Hold Your Own

I'm in this sweet funky mood because I've been listening to "Details in the Fabric" by Jason Mraz and James Morrison all day. Something about the song captures the beautiful reflective place in which I like to write. My brain is working twelve times faster and writing eight times more stories than normal, and it's all in the back, just sitting, cooking...

It's been months since I wrote anything I was proud of, but tonight, every thought I think feels like the deep inhalation of a breath... not just any breath, but that breath you take when you're inches away from a person you love deeply, drinking in--not the scent, as books always describe, but the moment, as if the longer you breathe in, the longer the moment will hold in your memory. I've never done drugs, never gotten high, never had a desire to... but I realise as I sit here that this feeling, this breath, is like that. I feel nothing and everything at the same time. I feel hopeful and quiet. I feel awake and still. I feel raw and paralysed. I feel like I want to breathe this in forever, because in this moment, I see clearly. I know differently than I've known.

Sometimes, these things aren't stories--at least, not traditionally. They are pictures--snapshots, just as much as any photograph I've ever taken--or portraits of an insight, a dream, or something more. They are images burned into my eyes, tattooed on my heart, imprinted on my soul. I did not put them there; they are a gift, but not for me, not always. Today, I don't know.

I see white feathers swirling up from the ground in a city full of busy people, making magic and seemingly freezing time for a perfect second... The crowds pause and look around... Where did they come from? For a moment, they are in a fairy tale, they are friends, or, better, family. They have dreams and not duties, faith and not fear. Where they once were enslaved to responsibility, they are now offered free salvation. The burdens they carry drop to their feet; they lift their hands and faces toward the sky, and they twirl, rejoicing in the glory of this frozen moment.

Then, in the space of a breath, from the start of one inhalation to the complete exhale of air, they drop their arms and eyes; they dust their burdens off and hoist them onto their backs, not noticing how their shoulders hunch as they carry a collection of hurts and wrongs... both those they've received, and those they've handed out. Where enchanted smiles had been, a flat line now reflects the holes in their souls. Faith fades; dreams die. They move on, pretending the feathers don't exist. They keep walking, brokenhearted, having experienced truth but without any understanding of what to do with it. They whisper to themselves, "Hold your own, know your name. Go your own way. Everything will be fine."

Oh, I know your pain! Hold your own... my mantra from childhood. You keep it locked in your chest until you feel like your insides will explode out into the open, like you'll be unable to keep still for a moment more. You think about what to do with it. You want to scream, shout, fall on the ground, you want to cry--yes, cry, heaven forbid! But instead, you close your eyes, you inhale deeply, you drop your eyes and your arms, you dig a deeper hole in your soul and bury it a little deeper this time. Exhaling, you open your eyes and tell yourself, "Everything will be fine."

But it's still in you...

I don't know if this is for you or for me. Maybe both. Tell me. Tell me if it's for you.
megan@megan-beth.com