The Breaking Point

Summary

The text is a reflective narrative exploring the author's journey through emotional turmoil, seeking solace in various spaces, and ultimately finding some form of help through therapy and the metaphorical guidance of the wind.

Abstract

The narrative titled "The Breaking Point" delves into the author's introspective journey through heartache and the search for safe havens in different rooms, symbolizing sanctuaries from emotional pain. The author describes a disconnection from reality, a breaking away characterized by travels and escapades in nature,

The last to know…the patient

Often, I have thought rooms to be the only safe places left; changing rooms, bedrooms, rooms to climb into, change in, or rooms where sleep comes easy. A room with no view would be the safest place of all — a central hiding place where only those with accurate maps and charts might find me.

No one saw it coming, not the heartache, what made me turn and walk away — the time when I never had much to say when there was nothing left to be said. In my life, I have traveled between many rooms, unashamedly parking my shoes, sweaty and smelling, under the beds of strangers.

Deep down, something snapped and broke away from reality. I traveled across rooms, boarded trains and airplanes. I played in different places, beneath the clouds, climbing trees, their branches rustling and rattling, smelling the blooms and blossoms, loving those that signaled summer, and felt carried on a carpet of waving grass.

Breaking point. What is it? I always laughed at the price paid to be in love. I’ve heard it said that when a person reaches a breaking point, they are last to know, happening to those who are best known for smiles, people who will go the extra mile. So as much as I ever understood anything, I understood the wind, the rain’s direction, the steadying of the compass. I never understood signs.

There were days I ballooned over a thousand hills, soared over lakes, skimmed trees, and, in that way, I understood how much the wind cared for me, whether on land, sea, or air, the wind moved me away from hurt. I heard no cries for attention, felt no need for sweet small kisses, hugs to comfort, I’d find the smallest of cracks to slip through. I have no excuse to be anywhere.

I turn and go back. Where I turned, I don’t know. The wind and I made a truce.

The office is lifeless but for a rubber plant in one corner. I had parked in the driveway behind The therapist’s car. I pushed a bell before an adjoining door opened. She looks to be around thirty-five, wearing white pants, a mauve pullover, and loafers. Her office is cozy, warm, with rugs on the floor and two armchairs. I will pretend I wanted to come to see her. Pretend I need help.

This is so embarrassing. I told her I could sleep in her office. There were no windows, or view of the outside world. She invited me to do exactly that, putting a blanket at my side. I didn’t. I will not care what we do; anything is fine, nothing is okay, too. Should we huddle under the blanket? I ask her what she wants to do. Nothing is okay, she said.

And so it has been. The wind alone has cleaned away heaps of regret, piles of wrong-doing, dust that covered my heart and swept away such leavings that broke my spirit. The wind and I crossed each other’s path daily without animosity, just a nod of courtesy.

I’m looking for space, I told her. I was sweating. I needed a drink. She asked what kind of space, big, small, empty? I said without a view, or on a beach where I can build a bonfire. Somewhere the wind can force out all thinking.

I know about the wind. How it brought the kind of love that floated and flowered through every year of my life. Love, as if a puff of pollen, arrived unseen on a wisp of air and left the same way. The woman offers me the guiltless pleasure of talking.

Then we start over. It suddenly feels forced. The therapist is building. I am walking through the ruins.

Breaking Down.

There will always be the wind of want, a wind of worry, and who hasn’t been touched by the wind of change? Not all winds are friendly, not to the sailor in me, but none has been savage enough to knock me off my path, or only long enough for a warm breeze to carry me away.

I’ve learned to walk in the wind’s direction, not asking myself what is right. The wind, too, is without a home and without a need to stay in one place. It moves at will, doing good things and bad. It cares nothing for responsibility nor the importance of boundaries. It can be the carrier of love, just as it is for clouds. I trust in its direction because, like balloons, lovers need to travel in the same direction, untethered of restraint, free to be different, the same.

Winds change, become breezes. Love, too, changes, back to what it was before it came.

Help arrives in the guiltless pleasure of talking.

Help Line