control

There is an exchange in one of my favorite movies of all time and echoed into another

Chow Mo-wan: In the old days, if someone had a secret they didn't want to share... you know what they did?
Ah Ping: Have no idea.
Chow Mo-wan: They went up a mountain, found a tree, carved a hole in it, and whispered the secret into the hole. Then they covered it with mud. And leave the secret there forever.

Lately I feel like this is my personal metaphor, I am that tree and I am a hollowed out woman.

Sometimes I am bogged down by other people's secrets, sometimes people do not have an inner monologue, sometimes people just want to share a lot, with me.

At times, this becomes too much. All these secrets I can't share floating around and staying my body. The only thing that I have felt that makes a difference in filling in my mud covered hollowness is this

Sometimes you need to figure things out without talking, sometimes you need someone there to keep you in the moment and to derail my propensity to wander off, and just when my mind goes to

unpaid bills..there is a hand on my forehead
the fear of a foster child taken away....there is a hand on my hand
the revealing of favoritism in a job consistently done wrong.. .there is a hand on my stomach
and the words of cesar moro playing over again...there is a hand on my knee

And at the end it is exactly what I needed. Visit her, she works wonders and one of the last people to make me feel unbridled joy.

(I also feel like the android hostess who has been at it too long and now has delayed emotion, but that is a story I know too well and is for another time.)