Holding It Together
I hold it together. That's what I do. I hold myself together so that I can get through day after day, and I hold it together when my body and soul scream that I should do otherwise. It is what I've done all my life. It is survival. Or maybe I've just perceived it to be survival, when in fact my holding it together becomes ultimately a suffocation.
In the past few days my holding it together has been tenuous, with unravelings, slow leaks, a dripping of emotion that I can't seem to stuff back inside. Today I was driving to pick up my son from childcare, and suddenly, making the left turn onto 10th Street, certain thoughts and images flash into my brain, a few words on a certain subject, and suddenly I am crying. It is not the time, however, not the place, and I've only two blocks in which to pull myself together and go forward. And that is what I do.
The other night I had a dream. I was in an apartment in New York City, an apartment that I wanted to live in, and had to go through some sort of interview process to do so. There was a panel of well-dressed, older white people and I was waiting to go onto a small stage for my interview. First, however, another woman came out, with her two children in tow. She looked nothing like me (she was black, I am white), but somehow I knew that the differences between us were few. Standing on the stage, she removed her clothes down to underwear and a bra, and launched into a monologue about her life, about ways that her body and being had been violated. I watched, a bit in horror, as the panel of oh-so-proper judges began to get agitated, and then angry. This was not the time or place, they said, for such behavior and outpourings. They hustled that woman and her children away with the self-satisfaction of the oh-so-proper people that they were.
I turned from the commotion and noticed an older man, not someone from the panel, lying on the floor and sobbing. Uncontrollably violent, heaving sobs wracking his body as he curled into himself on that worn, wooden floor. He, too, different from me and yet not so much. I woke up knowing that both that woman and that man live inside of me, representative, perhaps, of things I need to no longer hold together.
But I'm not sure I can do that, and when the emotion comes pressing from the inside I don't allow myself to go there. That's what I do. I hold it together.
In the past few days my holding it together has been tenuous, with unravelings, slow leaks, a dripping of emotion that I can't seem to stuff back inside. Today I was driving to pick up my son from childcare, and suddenly, making the left turn onto 10th Street, certain thoughts and images flash into my brain, a few words on a certain subject, and suddenly I am crying. It is not the time, however, not the place, and I've only two blocks in which to pull myself together and go forward. And that is what I do.
The other night I had a dream. I was in an apartment in New York City, an apartment that I wanted to live in, and had to go through some sort of interview process to do so. There was a panel of well-dressed, older white people and I was waiting to go onto a small stage for my interview. First, however, another woman came out, with her two children in tow. She looked nothing like me (she was black, I am white), but somehow I knew that the differences between us were few. Standing on the stage, she removed her clothes down to underwear and a bra, and launched into a monologue about her life, about ways that her body and being had been violated. I watched, a bit in horror, as the panel of oh-so-proper judges began to get agitated, and then angry. This was not the time or place, they said, for such behavior and outpourings. They hustled that woman and her children away with the self-satisfaction of the oh-so-proper people that they were.
I turned from the commotion and noticed an older man, not someone from the panel, lying on the floor and sobbing. Uncontrollably violent, heaving sobs wracking his body as he curled into himself on that worn, wooden floor. He, too, different from me and yet not so much. I woke up knowing that both that woman and that man live inside of me, representative, perhaps, of things I need to no longer hold together.
But I'm not sure I can do that, and when the emotion comes pressing from the inside I don't allow myself to go there. That's what I do. I hold it together.