Tuesday, February 17, 2015

I am the same; I am me

I'm in that same dark spot; that windowless room; there is the pain, so familiar. In my stomach the yawning hurt, on my chest the anvil, my vision blue and blurred, the relentless horn in my ear, the buzz that trails all my thoughts.

I have lived with this resident, this squatter really, almost all of my life.  I wear pink with this, I serve meals with this, I laugh and share stories and marry and work with this. Still and always. This.

I have tried to convince myself that I am not that child, who's dad was a treat in her life, and then gone. I am not that little person, trying so hard to be mature, to hear the words that were being spoken to her, to receive and understand them and be o.k. with them. And then I am that person and I do not understand and I am not o.k. with any of it. All is lost. I am so tired by it.

My compassion for children, my demands of them and aspirations, my immersion in the children in my life is by design. I am the constant that could not be for me. I am the ready, the steady, the immutable hug because I have to be. I know what it is.

I am crippled with the force of a million faults - not mine - theirs, for having failed at the simplest of things, for having tried and failed to make me the most important thing. And then I am broken, knowing they tried with all their might and I was, truly, the most important thing and still they failed. So I could fail too. Any one of us could fail and then the hurt would all come back and hurt again.

And there we'd be in that same dark spot, that windowless room. And we wouldn't have changed at all. We'd be the same. I'd be the same.

And no matter my pink and smiles, that is me.


1 comment: