big feel waltz

by Autumn Turley

i fell off the wave... it always happens at this time of year... and i always think to myself, "this time i will stay on!" but i always end up falling... every single time. but what has changed, is the hopelessness, that feeling that once you're down you'll never get back up again. and in its place is anticipation. i want to shake it all off like i wet dog... and sometimes i can, momentarily... but it all settles back on again. but this month is a transition. this month i am graduating college. and then i am going on tour! and now i am projecting into the future, feeling the feeling of something missing, or feeling the feeling of things being a lot heavier than i thought they would be, or feeling the feeling of being weightless... but i've got to stop doing that... because i don't know what i'll be feeling! and at the same time i know exactly how i'll be feeling, i know everything i'll be feeling... but there's no need to go there. this year things changed. this year i set aside days to take breaks. but what if that is not enough? and i wonder, am i really moving forward or am i running up an avalanch? no, i don't really wonder that, i only wonder that when i am stuck on the microcosm, because, when i get onto the macrocosm, i know that the concept of forward exists in spirals, and i am spiraling. i remember sitting on the bench with him, and he said, "how have you been?" and that question, i hear that question every day and usually it is so light that i can blow it away, but when he asked it, it was so heavy, heavy with the weight of a year, with the weight of a lifetime, with the weight of many lifetimes. many lifetimes... what is that feeling? what are these challenges? what are all these magnetic forces pulling me onto the microcosm? and what it's been coming to lately, is that i need to breathe... and breathe... and breathe. i was talking to her about that today, about how when i am stressed out the tension builds up in my chest and throat and jaw and neck, and she said "you know what you need to do? you need to breathe through your diaphragm." i know that i need to breathe through my diaphragm, but how do you breathe through your diaphragm when your stomache muscles are always too tense?