My Mind is Not a Good Listener

My mind is not a good listener. When my insides fold in on themselves and pull very tight, my mind refuses to hear when I tell it to pretend it away. Sometimes I try to tell myself it is just hunger or, if I have just eaten, than it is just something I ate. Oftentimes, because I am an avid coffee drinker, I can remind myself of the normality of a racing heart on caffeine. I will tell my mind that if I concentrate on other things, eventually the sensation will go away. But my mind is not a good listener. It can be like a child who believes that they are obeying the rule of not peeking at their Christmas presents if they wrap them back up after they have already torn the paper off. If you have ever seen a child re-wrap a gift, you can imagine the lack of relief after trying to re-wrap my tightened chest. 

Also, if you have ever felt a child's hug around your waist, you may understand my tightened chest. Not just a hug, but a puzzle piece fitting in place. Not just a puzzle piece but the last piece that you'd scoured the floor in search of for half an hour and finally found it underneath the napkin on the table. That child fits in such a way that your arms, crossed at the wrist, hang perfectly over his back and you know that, if you could, you would convince those around you that you two were actually a package deal and that it would be impossible to remove him from you now that the puzzle glue has already dried. There, in that moment, you remain and try not to feel too much. You try your very best to turn off your emotions but how is that possible when you are now not only feeling your own but his also? And not just his but his people's, too. As your crossed arms hold him to you, you are also holding the weight of the people of Seguin and it hurts. But like that puzzle piece, it does not hurt in a way that doesn't belong. It hurts in a way that only feels natural to hurt. It is as if until this point, the heart had not fully felt its capacity. It is a release and yet the release is stuffed halfway out. In that moment it will not see the light of day because for it to be fully released will only open a gateway to a heart at full capacity and how could anyone explain such a thing? There are no words because the heart does not communicate through words, but through feelings and in that moment, it was as if it were screaming the air right out of the rib cage that contained it. And then, all of a sudden, as quickly as it happened, he let go. And he looked up at me. Our eyes met and a faint smile was formed on my face instead of a novel of words that I wished to say, but what good were words now and how would I ever know where to begin? We were now two separate entities, but that puzzle glue ripped a part of myself and left it with him. My tightened chest feels the pull of that part and my heart has only lowered its volume because it has gone hoarse from screaming. I still hear it though because my mind is not a good listener unless the one screaming is my heart.

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