Giving in to the thaw
26 October 2011 03:16 PM Categories: The struggle
What of a prompt that no one but myself will read? Why do I always have to feel so contained, my contents spilling out, my emotions partially submerged, the bulk of them under water while my exposed self, blue with cold, frozen in place, glides past you without a sideways glance? Meanwhile, under the surface the rest of me melts. Sometimes it disappears as though it never lived, to be taken up by some other frozen being floating in the thick, cold water.
This morning, after the workout (boring, but I like feeling strong), I laid on the floor and cried. And then berated myself for crying (you know, not wanting to give in to my emotionality, my excess, the melt) and then I thought: this is shedding the excess, letting go of the overflow. This isn’t sadness or wallowing: this is me. I feel. To feel isn’t a crime. To be able to give voice to what is real is a gift.
Reawakening is confusing, the muddle and hodgepodge of mixed emotions, the recognition of what I have hidden from myself. To reawaken while also keeping my faults in mind, my me-centered fantasies, my needs that I want to cover over again so quickly with something, someone, but it’s only me here, waving at myself – it’s hard, this stuff, but hard in a good way, like the 25th push-up or going to the party that you wanted to avoid.
So my sentences are fraught and too long. My emotions are real and inconvenient and my metaphors mixed. I still feel like I am waiting for the rest of life to begin, but in reality I am preparing for the journey, reading the books, writing the rest out, thinking of a day when I am no longer isolated, when I will have colleagues and conversation and (please!) arguments about truth and what is real, about how best to handle the slipperiness of life.
Climb e’vry mountain, I say, in the way that works best for you. Accept the fact that there is no normal, that we all muddle along, and the only thing we can really do is try for authenticity, for being true to ourselves, while holding a hand out to the people behind us, the ones who aren't quite there yet.
My time as a member of this Round Robin go-round was short (someone else dropped out, so the numbers evened out), but I still have this week's prompts and I will substitute from time to time, so I may toss one or two up here in between studying and other writing and making sugar skulls and finishing the boy's Halloween costume. This prompt was "Something square." I went from a box to an iceberg to a puddle.
Image by Maria & Enrique of a forest near Onelli Bay (with iceberg) in Patagonia, Argentina.
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