I often feel

as if my body

contains a storm at sea.

It rages inside of me, trying

to tear me limb from limb. I

can feel my skin being pulled taunt and

I am desperately trying to hold it together.

Sometimes, all I can hear is the noise and the fury

of the wind as the storm gets stronger, as the

waves crash against the rocks,

the birds scream overhead

as the wind becomes

even more

furious.

As the boat rides

the raging storm, lightning

snaps across the sky as thunder rolls

throughout the clouds. I am inside that

boat, holding on to the edges, the oars taken

by the hungry waters. I sit in the boat, knowing that

my time has come, holding on to my skin which

desperately wants to just come apart, my

muscles screaming at me, angry and sore

beneath my fragile skin. I sit in the boat

and close my eyes, trying to hear the

storm as music, to hear it as

something beautiful as

opposed to the battle

that is happening

within

me.

I close my

eyes and try to

hear the sounds around me,

that wild sea within that threatens

to consume me, as something beyond

the crash of waves and the screech of wind.

I try to hear the music within my body instead.

The crashes of the waves, the spasms that explode

within my body, those are the drums, keeping

the beat inside me. The screeching wind,

the flashes of pain that ride along my

skin, they are the flutes that keep

try to match the beat of my

heart. The crash of the

waves against the

rocks, that is

the brain

fog that

slams

into me, much like the

cymbals that slam into every

song, punctuating every movement,

every crescendo. The numbness and the

tingling that runs throughout my body, that

is the guitar, playing a sweet melody that holds

everything together, that unites everything into a cohesive

tune. As I listen to that storm symphony, I feel the

waters start slow their rocking, the winds begin

to slow down, the cymbals crashing together

less and less. Soon, I can only hear my heart

beat which was the voice of the song,

the eternal beat within me that

is the beat of everything,

that had been trying to

find its voice the

entire time.

I close

my eyes

and listen

as my heart

sings me a

song. As I

sit in the

water that

was the wild

sea within,

I listen

to the

pain that has

become a

song.