A Story To Tell - Entry for The Writing Impact Challenge

People who know about my story, or parts of it, either label me as inhumanly strong or tend to tiptoe around me like I am something to frail to touch. Although for some reason even those without the vision of my past seem to project overly elated or twisted versions of myself, rendering me deformed masterpiece to their fancy.

Human interaction becomes laboured and uncomfortable. I watch them as they eagerly assess and dissect my strangeness. Their words plentiful, but mostly without substance, string endlessly like hollow pearls on a necklace. its weight is determined by their popularity within the tribe but never reflecting the actual worth of the mindless things they utter.

It is hard to not become desperate and thirsty for a drop of meaning in the desert of their company. Prolonged exposure leaves a chalky taste in mouth and the mind fills with cotton, it is but anaphylactic reaction to the missing pause button these people possess.

From the rim of my coffee cup I watch them, whisper incantation until their language becomes wordless sequence, mere vibration in the fabric of the universal music that creates our reality. What was before grating, becomes soothing rhythm like the train that used to pass by my uncles laboratory and I can finally breathe.

I smile as the known world melts, becomes invisible, bringing in focus realms underneath most barely reach in dreams. What people fail to grasp, what is seldom understood, is that words hold much more power then their obvious ability to harm or to heal.

We know that words written captivate in fiction and can provide ways to flee the confinements of our situations. History teaches us that education elevates societies and that the dissemination of knowledge can shift the tide of major events providing tools for lasting change.

The true power of " the word" is more hidden. It is not a coincidence that most religions link the creation of our universe with the spoken word. Words are the catalyst to manifestation, they turn thought into concept which then finds its materialisation.

It is pretty well accepted that besides the gift of opposable thumbs and the harnessing of fire, our ability to form and use complex speech gave us the great advantage that made us the dominant species. It is so incredibly sad to see how we as a race mostly squandered those gifts and have become menace when we could have become benefit to all.We fail, no we seem to refuse, to reach our full potential and it fills my heart with sorrow and ache.

Human greed and unwillingness for change and self responsibility often let the best intentions go up in smoke. Are we beyond help? It is hard not to lose faith and become despondent. This world and it’s norms often find me reeling in confusion and disgust.

So I retreat into silence, refuse to play the game. If possible recuperate in nature, wind in my face and dirt under my feet. Lay back in the fields and listen to bluebirds sing and fall into clear open sky. This gives me the purest joy, only bested by the feel of warm fur and cold noses of the furpeople who inhabit my home.

My illness has severely limited my ability to take refuge in the wild. To circumvent this obstacle, to find serenity in the fate I have been dealt, it is the mind that recreates places I remember or invent. Meditation becomes cloak of swan maiden that offers me passage to past and soars to the uncharted or unborn.

I envision the coolness of the woods next to my home in Berlin in summer, the tall growing trees giving shelter as shadow leaves make patterns on my skin. My George and Luna, still alive, running through the woods as the cats follow close behind. I run the olive groves of my childhood in the south of France, surrounded by fields filled with wildflowers and fluffy dandelions sending their progeny into the ever dancing breeze sent by an azure sea. I curate stylised memories and as I watch the collection grow my heart is schizophrenically both lighter and heavier for it.

People who know about my story, or parts of it, either label me as inhumanly strong or tend to tiptoe around me like I am something to frail to touch; but in truth I am more alien than you can imagine and yet more like you than you care to admit.