Bigger Than My Body (Is That Too Much?)

I sit there. Staring at a screen. And have to pull my fingers away. Because I am sitting still but inside I am swaying. Swaying outside of the lines of my etched profile. Bigger than my body.

In these moments I would like to go lie in a meadow, let my body press into the grass. Allow my swaying to continue until I swirl outside of my body and spread out, a giant map of the constellations of life as I know it. Become part of something that is bigger than my body.

I say things like this and feel that maybe I am too much. Like the world may look at my words and say

"Look at her, trying too hard to be profound. Making life into a mixture of metaphors when it is really all straight lines and angles."

Meet me and you would find I am capable of speaking literally. You would find that I worry about passing tests that I fret over my hair that I gossip about boys that I live like other college women. I cannot deny my material existence. It is a large part of who I am.

But I also feel so acutely. And I know that I write about this quite often but it is a phenomenon I have to try and make understandable with words. I cannot deny that I spend a large amount of time in a space that is suspended between the tangible earth and the world of intangible experiences. It is a large part of who I am.

I do not want to assume I am the only person who feels so much that at times it is difficult to keep my feet firmly planted on real soil. In fact I think that is why I sometimes share these thoughts with people, to find who else out there is living in metaphors.

Some have a little chuckle for these moments, it is a loving chuckle, one that says,

"Oh Alyssa, there she goes again, how sweet."

And I love them for this. Appreciate them. But recognize that they don't really believe that the sensations I describe are so achingly real.

Some just look confused. Or rather annoyed. I would assume this is because they think I am trying to sound impressive, philosophical, wise, but perhaps there are other reasons. I bare no resentment towards these people, I only wish that we could make ourselves more transparent to each other.

One day I expect that someone will see me in a state of over-sensation, a moment when I am so tangibly bigger than my body, and this person will not see my still profile, but instead the part of me that is swaying. This person will take my hand and lead me to a field far away from city lights and right next to star lights. Then this person will lie down there with me, because this person will need the grass too.

And I think this person will be a man. And I think this will be what love feels like for us. And I think I will marry him.

(And I am afraid this is too much to expect.)