I was naked.

Engulfed, enveloped, encircled by form.

The form, the purity, an essence - life. I was inside of myself.

It was dark, I felt warmth - not in temperature, but in presence - I was comfortable, at home.

I was naked.

Vulnerable.

Stark, bare,

White: not the shade of skin, but white:

the color of vulnerability.

The shade, or lack thereof,

of openness.

A light shone around me. It wasn’t harsh.

It had no origin.

It wasn’t accusatory.

Despite this engulfing, comforting white light,

and despite the warmth of the darkness beyond, I felt my bareness.

Nakedness.

Focusing on my surroundings,

I noticed, encapsulated and evenly spaced around me in a circle,

my troubles. My hinderances. My struggles. My problems. My past.

Forms, embodiments, they surrounded me.

This was a dream I had over the summer; this was my discovery. I encountered an almost-tangible space within myself. What I described is the space inside my mind, my head, my soul, or whatever you want to call it. It goes on…

This room, as it were, my soul, my mind-palace, is the control center. It’s the center of emotions, where the purest, most distilled form of my essence is housed. In this space I exist. There is no beginning, no end. No origin. It just exists. It is. I exist. I am. In this space, in my nakedness, I’ve turned in a full circle to observe my struggles. The evenly spaced, neither impending nor receding, unassuming forms of my trials.

Late in the summer, as I entered this mind space, I began to see each of these experiences, these trials, these weights, embodied. They took form. For analogy’s sake, I’ll say they expressed themselves as balls of yarn. Colorless. Rolled neatly or piled, bundled. In my bare skin, my vulnerability, I’ve prodded these balls of yarn. I’ve pawed at them. At times I’ve tried to curl my fingers around them, or cradle them in my cupped hands. I’ve tried to coddle them. I’ve cursed at them, with their fuzzy yarny nature, for making me feel even more bare. More vulnerable. Each time I attempted to confront, or organize, or deal with the tangled balls of yarn that were my struggles and trials and errors, they’d unravel before me. I’d gain understanding, I’d face them, in my palms, exposed. But these moments were fleeting. The yarn would continue to unravel, urged on by gravity, and slide through my fingers. Through the gaps in my naked hands.

My mind palace underwent a shift late in the summer. Rather, my mode of viewing my mind palace changed: I spun. I spun so quickly that I saw all of the forms of my past around me - my vision morphed into a 360-degree, all-encompassing view. I saw every ball of yarn, every past experience, every hindrance, so clearly. And then, when I stopped spinning, the forms were still there as they’d always been, yet for some reason, I saw them all at once. This time I didn’t try to address them individually. I started, instead, to grasp them with inspired intention, voraciously collecting them, compiling them into a basket (I don’t know where the basket came from, don’t worry about it). I collected the yarn, the memories, in the basket, where the woven fibers supporting them were too tightly knit to allow for the yarn to fall from my possession. The balls unraveled inside of their container. From their unfurled length, I knit a sweater. A sweater woven from my trials. From the yarn of my tribulations. And I draped it over my bare skin - I covered my once-naked body.

Then my mind space opened - I was no longer surrounded by a circle of hinderances, no longer looking past anything to the vastness beyond my orb of light. In my new sweater, I was covered, comforted, but also confronted by the space - the world - around me. Nothing could prevent me from embarking into the warm dark infinite openness that makes up my mind palace. The space became accessible. I felt finally able to discover, to uncover, to study its nuances.

On my left arm in a humble grey mid tone is the memory, the yarn, of Bryan’s life. The yarn of a death. The black yarn, thick and undefined across my back, tells the story of identity theft. Crawling over my right shoulder is the white yarn of September 11th, 2001, the light grey specks like ash, resting permanently, nestled into the weaving of all of our lives. I don’t wear the sweater to alienate myself. I wear it because we all have memories - forms, yarn - surrounding and encircling us. We’ve all been tested. The funny, seemingly counterintuitive thing is that donning this sweater, covering myself with my past, my struggles, accepting my low points, has been the most liberating thing I’ve done so far in the short expanse of time I’ve been alive on this planet. Wearing the sweater and turning my trials into self-expression has infected me with an infatuation for life’s fragile beauty and complexities. I don the sweater. I wear my life. I embrace the complexities. It’s a story, and it has no end: I will continue to accept my trials and future struggles; I’ll make space for that yarn as it comes. My sweater will gain patches and layers as I navigate this delicate and beautiful thing called life.