by Elizabeth Reeves

Created on: August 11, 2008

If I were a tree, I would dig my roots deep in the soil, stretch back my head, and let the sunlight or rain, whatever the case may be, wash through me and make me whole.

I am not a tree.

I find myself lost in introspection more often than not, wondering at this puzzling mystery that is myself. Why am I who I am? I am lost in translation, even to myself, that unsolvable me.

I lie in bed, and my mind races, just trying to figure out that one, great, question. Who am I? What defines me? Is it what I do? What I wish I could do? How I behave? My life, or my dreams? They all contradict, so I cannot tell, what exactly the me is.

I can feel the blood trace through my veins, close my eyes and feel my heart beat, breathe deeply and listen to it slow, hold my breath and hear it protest. These are my fingers, stretching here. Here are my toes. My body is a familiar territory. I know all its faults. I look in the mirror without recognition. I cannot see the whole picture, I know the details all too well. I get lost in the kaleidoscope of broken images seeking to make up the whole.

The numbers, the name, the facts... they are not even part of who I am. There is something deeper, something at the core of me, that I can find when I dig deep. I know that that being is me.

I can only hold on for a moment, and then I am swept away in the waves of questioning. Words I've said, that should have been better spoken, feeling as if life is ebbing away without accomplishment. Despair sets in with the madness of a never-silent mind.

Perhaps the real problem is that I am too aware. Perhaps I should let go, let be, be passive, accepting that this is who I am.

But I cannot do it. I cannot find enough of what is me to stop the constant search. I am fascinated by my own perversity. How can one exist in such constant contradiction of purpose and reality?

I wonder what others see. I have been labeled many times and have, equally as many times, rejected them. Perhaps, if I could see through another's eyes for a moment, I would better understand the basis of who I am, the core reality, that others see as who I am.

I can follow each breath through my body. I can feel the workings of each muscle in turn, the fluid in my veins. Yet I cannot create a map of my soul, of the reality of the person within the body.

Perhaps they really do not mesh. Perhaps I am awkward within myself because I am nowhere near where I should be. My vivid dreams at times seem more real than life. Perhaps this is the dream, the chaos, the tangle I cannot sort out.

And, so, does introspection lead me down to madness.

Learn more about this author, Elizabeth Reeves.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.