, my body reacted as if it had really happened.
And in a way, it had. Not exactly as the dream dictated, but I know what it’s like to lose time, alter my consciousness, and make choices that wreck my life. Most days I feel far removed from that version of me—until blammo, it’s right there in my face. I panic. Then I calm myself, the way you would a child after a bad dream.
You’re not there anymore, I whisper.
And I only partly believe it. Because it feels so real.
But then I look at the oak tree again. Even now, while its leaves are sickly and dropping, its roots are still deep. Its trunk still solid. It has survived storms and droughts and seasons that tried to hollow it out.
Maybe that’s the reminder: we can lose leaves and still live. We can look bare and still be strong.
So I breathe, letting the tree hold me steady for just a little longer. I’m not there anymore. I repeat it, not as a question this time, but as a fact.
And for the first time today, I believe it.
Love, Jaclynn
Going On 40 