I’ve spent the greater part of my life decorating boxes. Post-it notes on cardboard walls, drawings of another world, scribbling songs with invisible ink: my voice trapped between skin and a tattooed-postal code. 

It was my very own space. 

But we grow-up, and the box overhead shrinks down. If we don’t make ourselves smaller, we won’t fit, and we definitely won’t be able to breathe. So, the logical thing is to ignore the pilling of the sides -where years of ink had been inscribed over and over- its words becoming faintly perceptible, and instead, curl up as small as we can with closed eyes. No, we don’t realize how the box actually withers at our persistent imagination. Rather, we use our imaginations to become the item we believe we were assigned, deluding ourselves into the promise of delivery through someone else’s hands. Unknowing we are the ones holding the box. 

That “space” we’ve occupied is actually a part of a much larger universe. One that can hold us and our visions in the same breath, carry us down the same current. 

So there we are, feet wading in water we’ve been taught to fear, digging nails into the side of a box by hands we don’t recognize as a part of our body, unaware of how the moon mirrors itself around us, of how a version of us in the sky is hiding its face as well, waiting to drop the box down where it will dissolve in the earth.

So why don’t we dive in? Maybe because it’s air we have been fighting for, we fear losing our breath. Or perhaps the gravity of it proving nothing makes us fear losing our box.

A river otter can hold its breath for approximately eight minutes in order to catch what it seeks. And a river otter does very well without a box. 

For a moment, let’s pretend you’re an otter, too. 

So let go of the box you’ve been living under. 

I promise,

It will float up.

Welcome to Otterspace.