The Real Life Rambles
Dispatches From My So-Called Life: Where Awe and Overwhelm Collide
It’s been a while since I’ve written from the raw, winding rambles of my so-called life.
We’re traveling right now — and truth be told, travel is like being flung into a sensory hurricane for both of us.
My partner and I struggle with transitions — always have.
The packing, the pet sitters, the airports, the endless clatter of rental counters and Airbnbs — every piece of it tugs and pulls at our nervous systems until we feel frayed at the seams.
Airports are a special kind of claustrophobia — sardine cans hurtling through the sky.
(And for my poor 6'5" partner, it’s pure bodily cruelty.)
The first night in the Airbnb? Torture.
His tossing, my anxiety, the unfamiliar walls — it felt like my whole body forgot how to rest.
And yet...
there’s this silver thread winding through the chaos.
We’re here to visit his son, Alex — a bright, buoyant soul who feels like sunshine after a week of storms.
And then there’s the ocean.
Ah, the ocean.
The great expander of my chest, the original mother of my sensory seeking heart.
I went to college nearby, in Thousand Oaks.
Being back here is like opening a hidden door in my body — the smell of the salt air, the whip of the breeze, the vast, wordless YES of the ocean.
I was never a surfer — the waves had their own relationship with me, one of awe and humility.
Instead, I became the watcher, the wanderer, the girl with a Canon AE-1 camera slung around her neck, photographing the early morning surfers — barefoot and wild, chasing something I could only glimpse but never hold.
Yesterday, we hit the beach for the second time — just as a storm rolled in.
The wind screamed against my skin, sand clawed at my eyes, rain pelted my face.
We wrestled with the beach chairs, frustration mounting.
My body, my Autistic body, spiraling toward meltdown — so much sensory too-muchness, too fast.
And just when I thought I couldn’t hold it anymore —
I looked to my left.
A rainbow.
A perfect, defiant, unapologetic double rainbow stretched across the sky — every color sharp, vivid, shouting its existence into the storm.
We froze, slack-jawed.
We walked down the beach, found shelter by a crumbling basketball court, and just stood there, staring, hearts cracked wide open.
The paradox grinned back at me:
Life is both too much and breathtakingly beautiful.
Overwhelm and awe live side by side, twinned like rain and sun.
This is what my friend calls the Duality Paradox — and it lives in my bones.
The way exhaustion and wonder braid themselves together.
The way grief and gratitude kiss in the same breath.
And as if the universe wanted to underline the lesson, we watched Conclave the other night — a movie I can't recommend enough.
In it, Lawrence gives a monologue that wrapped itself around my heart and hasn’t let go:
“St. Paul said that God’s gift to the Church is its variety.
It is this variety, this diversity of people and views that gives our Church its strength.
In the course of a long life in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you that there is one sin I have come to fear above all others.
Certainty.
Certainty is the great enemy of unity.
Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.
Even Christ was not certain at the end.”
Those words rang through me like a bell.
Certainty is the enemy of unity.
Certainty is the enemy of wonder.
Certainty slams the door on rainbows.
The duality paradox is the antidote to certainty.
It’s standing in the storm, soaked and overwhelmed — and still finding yourself stunned by the miracle splitting the sky.
It’s knowing that truth isn’t tidy. It doesn’t live in binaries.
It lives in messy, feral, complicated beauty.
And when we let go of the desperate clutch for certainty, we make room for the mystery —
the messy middle —
the rainbows after the rain.
Follow @travelingalkaline on threads for more of the The Duality Paradox.