Taut framework

28 May 2011 05:10 AM Categories: Writing prompts | The struggle

She’s constantly asking me how I’m feeling, to check in with my body. The feeling moves, but not far. It’s in the center of my chest, directly below my breastbone, in the middle of my torso. It’s a tight thin line or a heavy cable, the wires overlapping, twisting and turning, and no one can break that sucker, you just have to let it be until someone – something? – cranks the winch. That same feeling spreads out in my chest, it smothers my heart, or maybe my heart is the one emitting it, giving it off like some sort of sickly aura or distress signal, the only way that dumb organ can communicate. Anyway: the feeling moves.

So. The framework that I built to survive, the carefully constructed structure? I’m dismantling it. Rather violently it seems. I’ve got the claw end of a hammer, I’m not only pulling at nails, but I’m ripping at the plywood, at the 2x4s, at this 70s construction of formaldehyde-soaked particle board. The photographs on the inner walls are faded, I can barely see them, but I feel the heat emitting from them, the danger. Part of me wants to just burn down the framework, maybe I’ve even started a fire in the corner with the lighter my grandfather left behind and the tinder, too, the piles of magazines, the candy, the sawdust. It went out on its own, I discarded the metaphor, or rather I am right now discarding the metaphor, realizing that I am in control here. It doesn’t have to come down all at once and if I burn it down, I destroy not only a part of myself but my ability to access it.

But the feeling. I carry it around with me, we’re familiar with each other, the tension and me, my protection system. It asks me if I really want to go there and I say I don’t have a choice. Together we go to our appointments, we wake up in the middle of the night. The feeling informs my writing. And yesterday, the two of us lying supine on the couch at my therapist’s office, enjoying the stereotypical position (we usually sit), we went down a path in the woods and met the best part of me. She was tall and maternal and kind, pale with red hair, and she enveloped the two of us in her satin cloak while we cried.

I hate the weakness, the feelings I can’t put into a framework, the little girl so controlled and angry. I don't want to forget her, I don't want to dismantle her world. But I have no choice.

Still. It all scares the fuck out of me.

From the prompt "In the middle." This is the sort of overwrought stuff I would prefer not to post anymore. Not that I think it is poorly written, it's just personal and intense in a way that I am tired of sharing. But here it is, small group of readers.

I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. Unless I tell you otherwise, this is the original 12-minute prompt edited only for clarity and typos.

Image by Dave Anastasi.

Tags: writing prompt, blah blah blah, Round Robin, A prompt a day until the Round Robin goes away, I bore myself, childhood, control

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