Bursting at the Seams

I got up this morning feeling rather empty but by mid-day I felt like I was about to burst at the seams. Have you ever felt that way? Like there’s so much going on inside that if someone should happen to bump into you it will all come spilling out like when you slice open a fish’s belly? That’s how I’ve felt all day, full to the brim and like a helium balloon floating somewhere up high unable to keep my feet on the ground. There’s been so much stuff swirling around inside that I’ve been walking around in some kind of dazed stupor feeling as vulnerable as a new born kitten.

It all started when I was sitting at the kitchen table sipping on my morning tea, writing in my journal and reading bits and pieces from a book on writing. Some of the author’s words, many of which I quoted in my journal, were jumping off the page at me. Reeling me home and helping me connect to the deeper aspects of myself. One of these quotes was, “To write is, above all else, to construct a self.” “Yes”, I thought. For the past 26 years, in the many journals I’ve filled, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing, uncovering, discovering, and constructing a self. There are days when I feel it’s a self I’ve come to know, rely on and love and there are other days I still wonder who and what I’ll be when I grow up.

So that’s how my day started and while I was still reeling from the effects of what I had read and meditated on in my early morning hours I attended Sunday service at the Center for Spiritual Living and that did me in! Dr. Ken’s talk hit me right smack in the center of my already contemplative full heart and from then on I was spilling over.

Something in me was touched and I was sitting in a place that was hard to describe. I felt delicate, vulnerable yet alive and full of life like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon unsure how to fly or where to go. Part of me felt validated in what I believe, who I am, what I live, what I often try to express, to follow, to do and sometimes succeed and other times shrink away from.

All day I couldn’t name it. Couldn’t write about it. Still can’t. I’m floundering with inadequate words unable to express what happened or why, what touched me so deeply and moved me to tears I could not control. It was just strange.

The words “In-Spirit” how I sign my emails come to mind with no further explanation than that. Just a sense of truth, of authenticity, of standing in the light, perhaps my very own light. Feeling exposed yet so very warm inside. And as I write these words right now, this same feeling encompasses me, leaves me once more wondering, what is this stuff I’m writing, and this feeling which leaves me feeling like I’m literally bursting at the seams?