When your outer shell crumbles

I haven’t ever felt like this before. I’m talking but the words coming out are a jumble of content. Perfectly imperfectly audible, looking back at an audience that has no idea who I am or the work I have been putting in, and their first introduction to me is this.

On the way to another meeting I’m trying my best to exhale in short deliberate breaths the thoughts that are racing in my head. The night before I experienced chills that jolted my body out of its sedentary comfort. And I knew it had nothing to do with the weather or with the onset of a cold, because hours before the chills, it was the quiet, uncontrollable but wipeable tears.

The second meeting went well. It helped that it wasn’t in a theater. I have a problem with throwing a performance. I can identify strongly with emotionally charged delivery but I can discern when it is affected. I have come to understand though, that few of us are able to differentiate between the real and the fake, because few of us are in touch with how we feel and why we feel it.

We go about our daily lives, being busy, achieving this and accomplishing that, but how many of us stop to question the reason for it all: what makes our lives worthwhile? Once you begin to do that, you begin to accept that you are as vulnerable as anyone else to outside forces beyond you. The vulnerability has always been there, but your awareness of it begins to manifest itself in the things you do and the choices you make, and at times, it can overwhelm you.