Two days ago I woke up at four in the morning, somewhere between a night terror and a panic attack. I’ve been sleeping badly lately. I’ve been feeling powerless and hopeless and so so angry about it. When I woke up at four in the morning, I heard an inner voice speaking to me with clarity that it can only have in such ungodly hour. It said “You can’t have an existential crisis. You can’t fall apart.” Ok, I replied, I won’t.

But it’s easier said than done. My last existential crisis happened this morning at a work meeting. I am one of these animals that tries to look bigger when it feels unsafe. I speak too much, I debate, I try to be heard, my voice goes into a high pitch. I hate myself afterwards. As I was busy hating myself with a post-meeting hate, I saw this poem in my emails. An immediate answer.

I went to a pharmacy around noon. As I was walking back, it was cloudy but not raining, there was a sudden light, a crackle of electricity and then a very loud bang – a lightning just there. I ducked and screamed before I realised what I was doing.

I had an introduction call with a coach today. I love the idea of getting a coach, although I do not feel important enough to have one. There was a framed painting on a shelf behind the coach: a blue surface of a public pool, as if seen from above, with people swimming in it. I kept thinking: how can it be? I’ve been obsessed with an idea to draw a public pool from above for months, but never got to it. How can the picture that’s been living in my head all this time find itself in this woman’s living space. It felt surreal, but everything today feels surreal. Like a portal to somewhere, but where to?

When my day ended, I biked to the public pool. I’ve only swam for about ten minutes or so in that poignantly blue water, when there was a thunder and we had to leave the pool. On my way back I felt no frustration- how unusual for me. I realized that even ten minutes in water were enough to wash away whatever I needed to wash myself off.

Then in the evening Tatiana wrote that tonight was a full moon and an eclipse and somehow it all fell into place: the water, the portals, the feeling that something is happening just beyond my reach – the universe is rearranging itself for whatever comes next.