Feel the Rain on Your Skin

The lyrics go –

'Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten'

• Natasha Bedingfield – Unwritten
  

I've had trouble with words lately. Language has tangled on my tongue.

And as I struggle with the long pauses in my own ability to converse, as I sit wide eyed and lost with this strange sensation, I – feel. Feelings sift through my awareness. Tangled up in the needs of my soul, the dreams of my heart. Language fails me. How do I describe what I am just beginning to touch the edges of?

I can't. I struggle to even want to bring voice to what is moving through me. Whatever I am feeling – it isn't ready to be verbalized and contained by a vocabulary that defines and acts as a cage to the work of spirit. These are words that allow me to withdraw into clinical observation. As an example: 'Adaptive behaviors derived from past experiences within the family of origin.' That is truly an umbrella statement that keeps the feelings safe and untouched. It keeps the rain from hitting my skin. I need to feel the rain, I want to feel it for myself.

Sometimes words are simply too static for feelings that flow in the deep currents of life. Perhaps I'll be able to look back and make meaning out of this experience. Perhaps I will keep following the feelings and allow the words to remain unspoken. And somehow – and perhaps this is the strangest thing of all – the moment feels fresh and alive as little else has.