The Cloud and The Tears

Photo: Dan Garver

What do we do with what we feel exactly? How does it impact one's life? My tango teacher is telling me he needs to feel what I feel when I am dancing. How can I unveil my feelings in a class? 

How can I let him know of the raw and unbearable feelings I have had lately. The intensity of the pain both physical and emotional? How could I bare it all in front of him? 

The books sit on my table on the right. A pile of words, teachings, theories. I think of TJ and what he represented in the short period of time that we experienced life together. I remember his words: my body is failing me. Little did he know that my body was also failing me. For different reasons. 

I avoid listening to music these days. I avoid pain. I avoid voices. Avoidance has been my strategy. The sky is my witness and partner of sorts. Way above me. Intangible. The dream of dreams. Where blood and tears mean nothing. White and blue mixing together in perfect harmony. 

Oh, the clouds I am in love with. Their dense beauty sprawling in the magic of flatness. Reflected in the water from the rain. In his eyes. His blue eyes. Pale eyes as if they were anemic. Maybe they were made of cement. Grainy, angry, cement eyes. Eyes with no soul [anymore]. Suffering can do that to you. Suffering can squeeze life out of you. 

Song: Cervo a Primavera by Ricardo Cocciante

If could go back in time – if I could rebuild- What would I rebuild?

Transform and relearn. The teacher was saying I had to do this and I had to do that. I haven’t been able to feel lately. It used to be so easy and so simple. I move my hand to my chest and I try to hold onto a broken heart. What for? 

The sunsets, the music, the kiss waiting to happen. He asked me to leave my brain at home. Little does he know that time and time again, I have looked at people and I have asked myself: how come it’s so easy for them? It’s so easy for them to have fun. I wish I could disconnect my brain from my heart. But my brain filters things I cannot control.

I am protecting myself, I suppose. I decided to close myself inside of my own shell. I have been refraining from talking and from having a social schedule, virtual or otherwise. Silence suits me better these days.  Silence is like a big cloud traveling in the sky. There’s peace here and yet, I feel like I am just trying to calm the storm.

Every set back pushes me down. How I respond to it also affects me. Learning and growing is such a painful process. One that leaves marks. A man left me and the impact that had on me still causes waves. I am not exactly sure why. It is not his absence that hurts me. But the past still haunts me. 

I am hungry for love and yet I choose not to love. Afraid that if I take that step, I will lose my pseudo balance and fall – again. But what’s balance and what is the exact risk involved in giving myself to someone again?

No answers. I still still, dropping my head to the side as if saying: does it matter? And what if nothing really matters? Then what?