Pressing Against My Skin - Moments Far Apart and Near Again
Tuesday, June 7, 2005 at 06:27PM
Jen
Today, my life feels alien. Sitting blank at that impersonal desk and wondering where this is to go: I can't quite grasp the day of the week; I don't remember driving to work this morning; I remember the feelings and the fears and the details in sharp stark perfection of this mornings' dream about Matt; I don't remember where my wallet is or, abruptly, the reasons to speak - I don't see that there is anything I need to say, there is nothing outside of everything inside of me and I can't begin to tell you how it survives.

In this moment the shape of my life seems unfamiliar. Wrong.

There is no reason for this. If reasons must be made, and being made, make sense of this sudden shape then there are bright blue flashes of fear that too many things were said, that far too much was left out. Shouldn't have been. Couldn't have been. Might have been missed. Myriad reminders, floods of understanding and looking backs in confusion. Past and present. Then and now.

Unconsidered, unthinking and imprudent I have always been - all the while holding aloft a shroud of honesty and ducking behind a sparkling shield of disclosure to deflect and distract those who wish to know me. To love me. To understand me. Finding, losing, believing it's all a lie, believing that nothing could be more true.

Knowing, regardless, that I have never felt so met.

But all, yet all, when all I understand, ever, is that I am the only person I cannot change; that I am the only person I have a hope of changing; that I am the person I fear to be; that I am the person I yearn to be, already.

Some truths given are not always true beyond the minute or the moment or the breath it takes to fuel them. Truth given freely is a far different animal than the truths we seek for our own knowledge.

Wanting to be understood, sometimes I blame you for not knowing which truths are transient and which truths are enduring and timeless. I blame you for not caring enough about the truth. I blame me for not being good enough to make you want to. I blame my inadequacy. I blame your lack.

On this day, the only truth I have to give the world are these three things...

There is a joy that rides, whispering in my ear, wrapped cozy around my shoulders like a tender shawl.

There is fear like a ferret - long and sleek and utterly incapable of rest - deep in my belly it digs and bites through all I know of my world.

And all in me, once and still; something dark and immense, like a shadow passing below me in the deep water; the anarchy of my body and the hot happy sex; the sound of doors opening and then wavering in the in-between world, swinging closed, searching for their balance point.

Article originally appeared on if you're not a penguin...shut it (http://www.airbornepathojen.com/).
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