Flicking matches in the dark
30 October 2011 07:04 AM Categories: The struggle
I write this and I am tired. But I want to talk to you, I need to tug on your sleeve and tell you how I am in between the reading, the schoolwork, the last couple of weeks of elementary school tasks (making sugar skulls, entering Scholastic Book orders, haranguing other parents) and Halloween costume making and my slow drop-off from the online world.
So I make the walk every week. I am tired of the walk, but it offers buffer space, time between home and revelation (if that’s what we’re in the mood for). Last Thursday after I reached my destination, in a room rich with leather and compassion, warm and low-lit, the tissue box beside me, I compacted a tissue in my hands and talked briefly about my interrupted sleep, the way I torture myself when I wake up at 2:00 a.m., the spilling open of my mind, my worries overflowing from my head to the pillow to the floor. Night thoughts are the worst. Why don’t you tell your night self to be kind to you? the therapist asked.
My night self. Suddenly she was there, showing herself from the dark place where she doesn’t sleep. She sat in the light of a faded street lamp, resting her back against a brick wall. Young, about fifteen or so, all in black, she glared at me and flicked matches my way, one by one, flick flick flick.
So maybe you need to pay more attention to the teenage you.
What the therapist said made sense. I’ve been trying to get back to this girl, to get to her, for a long time now. I like to pretend that she was an anomaly, some sort of thing to be suppressed, something to push aside, but she is part of me, with her rebellious independence, her outsider’s view of the world, combined with an openness and compassion toward the pain of others. Her experiences and feelings are not dark blots to be ignored. I have to integrate her back into me, the good and the bad and the inconvenient, take the fragments of emotion and personality and piece together a whole self.
Before I went to sleep that night, I approached the night me. I knew she didn’t want to talk. I knew touch would be iffy, too. I got closer, awkwardly close, and reached out to hug her …
But before that? When I was crying alone with the weight of too many emotions? I thought of the man in the other room, patiently working on a Halloween mask. I thought of how ridiculous it was that I was crying by myself when I had someone who could hold me when I was sad. So I did something I haven’t done in a very long time: I asked him to come to me and I cried in his arms until I didn’t need to cry anymore.
So I was ready when I reached out to the girl: You are me. Let's heal each other. We are going to accept our rebellious spirit, our independence, our interest in the world and other people that has been hidden behind a fear of the worst parts of us being exposed. We will accept our pain and see our loneliness, knowing that they don't define either of us. What we are defined by is strength and adaptability and compassion, by the feelings we want to pretend don't exist, by the way we can see others when we aren't blinded by our own melodrama.
She took the hug, though I haven’t totally convinced her yet that I am for real. Rebuilding trust is a slow process, a careful walk through unknown streets with halts and long silent stretches and moments where there is nothing but feeling with all of its layers, the warm hand-hold, the turning toward the other when the wind cuts through you, knowing, finally, that you are not alone.
I deleted my Facebook account (I have another one out there, friendless at the moment, a clean slate). Facebook wasn't working for me anymore. It was a distraction and felt like a layer between me and the world anyway, though there are a few folks I will be refriending with my new account soon, if they'll have me, my small cadre of friends, virtual and otherwise. My Google+ account is still out there, though I am not on Google+ very much.
I haven't let my Facebook escape stop me from creating a writing to survive Facebook page, however. If you'd like to "like" it, click on the link on the sidebar, or click here.
Does it make me a hypocrite to use Facebook for blog promotion?
Nah.
Image by maewe.
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