Sweating my way back to myself

Such is my disdain for my upper lip being peppered with globules of perspiration; I walk in micro-steps to avoid sweating. As the UK’s current heatwave continues, my exertion has ceased in loud refusal for any discomfort.

Now, don’t confuse me for being a perpetual weather complainer. The “it’s too hot, it’s too cold, too wet, too dry” amongst us. I’m having a lovely time, all sticky shins and hazy skies, golden hour bathing trees in its light. Iced drinks begging to be consumed before they turn lukewarm, ice-cream dripping down forearms after each yearned for lick. Ants greeting you on picnic blankets, kids giggling with water guns, and the smile. The smile that acts as contagion, making its way through the city.

I still don’t like to sweat though. I know why we sweat. I know its function and purpose. I just don’t enjoy the casual-walking-down-the-street sweat. The rest of my life feels enough like a sauna, that I equate sweating predominantly to the metaphorical and metaphysical kind.

The kind of sweat that begins as internal heat. My body letting me know that something is off. In the way that when you have something wrong with your ear and your balance starts to sneakily sway. The heat doesn’t feel suffocating at first, but present. A muffled under the weight of a pillow alarm, that something’s brewing.

It starts to spread just as a heat-rash would. This emotional mental heat that moves around me until it creeps into to my chest. Weighing it down. I wait for it to continue up to my throat and maybe it’ll tell me its story. Letting words form when there were only feelings. It doesn’t always make it to my lips, to plume out words into the world. It sometimes goes up into my head.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The sweat comes.

Emotions leaving the body, allowed to pour even when the desire to mop them up with a cloth arises. Released in tears. Purged by wringing a towel until the fibres leave a print on my palms and locked-in anger finally leaves.

The sweaty release.

All of that movement. The slow build of emotion flirting with me to make me melt in its heat. Finally finding an exit in a cry, rage, or words. Sometimes in nothing. Sometimes the feeling lingers a little longer in a sadness or confusion that remains anonymous.

We sweat to regulate. Finding a way back to balance. Taking away heat from the body.

It isn’t always pleasant. As you’ll know from being squashed into a train carriage without air conditioning. A pool of sweat puddling in your thighs. Yet, it takes the heat from the body.

I’ve been in a sauna of which I’ve surrendered into the wooden slats of its seat.

Sitting in the stories leaving, beliefs shedding, people questioned, choices made, ways of being released.

Sweating it all out.

But this time it’s different. Not the self-induced punishment of being pre-occupied with “doing the work” and digging around in old wounds, picking at scabs for the sake of it. Trying to grow. The desire healing.

Instead the heat building within me is a creative fire. A burning pulse of life in all of its deliciousness. Bubbling with ideas. Stories not able to be contained within me. Ripples of truth ripping out of my skin. Returning excitement. Projects turning around within days. Word counts bursting. Courses started. Timelines pushed forward.

I’ve been sweating off anything in the way of me creating work that’s rich, energetic, and urgent. Sweating off any fear of being fully seen as I am, who I am, and the message I want to share. Sweating off anything in the way of me being devoted to a life oozing with softness, slowness, and sensuality.

I’m sweating for a purpose and that purpose is not one of neutrality or balance.

It’s one of being more alive.

Letting the itchy heat of discomfort transform into fire.

No longer fanning away its flames but letting them live within me.

Creating life outside of me.