Ever day now when I am alone I pick at a tiny splinter deep in my hand.
No body sees it, no one but I know know it is even there. It bothers me.
I do not want it there. I try to remove it, picking and digging into my flesh.
I see it, a tiny fleck under my flesh. I do not want the callous to grow over it.
I want it gone, back the way it once was. I do not want to ignore that it dwells there, a reminder.
I talk every day. I always use my hands when I talk. I become animated in my ways to express myself. I reach inside and try for each moment to interact, to help, to listen, to spur a smile, and yet when I move my hands toward them, I feel that splinter buried deep...but they never know...
Daily I try not to recall the splinter. Daily I try to be my own pep squad that cheers me, myself to not think so hard, to not try so hard, to not feel so hard. I pick at that splinter and mutter alone that even though I do not help others like a doctor who diagnoses, a therapist who reasons, a physical trainer that encourages, a teacher that enlightens, that I can in each moment make a difference. I try to look at people, listen, empathize with what little they say of a problem that comes my way, I reason when they are sad, I encourage sometimes only in a sentence for those like us all to have a good day and to each I mean it...for perhaps they too bear a splinter...I tell myself one day, one day I will remove it, one day my flesh will be smooth, one day that tiny fragment of hurt will surface so that I can toss it from my body.
I pick at it again while I am alone, a constant reminder that we all have to cope in life, like a rock in a shoe, a invisible monkey on our back, a blazing hot blade plunged into out shoulder, a hand that squeezes our heart.
We all have splinters.
Today was different...
Today someone saw that tiny speck of gray under my skin.
Someone saw the skin pink and puckered and peeling and took my hand.
This someone without thinking instinctively took my hand and shook it kindly.
They shook it in warm friendship, they held it like a kindred soul, they grazed my splinter with a mere touch to help, and it moved deep, buried and anchored. It moved under their selfless touch, it moved out its burrow.
That person smiled. "there!" and smiled back at me, talking with words unspoken, words that I could hear as the crowd swirled by in a hurry , in a blur of chaotic waves all around us.
That person touched me in a way, that only I could feel, only I could grasp, and only I could commiserate.
I slowly placed my hand on their shoulder, a hand now free of pain. "thank you! I could never get it out!" I replied.
"Sometimes, all it takes is a little help." They said to me.
They were right, sometimes a splinter cannot be removed by the one that placed it there. Sometimes a splinter knows the hand that wedged it. Like Excalibur it needed another force to guide it, a reason beyond reason, a reason so primitive and yet so universally magical. SwanSongSurreal