When the ground disappears beneath me the meditation app tells me to accept the groundless nature of things. 

My anxiety has other ideas. 

The anxiety feels the falling, the gasping for air, the reaching for life.

My mind can wrap around groundlessness another day, but today I need the earth, I need solid ground. 

I email the monastery to see if they have any last-minute cancellations. They do. I go. Not because I’m Catholic or want to be, I go because everything there feels known. I know the bells will ring exactly five minutes before all seven prayers of the day and on the hour. The headstones and hikes will all be in the same places. The stale smell of the church, the lingering incense, the library books. I know the 3:10am bell will annoy me––I’ll roll over and fall back asleep. I know I’ll hate the food but eat it anyway, and am sure to find myself in the kitchen late at night looking for an extra package or two of graham crackers to take to my room. 

This known rhythm draws me in, it comforts me. It is a kind of ground when all else feels like falling. Walking into the church for compline, night prayer, I feel something in my body finally settle. The ground within me glances out of its hermit shell peering around for safety. 

What is known within me? I ask myself. What can I take home from this place, this encounter, this knowing amid all the unknown?

Is our only real ground groundlessness?

Is the only ground temporary ground?

“Do you trust yourself?” My therapist asks me weeks after the monastery. 

I pause and play around with telling myself I do. 

My chest puffs and a temporary courage flows through me. 

“The only real ground is knowing it’s all groundless,” I finally admit. 

Some kind of self-trust emerges, my anxiety can handle the groundlessness today.