the grip

I wish you could feel how tightly this grip is wound around my soul,
it cuts off all the oxygen that lights the candle flickering in my heart.
I pause and look and twist my way to try to loosen it.
I squirm and yell and curse and it never unravels, but I do.
I begin slowly like a single thread from your sweater that gets caught on a branch as you leisurely stroll by. You pull it, quickly, trying to remove it before further damage is done but you aren’t quick enough. It begins to unravel, more and more with each attempt at stopping it… it unravels until there is a hole — one that is visible to everyone who walks by. They try to pretend to not look, to time their glance with the movement of your eyes so you don’t catch them.
But you do.
You see them peering at the hole that started so small but now shows the world your fleshy skin underneath.
And it all started with that grip.
The one I placed on myself to try to snuff out all the worth that others could see because I didn’t want anyone to see. I wanted to be invisible, to slip under the wave and never be seen… I wanted to meld into the crowd of ordinary people gathered at the ordinary coffee shop to talk about their ordinary lives because no one pays attention to them. Everyone walks right past all those ordinary humans on their way to some other place. The place everyone wishes they were.
I wonder how tightly the grip has them.
I wonder if they smile so no one sees the unraveling.
I wonder if they laugh so no one hears the distant scream.
I wonder if they squirm when no one is looking.
That grip.
So tightly it holds.
The bruising can not be concealed.
and then…
I stop.
My movement.
My breath.
My anger.
My fear.
I breathe — deep, slow, deliberate.
I will every ounce of life into my lungs till I can hold no more.
I am filled with the life that I am claiming. It is mine, unmistakably mine.
and then…
I exhale.
Slow.
Calm.
Steady.
Peaceful.
That grip.
The steady stream of pain subsides in that instant I decided to not notice because noticing only gives it the power it never deserved. I stopped squirming and fighting and reviewing the repeating scenes — I stopped waiting for a change… I am becoming, I am becoming.
The grip is there…
always there, attempting to enforce its power over me when it knows I am barely breathing and trying to be small and searching for answers that don’t exist and wishing I was invisible.
But I am not invisible.
I am alive, still.
… the grip, it loosens.

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