Tuesday Night

It was on Tuesday night that the thing in my chest finally moved. It had been sitting there for days, a tight aching knot of something that made me feel like crying, kept me from even thinking about next steps. It would climb into my throat and stick there in my craw, and my mouth would open and close and nothing would come out. I'd finally get a breath in and my head would be pounding, and it would drop back into my chest, the worst heartache I'd ever felt. I rocked myself back and forth, sobbing, as it climbed and sunk, climbed and sunk.

Finally I held it there, locked in my throat. I put my attention on it and massaged with my mind, gently squeezing and releasing. What is it, what is it I kept asking myself. What is this? What is it? And a word came floating up from out of the thick ache: sadness.

I breathed and kept my attention there. Sadness, I said to myself, and with a gelatinous pop it came up into my head. Pain, oh pain, oh throbbing pain ricochet in my skull. Still the attention, light attention, gently feeling. what is it? What is this? What are you?

Again a word came up from it, this time spreading into my left cheekbone, behind my right eye. Guilt, I/it said. and it throbbed alive, this guilt that is the left side of my face, reaching up into my cranium.

And as the guilt dissipated, a hard, hurtful nugget, a little plug of pain remained. It refused to move, refused to be anywhere, and I held my attention there. This little plug of thick rubber pain stuck in my skull, on the right side, just above my eye.

Exhaustion threatened to overtake me, but I stayed, my attention unthinking, squeezing and releasing this knot. It went slow, so slow up the inside curve of my skull, above my right eye. It stuck, dense and magnetic, the whole way. I stayed and stayed, what is it what is it what are you small one the smallest densest thickest slowest most hidden one what is it what is it

and with a crumbling, with a softening, I heard 'hurt'.

hurt, I said, and it throbbed gently. I throbbed, gently. Yes, just simple, pure hurt. I hurt, and this old young hurt was moved, was softened. It didn't dissipate upward, out of the top of my head, as I thought it might. Don't make me go, don't leave or push me away it asked. Just stay. So I stayed, I held that hurt as it softened and melted, and the pain began to drip and dissolve and distribute and release through the rest of my skull. I have had echoes of it since, but nothing quite as strong.

~ Goddard Embodiment Studies Magazine, 2008