Thursday, October 15, 2009

Burning

I've been running a low-grade fever for a week now.

I have no other symptoms except for the general achy crankiness that fever brings, along with exhaustion. A low-grade fever for someone who generally has a low body temperature means that doctors and nurses tend to sneer at claims of feeling bad, because even with a low-grade fever, my temperature is about 98.6 degrees. So, no doctor's note. No time off work (as if I could afford it). Just waking up exhausted, coming home from work schwacked, nap, wake up, maybe eat, feed and walk my dog, and then listlessly hang around my house.

In the absence of other physical symptoms, I have determined that there must be something else my body is doing or saying through this. It could just be my body telling me to sit down and simply relax, something which, a friend pointed out to me recently, is something I'm really bad at. I'm not good at seeking the still point. I do tend to run around and try to fix the things I think are causing this, rather than being patient with the situation - and myself - and letting it all fall into place.

My life went in the blender two or three months ago, throwing me into an existential crisis about where my path in life really is, and what I'm supposed to be doing in this world. People I thought I could depend on are gone, just like that. Emotional ties (mainly to clients) that did feed my soul have been cut, often without closure. I have asked God this whole time what He wants from me, why He has ripped so much from me right now. I can't take much more. It's these pieces I'm trying to put back together, but I might have lost the glue.

I have been trying, through whatever means possible, to just shut it off. If there was a piece of my heart that I could cut out to help me lock down this vortex, it would have been gone by now. But there is no such thing. (Believe me, I have prayed for this for two months now. It's still there.) I used to have such disdain for people who had shut down like this. I couldn't imagine wanting to stop feeling. That's the whole problem with our culture, isn't it? We feel lightly, if we choose to feel at all. We deaden our emotions until they are comfortable for ourselves and others, until our joy and laughter no longer threatens another's quiet, until our pain just gets channeled into angry music, until our love no longer generates fear, until our grief fades away into numbness.

Sometimes, I really want that numbness. I want that dumbed down version of me. Tanya 2.0 - less scary, less intense, less angry, less grief-stricken, less loving, less joyful, just...even.

Instead I have this inexplicable fever. The intensity and heat will come out one way or another. So I asked myself last night, what burns in me? What burns in me that hasn't come out through my writing thus far? What burns in me that has no other expression than to slowly simmer my body until I collapse each night?

I am alive and intense and real and dancing and feeling so deeply that I wonder if I really have a place in this world. And something in me cries for expression but I don't know what.

2 comments:

  1. Tanya, I know you wrote this in October, but I've just now read it. I wanted to comment, but don't know what to say... It seems odd to say it's well-written (even though it IS, incredibly). I guess I'll just say it's right on the money... I've felt some of these things before, if not all of them, and reading this entry gave me a sense of peace somehow, especially after having just gotten over a terrible fever. ;-) Hope to see you soon.

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  2. Lovely Tara, I just read your comment. LOL! Thank you. Thank you for the gift and beauty of your friendship, and thank you for the support your give me just by being so wonderfully you.

    Must. Hike. Soon! :~)

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