I Can Move My Spirit

I stand in the bathroom, goosebumps on my skin, towel round my body, glasses off my closed eyes, as I breathe deeply, letting the air flow through me.
I take my deepest breath yet, gathering up my being in my chest, my heart, and then, I push my spirit down and out, feeling it fall through my body. It flows outwards as it hits the floor, scattering into a thousand pieces like a broken glass that slipped through my fingers like sand. I stand there, feeling empty as a hollow snail shell, until I can't take it anymore and have to inhale, summoning my soul back again, into a whole that fits almost perfectly into my body. Some parts of me are missing. I can feel the gaps. Places where my heart went into someone or something I loved, and either I never saw them again, or my love was never returned.  I have always felt my soul within me, and I do all I can to make it my own.
Sometimes I feel like I'm making magic. I'm twelve years old, yet I still own many stuffed animals. Each one has a name, a personality, a story. Whenever I look at them, I see them, and I see who I made them to be. Sometimes when I look at them, I see me. Once, as I looked at one of my favorites, a stuffed penguin, a voice said
"But this isn't really who you think he is. He's really just a toy penguin. You saw all the other ones just like him at the store. He's really no different than all those other ones. You just invented who he is. He's not really there, you just think he is."
That voice scared me a little. I could feel part of my spirit falling, sliding out of me. The bit that was all my stuffed animals identities. I struggled to hold myself together. I could feel my faith falling, slipping away. Then I looked into my penguins eyes. Pieces of his stories came rushing back. Who he was, how I had chosen him, how much I loved him. The piece of me fell back into place. I was fine.
But it scared me. I had had a Realization. Every now and then, I see the real truth, how real everything is. Sometimes they're really scary.
Once, when I was about six or seven, as I sat on the toilet, wrapped in a towel after my bath, I was quietly thinking about what would happen to me. I started to cry, I was so scared. My Dad came in, and he asked me what the matter was. Still upset, I stumbled through how scared I was feeling. He asked why I felt scared. I told him that I didn't want to die. I knew that one day, young or old, all my experiences, memories, identity, will turn to dust and be unknown, and much of myself would be forgotten when I die.I didn't know where I would go, because I didn't know if Heaven was real. And if it was, who would be able to tell us? I was just feeling lonely, I guess. My dad told me that when he was little, he felt the same way sometimes. He told me that however we look at it, someday something irreversible will happen. But life goes on, until then. I stopped crying. I relaxed a little. But every now and then, I remember, and I truly become afraid.
Other ones were less scary. You know how sometimes when you say a word over and over, it starts to sound funny in your mouth? Well, sometimes that would happen to me, but it would be me actually SEEING an object as if for the first time.
Another one was kind of creepy. I forgot who my little brother was. Sure, I remembered his name and what he looked like, but it was like remembering someone I had just met once. That was weird.
But the scariest one of all came, in all places, (for the third time in this collection of words) in the bathroom. I forgot who I was. My name felt funny and weird in my head and in my mouth. My body felt like someone else's, someone I was seeing for the first time. My memories, my experiences, felt like scenes from a movie I had watched. My identity felt different. It was like stepping outside of myself and actually Looking at myself for what and who I really was.


......To be continued......