To Breathe

It used to be that I wrote out of emotion. That something would happen; someone would do or say something that fueled a fire within me and a frustrated mess of feelings found its way to the page in some form or another. I used to love the rush of directing all of my mental energy, all of my emotional preoccupations into something creative. I started writing as a way of getting everything out. It was messy, don't get me wrong. It was filled with anger, filled with sadness, filled with resentment and regret. I hated feeling the way I felt, and at the end of it all I'd be emotionally exhausted, but restored.

As I grew I became less and less emotionally invested, less emotionally affected, less creative in some ways. Writing, thinking, feeling became a means of vulnerability that I wouldn't afford myself, and it slowly phased out as something instinctual. Now, I often find myself without strong emotional responses, if any at all. I don't know where this came from specifically, I suppose it was the result of an adolescence filled emotional experience, as if I've used up my supply of this powerful motivator and all that remains is the harsh exterior of logic and reason. I've come to identify this as my major struggle, the battle between what is known and what is felt. Though I inhabit a world of reason, and function therein quite comfortably, the moments when emotion bursts through feel like bursts of fresh air on a warm, stale day. It's tough, even now as I sit at this keyboard, acknowledging that much of my life is spent without really feeling.

I suppose this is where religion comes into my life, and makes things interesting. To me, God epitomizes the idea of existence as felt. While there will be an endless search for empirical proof of God, He'll never be found in the realm of what is known. He may cross over in the individual that reflects that they just know, but this is merely an expression of feeling, albeit a strong feeling. God, Jesus, the Spirit, these aspects of the ever-present creator aren't meant to be known, but felt. Jesus isn't in my heart, He's somewhere in my brain in those sections responsible for His detection where I feel something beyond myself.

For me, this is what life should feel like. I often feel like I'm simply counting the days until life occurs, waiting for something beyond what is to awaken me to something greater. It's not about heaven, deliverance, salvation, it's about feeling existence. When I used to write, I felt it. It hurt, it stung, it numbed, but it also felt amazing. It was something indescribable. Now I don't know if that's what God feels like, but it was a sensation of the greatest magnitude, one that brings you to tears over nothing, stopping all movement and sound around you, captivating your very existence. I long to live outside the constraints of my own consciousness, to escape the numbing grasp of logic and reason long enough to let life in.

Whenever I write, whenever I want to be transported beyond the constraints of my own thoughts, I listen to music. For me, music is the language of the soul. I strive to leave the mind behind, to write not thoughts but feelings, and music allows me to access that small part of myself. I don't know if I really do have this emotional side that's been crippled by life or if what I listen to elicits its own response external to my logical self, but I know that in these times I start to feel alive. I write to live, not to be read. It is breath for my soul. I spend my days gasping for something I cannot explain, for something I simply know, for something felt. In these times, I breathe in deeply, allowing each individual emotion to fill my lungs, swirling its affects around as they flow throughout my body. Then I exhale, unaware of when I'll take this deep breath again, but appreciative of the opportunity to feel alive.