I had been with her for many years; about thirty odd I think. I had abided her company more than I had abided anyone else’s but I often wanted to run away from being whole with her.
I would do anything to run away from her bland existence; headlong into the glitz and glamour; swooning at the feet of demigods and throwing money at the gold that didn’t glitter.
Other people drained her but she didn’t drain herself. She often told herself she lived in a small world away from everyone else. It was like being on a satellite; like being the man on the moon; watching the world, sometimes shining a mellow brightness onto it. She felt a strange feeling of disconnection yet integration at the same time.
The world was too noisy and loud: people were too crass, complex or downright dark. It was a demanding existence. Tuning out was much more bearable but it pulled on the heartstrings. She wanted to blend into another or into Other; to lose the anomie and to be a she of no Me.
She felt more whole with people or when she was in the woods, by the sea or in a music concert. It was as if being in her own body in her own self was prohibited: that her own body was somehow a signal to her that she ended where it began, that it was finite and limited – boundaried and bordered.
The signal disappeared when she was with others – when there was hope that she started where they began, that her existence and theirs played around at the edges of the space between their bodies, creating a whole being called a ‘We’ . A ‘We’ was special, lyrical, creative and powerful.
An ‘I’ was not.
Or so the story said.
When she felt that she was going to be an ‘I’ her mind told her that she was powerless, lonely and lacking in potential. She didn’t feel romance, magic or laughter. She felt loneliness and apathy.
Or so she thought.
She turned on the radio. A tune came on. It was the Lambada. She clicked her heels and moved her hips. The music was the Lead and it swayed her. She succumbed as the Follow. In her own company she dazzled but no-one had to receive her light; she was her own energy and had the capacity to dazzle regardless.
The song stopped. She laughed uncontrollably. She didn’t need company to light her up.
She was the creator of her own dance and she let her music play on.
Copyright Fizzy Wisdom 2019
This is some prose I wrote about the battle that we have with the shadow sides of ourselves. Learning to live with the darker parts of myself reminds me of learning to live with our household spiders, which for some of us is often a step too far!
