i slept with my hand on my heart.

Last night I slept with my hand on my heart. I was in bed early, laying in the dark with my hand on my heart. My eyelids were heavy, but the sound of my own heart alone in the dark was too much. So, I fed my face. And then I fed my new 30 Rock addiction with all of Season 1, disc 3. Then, I went back to feeling my heart alone in the dark. The gentle, steady thumping against my palm reminding me that my heart's not broken; it's beating. I became aware of the rise and fall of my belly as I breathed in, and out, reminding me that I am alive. I let my mind wander from one choppy thought to another. My brain volunteered for the job of separating dreams from reality, a task it has never mastered. It became too much. Not that my brain wasn't capable; just that the ratio of 1,000,000,000 thoughts: 1 head was a bit unbalanced. I had to focus on not focusing on anything. 'How do I do that?' (I once took an acting class that required us to lay on the ground for 10 minutes and think of nothing. Needless to say, I never mastered that, either.) 'No, I have to get this right', I thought, 'for my own good'. So, I forced my hands to be my eyes, and we sifted through the thoughts and finally got to that quiet place, alone in the dark, with the soft go-gong of my beating heart, the blood coursing through my veins, supplying my body with oxygen and air. In that quiet, tremulous place, I found myself. And I took my own hand as we walked off into the deep.