face rock

Silence.

Alone, I sit in the living room.

I feel that the room is silent.

 It is night. The lawn care people are home with their families. The TV is off. The kids are asleep after a day of conversation and school and eating and TV and music from their computers. No beeping from the microwave or oven telling me the food is done and I must stop what I am doing to tend to it. The water is not running thru the pipes to feed the showers or sinks creating anxiety that someone is wasting water. No anticipation of a phone ringing. Even the refrigerator motor has stopped.

Ah, sweet silence.

But is it really silent? I find there is never really silence. There is the sound of my heartbeat. The sound of my breath entering and leaving thru my nostrils. The sound of the slight hum of the computer. The sound of my fingers pushing on the keys for each letter I type. The gentle moan as I release a deep breath or slight sigh to catch up on my oxygen needs from shallow breathing. Breathing shallow is my way of trying to blend in with the silence.

When I go really deep in my psyche with this, I believe I am breathing this shallow breath as if waiting for something to strike. Like an animal, I am trying to become invisible so no one will notice I am sitting here. Or maybe I am feeling I have to move ever so slight as to not disrupt the moment, when in reality, holding back the breath is really postponing the moment. The moment of what might be as if it is so uncertain that I don’t allow it to rise from inside. I keep it down by slowing the breath. Sometimes I slow my breathing because I feel I might miss something. I might not hear it if I space out and breath deeply. I subconsciously relate deep breath with the letting go I experience in yoga or meditation. I don’t want to always let go. Sometimes I just want to hold on. Hold on to everything. Hold on to life. Hold onto living my life, as I know it now. I don’t want to loose anyone. I don’t want to feel the pain of another’s suffering. I know at any moment someone could call me with devastating news and my whole world would collapse.

I feel as though my world is built with playing cards. I have chosen bicycle brand playing cards, the best brand I know of. I have meticulously stacked these cards one by one, higher and higher they are stacked, each card representing pieces of my life. They seem to hold very well but I never know which card will tremble under the weight and fall causing the whole thing to fall. This is how I feel devastating news would affect me.

I want to be in this moment when everyone is healthy. I think, how can this be? How can those I hold dearly all be ok? How long can I hold on to this good fortune. The world is full of suffering; full of hunger and pain; full of people being killed in the name of God or Allah or their gang or their passion or greed. There are those that get sick first then die or die instantly from an accident or a body part malfunctioning. Yes there is depression in my family and alcoholism. There is the common cold and arthritis and pinched nerves and scoliosis. These I can deal with. These I can breath deeply too. These I can meditate with. But it is the more serious stuff, the heart wrenching stuff that would knock that card loose.

I have felt crying so intensely that I thought I would stop breathing. My heart hurt so badly that I gasp for air. This I could handle. But I am certain that it is all just a warm up, just the lead to the really deep stuff. I don’t think I can handle the loss of a child. I think about it just a little and cry. I am only thinking. I feel if I allow the thought to come just a little I will be more prepared if anything ever does happens, I will somehow be able to handle it better, so I allow the thoughts to come. The problem is that as soon as the thoughts come I cannot handle them. I break down and cry. I run to the bathroom and sob. The bathroom is the one place I know I can be alone. There are not many times I am truly alone, with all my kids near me over the years. So the bathroom is where I run to when I need to cry. Sometimes I will start sobbing while driving but it doesn’t last because something will demand my attention: a stoplight or a bicyclist. I also cry in my sleep.  I have woken up many a times sobbing from a dream of a child dying or a dream of one of them being taken away from me. I absolutely freak out at the thought of someone trying to take my children from me. It takes hours to calm me down.

I find when I am really tired I am much more vulnerable. I cry easier. It is a release I welcome. The problem with this is sometimes I am so tired I can’t stop the crying, I think I am all done releasing what I was holding onto but I continue crying. Then the crying is just annoying.

My favorite is when I cry myself to sleep. Crying myself to sleep brings on some of the most relaxing sleeps I have ever had. There is no holding back breathing when you cry. The breath comes in great gulps. It helps to balance the times I try to control everything with my breathing by unconsciously shallow breathing. Life cannot be controlled. Sooner or later the universe lets you know this and the damn of tears release. If the tears are held back a less desirable release may occur; possibly uncontrolled shaking, seizers, severe headaches or other pain, even worse, diseases like cancer. The list is very long.

Laughter is another form of release. It has been proven that people in hospitals heal faster when they laugh. Have you ever heard people laughing hysterically but had no idea why? Did you notice you start laughing too. It is contagious. This is my preferred method of release.

All this laughing and crying still does not solve my fear of the really deep stuff like the loss of a child or the possibility that one of my loved ones will be abused or tortured in some form. Thankfully these thought do not surface that often. Days and months go by with the absence of these thoughts. It is when I hear of it happening to another that it surfaces. With all the news and TV shows, and the magazines, it is difficult not to hear of a gruesome story now and then. When I hear these stories it brings me back to my family. I never have felt and never will feel I would be able to handle this. This I must accept. This I must understand; that I will never be able to bear that kind of pain and pray that life will grant me some great mercy and never, ever deal me that card. For that card would surely bring down the entire deck, twisting the cards in such a way that I would never be able to stack them again.

Still I breathe shallow so no card is disrupted, no card can be moved from this magical place that is holding it all together.

Once again I am trying to control even this moment, this moment of silence. I can analyze why I do it. I can be clear with myself about all the reason to do it. But what I cannot do is have power over the moment, the moment is shifting continually, it is eternally changing and when it transforms it ask no one permission about the outcome of that change. No one can control a moment. The most you can do is flow along with the moment or hold onto a rock with all your might until the current of that moment forces you along. Either way you will move along the river called life.

I decide to let go and trust. Tonight it is a conscious decision. I am hoping it becomes a subconscious reaction in the future. I decide to take a really deep breath and release it, the sound of the breath filling the room, gently tossing silence aside, happily anticipating the ride.