"I would lie in bed and try to vanish. I was not old enough to understand what death was, exactly, but I recognized loss; I understood it was a kind of absence and I was determined to become that. I would close my eyes so tight I saw stars, I truly believed I could stay inside the hard clenched black and flip myself inside-out, becoming the reversal of light. Often, I would pray myself into a catatonic state: Let me go away. Let me stay in the dark. Let me be gone, over and over until the sun came up. I would go several days without sleeping, trying to manifest my end with heartbroken prayer. Sit for hours in front of the television, staring into the static between channels. I mistook the humming of my sleep deprived brain as a step closer to vanishing. It was the only thing I wanted. All the time." - Rachel McKibbens, The Ghost Daughter Speaks.
I read this and I couldn't keep it out. It was like someone was narrating moments from my life. It felt impossible, could it be that I was not alone? That someone saw me in that darkness and wrote down all my secrets? That's what I thought initially, instinctively. It made me feel.. naked, and heard. It's crazy how someone else can put words to your feelings and give your heart a voice when despite all the ways you tried and wanted to, so desperately, you could never seem to find them. The emotional and verbal paralysis that happens when your mind tries to save you by silencing you. But silence is the loudest voice of all. Replaying memories like film on a projector that never stops turning. I read this and it immediately takes me back, back to every night when this was my prayer. To just let me fall asleep and in the morning be gone. Be nothing. Be safe. Life is a scary place when the people that are supposed to protect you, hurt you instead. And you know it must be bad when a child's sweet dream is the one where the darkness protects her. Where if she could just find the right place to hide, from even herself, then finally there would be calm. Where the monsters in her closet are no where near as terrifying as the ones walking free in the daylight. Reading this, something let go in me, and I could feel myself breathing.. really breathing. I remember thinking how foreign it felt. And in that moment I realized that I'd been holding it for years, decades even. I wondered then, if I'd been holding my breath since that night, as scared to let it go and be heard as it was to leave me? And all these years and relationships later I finally understood why my breath always seemed to believe that it was safer staying right inside of me.
In spite of all of this I can honestly say I fought against myself, against every self preserving instinct I've ever had, when it's come to love. Always. I've turned myself inside out, and upside down, to be all the things that I want to, need to, to the ones I love. And in the process I've broken and re-broken myself, starting over again and again, forgiving them and myself for falling short, for disappointing and failing. And then choosing to get up the next day and start again.. because it's worth it. It will ALWAYS be worth it. Because I can't keep having my sweetest dreams be ones where I'm alone in the dark. Because as comforting and consoling and safe as that dark feels for me, there is one thing I will never find there... the warmth of another heart that loves me. There isn't room for that there, that is something I will only ever have if I can step into the light. It's hard too, the light, because there everyone can see you, and you can really see yourself, and there is no safe place to hide. The light of another's love exposes all, but it does something even more profound if you let it... it accepts all, and loves all. Not in spite of but because of.
So I'm ready to take a walk in the sun, to bask in the sun, to work on my tan even, but I am fair and fragile, so for safety sake I will be responsible and wear a little SPF. But I'm looking for a place to start...
------
"I'm looking for a place to start,
And everything feels so different now.
Just grab a hold of my hand,
I will lead you through this wonderland.
Water up to my knees,
But sharks are swimming in the sea.
Just follow my yellow light
And ignore all those big warning signs.
Somewhere deep in the dark
A howling beast hears us talk.
I dare you to close your eyes
And see all the colors in disguise.
Running into the night,
The earth is shaking and I see a light.
The light is blinding my eyes
As the soft walls eat us alive."
- Of Monsters and Men
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