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Ocean, Knocking
As you open that door…
you don’t know that there is
an ocean behind it
If you had to choose between feeling nothing and feeling everything, would you succumb to the flood? What if what you felt was more than most—if your body and mind becomes a single ravaged nerve for every throb of the world? When something scrapes the very soul of you, it does not bleed—it sobs, endlessly, until you forget what silence felt like. And a person like me avoids—craves—the numbness, the quiet.
You try to be a small stream. Gentle. Contained. But the water always remembers its source. Before long, you’re a river cutting through your own heartbeat. And then—an ocean. No warning. Just electrically charged emotion, crashing against your chest, spilling out of your eyes, filling your mouth with salt and confession.
And the only way to diminish it all is that you learn to shrink. To hold your breath longer each time. To become the shoreline. To diminish all the feelings… all the mess that washes up on the sand. To diminish yourself, deny yourself….
You tell yourself that less feeling means less breaking. But really, you are just boarding up the cracks, while the storm brews inside.
And still, there are those who knock gently at the door—asking for small talk, asking if you’re okay, not realizing there’s an entire sea pushing against the frame.
Copyright ©
Laura Breidenthal
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