In my mind, I have an idea of who I am- a version of myself who could play a regular character in a TV show. Sitcom Ra is consistent. She's concentrate.
100% Ra. 100% of the time.
Life isn't a television show, though, and someone walking around at 100% would most likely disrupt the flow of things.
So we dilute.
Five parts individual, one part society.
Ten parts individual, one part society.
One part individual, one part society.
Everyone seems to have a different mixture, and we dissolve into each other flawlessly like a fruit punch.
It is a solution.
I used to be one, too.
I used to blend.
But now I am oil and water, constantly bubbling up against the parts that are not me.
This is a consequence of having been incarcerated, though, I think. Society was distilled from me, then emptied back in.
I feel my dilution.
It affects my sense of everything, even time. It has been fourteen years since I lost my husband. Or three days. It's been four decades since I left prison, or maybe it was yesterday.
I don't know if I lost part of myself when I was away, or gained some of myself.
I just know I can see all the spaces where I don't dissolve. I can feel the layer of something else on me, covering me, suffocating me.
If you shake me hard enough, though, for a split second, I almost mix.
It makes me crave a shaking, and I wonder if I've been calling all this turmoil into my life... just to feel concentrate, just to feel whole.
Just to be a solution,
instead of just another problem.
