The rot helped me to understand.

While reading Hval’s Paradise Rot, I reflected much on fungi growth. It creeps and consumes without bounds. It has a putrid aura that signifies the end. But of course, the fungi is alive too. Every end is a beginning. The disgusting nature of what it means to embody humanity is natural. Change is the only inevitable constant in biology and therefore fundamentally tethered to our DNA. 

Just like rot ought to happen eventually, so does someone leaving. 

And then someone coming. Then leaving again. 

Each time you will grieve and die and rot. Then the fungi come and consume you. 

The fungi finds you yummy; they love you! They find life in you. And then all of a sudden, like the inexplicable materialization of life on earth, you are born once again. 

I feel like I have been rotting this whole year. My pride and ego have been broken and reconstructed again and again, each time taking on a face that is unfamiliar to me.

I also feel more aligned than I have ever felt, which is a beautiful consequence of succumbing to the rot.

The orientation of the sky when I was born tell me that this is an important lesson in particular. I found my answer and it is this:

Let go and let rot.

I recently discovered my need to have others be awakened by love in order for them to love me.

A need to save them so that they can save themselves so that they can see me. It is an order of operations that has never ended in success.

But it is only when I let the rot consume me that I realize I do not need a magic word or a savior to be loved. And it is only then that I feel empowered to let go.