30 Day Writing Challenge 2 - 4/4/16: Bones

First time I heard the music
I thought it was my own
I could feel it in my heartbeat
I could feel it in my bones

-- "Blame It On The Love of Rock & Roll," Bon Jovi

I used to laugh at my parents or grandparents when they said they could feel weather changes in their bones. When I was diagnosed with early-onset osteoarthritis at age 20, I stopped laughing. And now that I am of a certain age, I not only feel weather changes, I feel cold (primarily) that seeps into bones. I definitely do not laugh anymore!

I'd never had a broken bone until last year, when a toe had to be deliberately broken as part of a foot surgery to remove a bunion and realign some toes. I now not only have a surgically reconstructed foot but metal and Kevlar contained therein. 

But I feel much more than weather in my bones these days. I feel joy and delight, I feel deep pain and especially lately tremendous grief. I have felt sadness so overwhelming that to move brought physical discomfort. I have felt such happiness that my bones radiated warmth throughout my being. I have felt anxiety to such a degree that I felt my skin would break apart and my skeleton run away. 

In my bones -- in the very physical depths of me and beginning to meld with the nonphysical essence of who I am. Bones, not just literal ones, but the endoskeleton of my soul. For every physical entity within me, there is a metaphysical mirror in that core essence, and in that emotional center, I feel things deeply, in my bones. I was afraid I might crumble at times but I am stronger -- physically and otherwise -- than I am even willing to say. I have my limits, and only rarely have I plumbed those depths and touched those boundaries. They seem to stretch and contract as time flies on and rolls across the bones of my life.....