Yesterday, I Wanted Not to be Me

Yesterday, I wanted not to be myself, I wanted to escape from me for the afternoon or even just a few hours. The intensity of me was too great, the weird, oddness of who I am too convoluted. I couldn’t make it out and was left with the bright burning of what I feel and nothing else. I wanted to escape, step out of my own experience for a time.

I often feel as if I am standing at the edge of a fire, a deep red-gold burning within me. I press myself closer and closer to the flame to see how long I can stand the heat before it starts to burn. It is a strange kind of game, to see how far into that brightness I will allow myself to fall.

I know I am not alone in my way. All over the world and throughout the history of humankind, there has been this cusp group of people like me: writers, musicians, actors, dancers, painters, composers. We have always existed on the outskirts, the ones for whom a ‘normal’ life is an intolerable one. The sports stars, the inventors, the religious zealots and the explorers who wander the globe, even those bizarre men who fish the bearing sea, we are the ones who left the crowd, broke away from the social norm, went our own way for no other reason than that we feel this hungry longing. At times, on the edge of the fire-pit, I wish I could lose myself completely, be burned to ash so only the cinders remain. I imagine then, I would have peace.

Instead, I stand with a great black lake behind me, that whispers things I could never know, and the bright, bright burning within. Poised between two poles, I navigate each moment, never knowing will it be the bright burning, or the deep of the lake that will eventually consume me.

Author: lakshmibertram

My first book, 'Choosing Waterbirth: Reclaiming the Sacred Power of Birth' was published in 2000. I continue to write, working on a number of projects, both fiction and non-fiction. View all posts by lakshmibertram