Unmoored

I am a word person. There are words I love simply for how they look in written form. There are others I love for how they sound, and still others I love for what they mean or who they remind me of. Sometimes I think about situations for much longer than necessary, for the sole purpose of figuring out a single word to describe how I feel about or perceive it.

I am also a writer. Not the kind who is gifted with words crying out to become books or columns or academic papers. No, I'm the kind of writer who uses writing as a way to work through things in her head, regardless of how many people may or may not read it. For as long as I can remember, when I have things I need to process, I write them out.

But I'm currently finding elusive both words and the ability to write things out.

I want to write more about Silence, and maybe I will at some point. Right now, however, I feel too fragile to try to put words around where it is taking me. I can't even seem to write about it privately without feeling a sense of betrayal, as though I need to only hold the experience and let it be what it is without analyzing or searching for explanation.

And when it comes to trying to share any of this with people I know, words may as well not exist. There is almost no one who seems safe enough for me to attempt an explanation of what is going on or how vulnerable and exposed I am. I feel disconnected from just about everyone at present.

By habit, I was contemplating this experience and attempting to come up with a word for it. Maybe I can’t write about all the details or explain myself out loud, but if I could at least identify a single word to encompass it all, I’d be able to put this phenomenon into that word and hold that word in the midst of what is unfolding.

 

Unmoored.

That’s the word I kept coming back to every time, even though I wasn't entirely sure what it meant. Sure, I knew it was a nautical term and I had an impression of its meaning, but had never looked it up in the dictionary. In my mind I associated “unmoored” with “adrift,” but "adrift" didn't entirely fit. So I looked it up.

un·moor  [uhn-moor]

1. to loose from moorings or anchorage.

2. to bring to the state of riding with a single anchor after being moored by two or more.

That's all I have at this point. I’m not even going to attempt to explain how entirely accurate the definition is for what I’m experiencing. Perhaps someday I will have more words and be able to write a beautiful reflection on my unmooring season. Maybe, but not today.