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August 19, 2003

Happy/Sad/Sweet/Sour II

What is this strange place where I currently reside? For the past few weeks, I’ve felt an emotional retreat. A crawling into one’s self, perhaps, into the bomb shelter of one’s own mind. It’s strange—I’ve always associated my mind as a particularly dangerous place to reside—but lately I’ve been pulling my thoughts and emotions into it the way a toddler drags a security blanket, grasping them tightly to my side, reluctant to be alone without them.

I don’t share well. I tend to hoard my feelings, my troubles, and stockpile them in some corner of my mind, some angle or curve of my body, tenaciously guarding them. At times, to lessen their presence, I’ve been known to minimize those curves and angles, as if the restricting of thought or reshaping of the physical could squeeze out the tangle of feelings…instead of just knotting them further.

I’ve done this for as long as I can remember. The ritual of thought is both comfort and demise.

So where do you turn when life begins to change and you feel, in a sudden rush of realization, that you might be growing out of your sacrament? It is a flash of pure panic, a pain indescribable to most. It is a clutching impulse, like a child holding tight to that blanket, arms rigid, intent on not letting go without a howling tantrum. It is excitement surrounding a new stage in life, bound only by the intrinsic response to crawl inward once more.

Do we ever truly change?

Posted by callalillie at August 19, 2003 10:15 AM |