Dissolving Waters

OPINION COLUMN #28

All my life I have felt like a fizzy tablet in a world which felt like an outbursting waterfall.

The question was not was I going to dissolve but when and how many times.

I am sure I have dissolved every other time. But the thought of it, the fear of it, was stronger and it felt like it.

I was so scared I restrained. I was so scared my skin had become a leather thick as an elephant.

Yet, it was not enough. I felt like every challenge made my ground collapse. I was losing my balance.

And it also worked the other way around. The only thing giving me strength was a person, an object, a project, a situation. Therefore, without the person, the object, the project, the situation, I didn’t exist anymore. I was nothing and nobody.

It was only ideas in the end. Figment of my imagination. Gathered to respond one only mental construction, one only personal mythology. In my case, I was doomed to great sorrows, utterly unable to be happy. Because of conditional and deserving love I was raised with. I didn’t deserve to get what I hope and dream, I then collected experiences, even tiny, proving me I was right.

I realized this narrative wasn’t working anymore after a trivial inconvenience: a flat tire. It was raining cats and dogs, I was already late, with both my broken ankle and heart; yet, in front of my flat tire, I shrugged without a tear and got my car jack. In other times, this trivial inconvenience would have unleashed sobs (that day, only the sky was weeping) and a confirmation of my wrecked legend: I was doomed to be unhappy for my entire life, I didn’t deserve better!

I only needed a rainstorm, a delay, a broken ankle and heart and a flat tire to understand my narrative had changed. I was not that fizzy. Maybe I actually never was! It was a sad story I told myself to put me to sleep…

All my life I have felt like a fizzy tablet in a world which felt like an outbursting waterfall.

The question was not was I going to dissolve but when and how many times.

But now, I have changed my substance.

My strength doesn’t depend on a person, an object, a project, a situation, an idea. I have found my own balance. I can choose the person, the object, the project, the situation, the idea, to walk along the way with.

Without thinking the person, the object, the project, the situation, the idea will define me.

Without believing I need the person, the object, the project, the situation, the idea, to emboy myself.

I am my own home. My body is my only shelter.

And every life moment is looked at differently. Not as a consequence of my misbehavior.

Of all the sorrows I shall deserve.

Every life moment gathers to tell a new story. To rewrite my personal mythology.

All my life I have felt like a fizzy tablet in a world which felt like an outbursting waterfall.

But now I have turned into a capsule of medecine and I never go out without my umbrella: I don’t need to avoid nor my elephant’s skin anymore.

I am free and light under the life storm heat!