My Lungs

I don’t remember when or who, but sometime, someone told me about a lung problem where it feels like you can only use half of your lungs. As if they were tied off in the middle. And no matter how hard you try, a full breath of air – deep and satisfying – is not possible. It sounds horrid.

I feel a bit like that. Not with my lungs, but with expression, with my life, my passion… me. I feel I am only half as me as I once was, as I could be. I want to inhale the richness of that which I am experiencing, the personhood of those I meet, the beauty of each new morning, the privilege of being alive and I want to exhale love, expression, story, self. But my metaphorical lungs are only working at half capacity.

And I want to blame the language. German is caging me in, inhibiting who I really am from coming out. I scramble for the words to explain to tell a story, to convey a feeling. And all I ever do is trip and fumble. The things I leave unsaid have piled high inside me. Unsaid for fear they will come out wrong. Unsaid at the cost of my being left unknown. And maybe it’s all just imagined, like a mime, silently fingering the invisible walls that encage him. Nonexistent walls. Nobody notices them, or my tied off lungs, except me. But my walls feel painfully real. I run into them every second sentence. Sometimes I just want to lay down and give up. Shut my mouth and give in to the aching for a full breath of air – deep and satisfying. An alive conversation, unshackled expression, an uninhibited flow of words and then – silence. Not silence born of the unsaid, but a silence to relish.

Give in to the aching for a conversation in which I don’t have to think about grammar and the words I need do not hide from me. For that old familiar feeling of a deep, rich exchange.

But I don’t want to give up or give in. I want to overcome. In those heavy laden, seemingly hopeless moments, I want to overcome. And carry on. 

10/11/2017

Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 17, 2018 at 11:01 AM

    Dear Anna-Lena,

    we've met last weekend at the writing workshop. Didn't know what blog you're writing on until now.

    What you describe sounds weird and tragic to me. I remember you were quite calm - but that the reason is such...

    I know the feeling of inability of expression myself. I also often still struggle with language, feeling not skillful enough or too slow or being it to tedious to find the precision, incorporate the whole scope, convey the correct intensity of any entity to be communicated. I don't feel I could do *better* in a foreign language however - even though I sometimes feel writing in a foreign tongue offers an alternate perspective and lends a non-native sense of freedom. So, to change perspective: Congrats you've discovered this freedom in the English language! I hope you write on - in whatever language feels comfortable to you :)

    Andreas

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A Drop of InkFebruary 25, 2018 at 7:29 AM

      Hello Andreas,

      I don't know if I would go so far as to say tragic, but it is frustrating and difficult. I think the metaphor can apply to other situations as well.

      I hope you never let the feeling of inability stop you from trying! But I understand what you mean.. words seem to always fall short. And even if you find the most accurate and skillful words, it's hard to know if what is understood is the same as what was meant. But I believe there is beauty in the trying.

      Maybe someday I will find the courage to try in German!

      Happy writing. :)

      Anna-Lena

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Among the Olive Trees

  We used to play among the olive trees, chasing each other in games of tag or mission impossible, dashing from tree to tree as if their thin knobbly trunks could hide us. We were careless then, impervious to the hardship of the outer world… there were walls built around our places of play, containing our laughter. We called these places home, the space between the olive trees, the safe bubble of our existence.  I suppose we must’ve always known we looked like outsiders, though. The older we got, the more obvious it became. We had only to look at the different color of our skin and hair, which was uncovered, to realize we were the foreigners in this land. We had only to be stared at by hungry eyes on the streets we walked and be told not to make eye contact, not to laugh out loud, and not to show too much skin to realize we were not free beyond the walls of our safe zones, in this place we called home. When did we realize what this did to our relationships to our bodies? Dista...
Read more

Every Turn of the Moon

I like to imagine my womb as warm and welcoming, her lining exquisitely molded and extraordinarily cozy and calm. She is pregnant always with expectation. She is filled with desire and hope, she floods with life potential, patiently ready. She is beautiful and strong. Her yearning ancient, she reaches ever for what could be, ever for the swell of new life, the expansion of love into new territory. She is unwavering. But every turn of the moon around the earth, she is disappointed, her desires unmet, purpose unfulfilled, her emptiness taunting. Her wailing sears through my body, racking me with pain. Her hot tears drain out of me, uncontrolled. Her grief sits raw, heavy and aching in my pit. Restless and roaming, it goes. And it comes in wave after wave, repeatedly debilitating me, doubling me over. I’ve learned to let her grieve, to give her space. To not exhaust us both beyond what we can bear. I’ve learned to slow down, take a breath, accept that I must do less, be gracious. For in...
Read more

Road Trip

Yosemite, Grand Canyon, the Rocky Mountains, Shenandoah, Niagara Falls, and Yellowstone… jewels of the nation, in all their striking splendor and in all their breath-taking beauty, are places I will perhaps see someday with my own eyes. Places I could have seen, if I’d had more time or more money, or if I’d had company, or if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t. It is a curious thing when an old, vague dream takes shape and unfolds into reality. The words “someday I’d like to do a road trip around the US and see all my friends”, meant almost as a joke, floated across the distance of the kitchen table and fell on serious ears. Unlike me, my friend believed this to be entirely plausible and even gave me a time frame. And while her timing (or mine?) was off, she proved right. The words had been released, the dream had seen the light of day and started to grow. Handing in my letter of resignation two and a half years later fed it even more and soon enough I had a return ticket to Portland, Orego...
Read more