What the Mind Produces

Surges

Unprompted, written in a surge.

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There's a boulder on my chest. 
An ordinary boulder, really. Shades of grey, the texture that of a ball of crumpled paper.
A smooth, cool, unyielding piece of rock.

I could leave it be. I can talk, I can smile, I can breathe, even with it there. 
Everything is just a bit heavier because of it. Talking becomes quickly agitated, smiles miss my eyes and breathing becomes laboured. 
Lying down in bed is the easiest. It doesn't stop crushing, but at least my muscles can recover from exertion. Once I lie down, sometimes that I can't muster the strength to get up because of the added weight. Sometimes, I don't want to fight that.

When I try to push it off, it gets a little denser still, as if it doesn't want to leave. Maybe I'm a soft and warm enough place, inviting to the cold. 

Getting a reprieve takes surges of most of my strength, condensed into a single push, almost so as to surprise it. Without much forethought or planning at all. And when a surge rolls it away, I can use the energy that normally goes toward carrying it for other things. 
After a while, it rolls back on. As if I were Sisyphus and had pushed it off me and up an incline, only for it to come rolling right back again.

There's still a boulder on my chest.
I know I'm not the only one with a boulder. But most of us push in silence, believing we can eventually grow strong enough to push it off for good.

But maybe it's not my muscles that are the trouble here. Maybe it's the rock. 
Lately, I've started to try to hack at the rock, make it smaller instead of pushing the whole thing away. The stone is hard and resilient, and progress is sluggish. 

But slowly, the surges to catch a break take just a little less of my effort. I can do them a little more often now. 
Patiently, I chip away. Talking becomes friendlier, smiles tend to reach my eyes and breathing eases. Sometimes, others help me, most of them unknowingly. 

For now, it is still large enough to hinder greatly. Maybe one day, my boulder will be a pebble and a surge will take just the flick of a finger. 

As I carve, that is what I imagine.