How I survived myself

 I look at my hands sometimes. See the lines etched out across my palms, like an artist took a pencil crayon and scratched them out at random. Some are deep and stretched out with purpose, some placed there quick and light as if by accident. I examine my finger nails, the way one bends unevenly from having being slammed in the door when I was a child. I see the scar on my knuckle, barely visible, a permanent reminder of the dangers of showing off on a bicycle.

 I trace my right hand with my left and am reminded of all the things I’ve held in them; My stuffed bunny Balthazar, the hands of my mother and father as I swung between them at the zoo; My baby sister, a skipping rope, a paintbrush, my grandfather’s hands as I watched him fade away. I’ve held books, and sand dollars, friend’s hair, the faces of the boys I’ve kissed, the door knob as I slammed it shut. I’ve held heart rocks, and the ocean as it poured out between my fingertips and back to sea.

  I hold my hands up to the light and it’s as if I can see right through them. Skin, bones, tiny blue veins coursing with blood, all transparent. All that I am, invisible. Gone. I look at my hands and I am reminded that I am not forever. If I look closely I can see my fingers curling up with arthritis, the memories of all the things they’ve done hidden in the space between my palms. I can see them turning to dust. Tiny particles disintegrating, rising into vapour, and pouring back onto the earth as rain. Back to sea.

  I look at my hands and I know I am not them. I am not my skin, my bones, my blood, my breathe. I am not the words on this page, nor the body that writes them. I am not my memories. I am not even my thoughts.

  I am nothing. And everything.

  In a discussion in one of my acting classes we discussed the impossibility of the job. To capture the essence of a character, to embody them, understand them; a daunting task.

  Our guest speaker laughed. “Do you even begin to think you can understand all the intricacies of the universe? Know all its secrets?”

“No”, we replied.

“ Well the human being is just another universe.”

  I am nothing. I am everything. I am the mud, the leaves, the dust, the trees. I am the wind, and the wild grey sea.

  I hold my hands cupped out in front of me to catch raindrops as they fall from the night sky. They slip through the cracks between my fingers and make their way back into the earth. I look at my hands and they are small. They are etched with lines, there is dirt between the fingernails.

  I do not matter. And yet, I am matter, so I must.