Tap, Tap, Tap In.

There comes a point in life where subconsciously you truly don’t give a fuck anymore.

I coined it as a spiritual “tap out” – a moment when the soul leaves the body and you’re merely a vessel existing without awareness.

Spiritual tap outs can be temporary; a few minutes to a few hours. Or they can last days, weeks, even years.

I recognized them as moments of violence, usually toward myself or others. Why violence? When trauma occurs, the brain goes into flight or flight mode instantly burying it in the body, not giving your consciousness the moment it needs to process the information at hand. It is only later on when something triggers the memory that the trauma explodes out of you. At that time hopefully one would seek professional help. Without it, the trauma manifests into PTSD. In my case, it was violence, both physical and mental. You get the jist of my root trauma?

My first tap out, unfortunately, lasted a few years. I’m not sure exactly what woke me out of it as I had an abundance of “awakenings.” It wasn’t shattering my hand blacked out, or my older sister deathly afraid of me overdosing, it might have been when I gave my twin sister a black eye, or was it when my ex-boyfriend tried to kill me in the middle of the night? These are just some instances, to name a few, but for some reason, I was unable to shake my tap out. I lived in it. It became my stasis. I’m not going to write off ages 15 to 23 and say that I didn’t have extraordinary times. I did. I accomplished a lot in those eight years while simultaneously being in constant pain as well.

I’ve been to therapy, I’ve done countless meditations, I got sober for six years. Sometimes I feel that burn from the past. But now, I get to “tap in.”

When I was 24 and already a few months sober, it was the clearest I had been in some time. Not only did I feel so weird and awkward all the time from what seemed like a lifetime of socializing with alcohol, I also felt like an innocent kid again, discovering oneself with such innocence, and new purpose. Those few months of fresh sobriety were magic.

And then, all at once, the pain of the past came rushing in. (More on this can be found in my story, “Awaken.”)

I experienced my “tap in.”

I felt like my soul came back into my body, screaming, trying to claw its way out. It wanted nothing to do with my body; it was much happier being set free, watching from overhead. I felt like this for quite some time. During this, I lost a boyfriend because I was emotionally inept to withstand a relationship with another at the time. I could barely keep myself together. I stopped talking to a lot of friends because I felt I would have been a burden. It also seemed that my family started to tear away from me again. The only thing I had was therapy, work, and dance.

At work, I got to leave my problems at the door and talk with all the hotel guests and employees about their grandiose work adventures and dreams. It inspired me to have them, grandiose adventures and dreams, too one day.

At therapy, I sank deep into my subconscious to scrape out the parts that no longer served me, gave them my love, and put the puzzle back together.

At dance, even though sometimes I felt the most self-conscious, when we could finally perform the piece taught, I would let go. I would let everything go. It was the place I felt both at peace and fiercely competitive as hell.

All of these spaces included my new found friends, and the three that I kept from my early days contributed to keeping my soul at bay.

If I experience a tap out now, it will only last a short few minutes, because my soul knows that it’s safe in here now. We’ve done the work together and we have much more to do.

For now, I'll keep taking hits of this “tap in” shit, whenever I can. Whether I’m at a club and the music and the lighting is so synonymously beautiful as I’m eyeing that cute boy in the glasses who’s looking back at me, or when I’m in nature hearing nothing but wind and leaves, thinking of nothing but the stars and the planets; or when I see a fucking rainbow on my twin sister’s wedding day and take it in deep into my heart’s container to never forget the sight.

Shit – I experienced one today walking to the gym this morning and just seeing a beautiful reflection of one building onto another and thought, “Architecture, am I right!?”

Whenever you want, you can tap in.

And if it’s hard at first, know that it will truly get better.