I am a bug saver.

I am a bug saver. If I feel a creepy, crawly, long-legged thing making its way up my skin I don’t swat. I don’t slap at it. I don’t curse or scream. I simply say “hello” and gently guide it off of me. When a bug, of any kind, even a wasp, is stuck inside and buzzing near a window I won’t grab my shoe and smoosh it, so its guts are stuck between the indents of my Converse. I feel it. I feel its frantic, manic need to be free. I take that feeling deep inside with a breath of realization that it is trying to live, too, like me. It’s afraid of being trapped. It was made to be a creature of the outside world. To nourish of the green grass and tree bark, and lake water. It doesn’t want my skin or my hair or my anxiety. It needs to be unfettered again. Liberated from the snare of confinement. Sometimes I feel I’m an insect. Not in the existential ‘I am miniscule and insignificant in the vastness of the universe’ (I’ll save that for another blog post!), but in the longing to be set free. Sometimes it feels very much like I’m on the inside looking out at a world I no longer freely inhabit. One that is moving forward, when I can no longer move. I feel trapped. In my body and in my mind. Impervious to the realization that, like the bugs I kindly and carefully set into the garden, I just need a tender hand. I just need my hand.

Do you feel trapped sometimes? How do you reconcile the reality of your illness, or someone else’s illness’ effect on your life? How do you feel free?