Living and Feeling.

Slipping back into the gap again.
I'm alive when you're touching me,
alive when you're shoving me down.

It's that part of that song that brings my entire universe together. The few words vocally spoken on it's own level. It pieces me together. It tears apart everything.

All my life, I've had those moments where I was left wondering if I were living, hallucinating, or just blatently dreaming. Out of all the times I've had to ask that, it was when I was happy. I've never found myself perplexed when I'm sad or hurt.

It's been a year since these lyrics wrapped their hands around my throat. A year since so many things. So much hurt. So much feeling. So much living. To me these lyrics are exactly what is said. I am alive when I am hurt. I am alive when I am put down. I am alive when put in my place. Alive when I am everything to you (and, sometimes, nothing to myself).

A year ago, what I was to someone was more than what I was to my own self. What he was to me was a mirror to reflect the meanings I placed on a person. He reminded me I was something, and someone, and had the right to make (wrong) decisions. He reminded me of all the things I let slip from myself, and even what he relfected to me I could never grasp. I pushed everything I rejected onto him to get away from myself. That is not the whole story, as we all know.

When the end came, there I was, able to feel my own fingers tickling my hipbones. There I was, doing the unthinkable to myself, because I could feel. I could feel everything I hated and I let it bleed out. It left me and afterwards, everything was tinted with a dark amber, from smell to light to taste. I became the girl I didn't know and transformed with my own devices. I was left alone with myself and my own thoughts and my own love that had no where to go besides to my own heart. That is what we call healing. Healing is a scab of change that, with time and no picking, blends with your own skin and blesses you.

What no one tells you, ever, is that healing can sometimes hurt worse than the fall.

There have been instances since, where I've let myself be taken advantage of. Not let, but had no control of. Those months afterwards were the most pain-filled times, but the relief of tearing yourself open is that there will always be some change, some transformation. As painful as losing you was, I grew into myself, and taught myself a lot, because for once, I only had myself and my choices to make. I didn't have someone there telling me from right and wrong, and that is a true test of character. I did the right thing, knowing it could be one way or the other with you, and you took it into yourself. I was living and breathing, searching with my hands to myself, and I found all the answers that no one could ever give me. Growing.

Sometimes, when you heal, there's still a reminder that you are still living. You look at the scars and remember the fall, and that makes you more cautious the next time around. You rarely make the same mistake twice.