I sat, paralysed, last evening. Aware, but tuned out, my frantic thoughts disallowed anything more than minute movements – a click of the keys one moment, the silent fingerprint on touch pad, breathing slowly, crossing and recrossing sleepy limbs.
It’s too much, too soon, too normal, less broken. Who am I, if I’m not opening a vein and inviting who ever will swim into my anemia?
I am healing. Bandaids have been replaced by actual curing salves and solutions and after them, after every moment of refreshment, my soul gets bathed again in something prismatic.
Light.
The cleansing, the coping, the feeling, the torture of knowing what it’s like to sit with hurts and let them tear into you a little bit, but not rip yourself new infected skin because of them. It’s what’s been happening.
The lessons, knowing when I can help and when to quit, knowing that praying to be fired from the maternal care I so often attach to love means that I’m not prepared for further journey and accepting it. Acceptance.
Last evening, with the winds howling fiercely and the rain soaking my window, I sat still and breathed, knowing that it was all catching up with me. Usually, thunder would clap and a twisted face would come out from the gloom, righting the health back into scary destruction. My face.
My old face.
When I finally stopped sitting, I stood and looked. There was no evil visage in the bathroom glass, bent on tornado-ing the rebuilt, renovated and replanted. There was only clear eyes, with a touch of happiness clouding their usual soulful haunting. My hands itched not to scrub away the discomfort that scars knitting brings, to pick away the mental scabs. To make walls and tile sparkle, and all that surrounds to appear clean and controlled.
They just resumed their previous sweeping caress of the laptop, as I sat, transfixed with my own incomplete metamorphosis, knowing finally that hard and fast didn’t equate with backwards and failure.
This post is in response to this week’s {w}rite of passage challenge. I can’t add the linky, but visit the page to participate or find other writers, hell-bent on ripping the band-aids off of their writing.
