Black Balloon
You're hiding in your skin. What to say to this? Who to say it to? You're hiding in your skin and you know it. Your skin is a latex covering stretched thin – a balloon blown and blown and blown up. Stretched thin, about to pop, about to peel back. About to scare the hell out of you when you can't take anymore.
No more breathing into me. No more of this healing air. I can't take anymore nor do I want anymore. On your knees, on your back, this feels unfamiliar. I know I'm a writer and I'm just out of practice, but there's an unfamiliar threat of connection thing too, and I'm . . . am I anxious? Maybe, but less so than I might expect. Why do I keep thinking that: on your knees and on your back?
They're both supplication signs to the Universe, aren't they?
That don't make me quite so mad anymore.
Who am I if I'm not traumatized and angry?
What do I look like happy?
I suppose I do still recognize myself in that right now, happiness looks like a pin through a balloon. Baby's black balloon. What is wrong with me? Well? When your body is an empty tank, what do you expect it to say? What do you want it to do? When all sides of your skin are glass, what do you want to hold up and let people see? With what will you define yourself and do you have to care if no one outside of you cares?
You're hiding in your skin, but I don't really think that's it, Jennifer. You're just afraid of letting this armor of trauma, pain and anger fall away, because you remember how it felt the last time you moved through the world and thought you were happy. And thought you were safe.
I never thought any part of me would be open to supplication of any kind, ever again. Roll that coating down? Take it off? Let that skin split off you and fall away? That's on your knees, on your back to the Universe. An unnerving acquiescence. That's a seed splitting open so it can bloom. An act of faith more than will. But then, think about what happens with flowers.
This came out when I gave my body a voice inside Body Writers, my somatic writing and healing circle. Learn to give your body a voice here.
