Worth wounding; our passage to possibility

I'm reading another advocacy document for our physiotherapy profession. It's Evidence-based, arguing Economic-value, through Sustainable-pricing.

The framing, the stance, smarts with familiarity through my laptop's semi-lit screen.

~

My eyeballs burn, stinging edges meet words, measuring my worth.

I watch their habitual widening, an attempt at tolerance pushing them into performance.

They close.

Flattened phrases fall, wounding their wound.

Lids provide refuge,

salt bathes sight;

welcoming well of stillness

~

From our beginning, we have looked outside to know who we are. Looking for our reflection in the mirror of others. What the mirror showed, we shaped into blueprint. Unaware the cost of belonging.

Born from the need to be respectable, we chased legitimacy, to not be something else.

We contracted into certainty; morphed into something else.

Nowadays, we work to be with people and learn to call it something else.

 ~

Tracking outward, shifting shaping, walled within

I notice the pull.

It yanks me upward - from presence to doubt. The knowing I had becomes something to hide. I watch myself leave it. Heat spreads, body turtles, fog descends. Self-disappearing act while the shape performs. Dextrous chameleon knows how to do. Defend, distract, defer, dismiss.

Doing fills the space

~

It's never enough, is it?

All that efforting.

So much spent.

For so long.

Relentless.

Endless.

No rest.

~

It's so small, barely felt; as if testing its permission.

~

Another is felt, same smallness; testing some more.

~

The next one softens; feeling it out.

Something new and also known.

~

I notice a pang.

I watch myself follow it.

Down we go.

Following what knows.

~

Thick threads tangle

winding, wrapping, wrangle holding on,

holding weight,

holding weary.

~

My body slumped low in my chair, spine curling.

Pinprick pressure, ever so slight Eyes now level with the advocacy words.

They look different, misshapen. Edges blurring, letters muddling swimming darkness starts to pool

I watch my lids close over again.

Free fall; free to fall