248. A More Truthful Response

How do you feel? This question was one she had always struggled with. To offer up a canned response like “fine” never felt right. It didn’t feel right because it wasn’t wholly true. She wasn’t just fine, and saying so seemed to lack honesty.

Honesty was important to her, but whenever she would try to conjure up a more truthful response, she found she couldn’t locate any words that were up to the job. There were always so many feelings present in her and there didn’t seem to be any way to summarize them into a sentence or two.

Just because someone cared about her did not mean they wanted to hear an entire diatribe about her current emotional state. And really she didn’t want to inflict such a lengthy report on anyone. She wanted to offer a response that was both accurate and honest, while also being succinct.

Surely this was not an impossible task, but every option that appeared in her mind felt too ambiguous to communicate anything of substance or value. Perhaps she was overthinking the problem. This was a real possibility, for overthinking was an unfortunate habit she had developed over the years.

She decided to stop thinking and listen to herself. But she heard nothing. Nothing seemed to be alive inside her. Nothing was offering anything for her to say. But then she realized this was just a cop-out, an attempt to escape. She had to listen more carefully.

There were feelings inside her, a veritable multitude of them. They were saying things but not in any language. How could she communicate what was not in language? She pondered this for a moment before realizing that she needed to stand up.

Then she began to move. She followed her feelings, creating movements with her body that expressed them precisely. She moved her arms, her legs, her head. This felt like the appropriate response. She was dancing. How does she feel? Like this.