calm

      I never imagined in a million years that I would understand what  it felt like to " be still". Never could I have understood how to merely grasp the concept of  even STANDING still. My busied mind and body constantly had me bouncing around from insanity to astronomical insanity and back again. I'd tap my foot a hundred miles per hour because my nerves were so shot. I legitimately could not stop my heart from racing, my eyes from staring or my limbs from shaking. When I was a child I had a horrible case of Restless Leg Syndrome that carried on heavily into my addiction. I remember being  up for hourssss, days on end kicking my legs. Hanging the left  one off of the bed, and then the right one, and then both of them. Over and over. I was quite possibly crawling out of my own skin one single nerve ending at a time. My own body didn't even want to be a part  of me...what does that say?!
    My mind moved faster than my legs most days. I'd be ten steps ahead of myself, before my limbs could catch up I'd in turn be ten steps past that. I wandered. My poor soul was left out to dry on a regular basis. It would try desperately to catch up to the empty vessel  that had  abandoned it, and sad defeated time after now even more sad  completely defeated time I imagine it had just given up. I began to truly feel that hollowness. I imagine it happened somewhere between 18  and 24...I was lost before, believe you me...but not until I hit  my full maturity did  I begin to realize just how strayed I  had become. I  talk a lot about surviving. I Know now much of the time I did not spend living, but the more I think about it...I'm pretty  positive I just existed. I took up space. Always in a rush to go  no where and to pull everyone along for the ride. I don't even think I breathed the first 23 and a half years of that shallow existence. Didn't have the TIME I  guess.
     Today I sat still. I sat through an entire movie...alone mind you. I laughed, and I was the only one around  to hear it, and that was ok. I did not need to phone a friend or fast forward through the boring parts. I was just PRESENT. That is my new theme for this journey I continue on. I will  not survive, I will not merely exist...I will be very much present and I will  be very much alive.