I’m still afraid of so many things. Maybe if I was put into a box and frozen for a few years, my heart would get frostbite, and when it thawed pieces would fall off and with any luck, they would take some things with them. Or a doctor could remove them carefully with sterile clamps and scalpels, all neat and orderly, and sew me back up with nice orderly stitches in a straight orderly line. That would be so much better than what I have to do. So much better to be orderly. So much better to be neat and clean. But instead I have to reach into myself and rip out the pieces. It hurts it hurts it hurts so much but if I leave them they will rot away there, and take the rest of my heart with them.
Maybe it will be less painful if I refuse to write it. If I never again see it before me as ink on paper, in my clumsy script. Maybe I will forget how to write those three letters in that order, and so forget a bit of it. Every prayer concerning it I’ve put into bottles and hung from my tree.
I have lots of things on my tree. Empty bottles of wine, fragile teacups, shiny silver trinkets, sparkling baubles and things that glitter in the sunlight. I have carved things into its wooden skin; words and phrases and pictures and symbols like pale scars in the rough, dark brown hide. A heart is there, with my initials on one side and a plus sign in the middle and a blank space on the other side. I’ll carve someone else’s there when I find them. Even if I have to come back from miles away. I’ll go back to where I spent the longest and went through the most and was innocent and romantic and dark and fallen. The place my life changed forever. Many times. Where I longed so much for things out of my reach. I’ll come back and say to my ghosts, “See? It all turned out alright.” I’ll carve his initials next to mine, and a symbol of closure on the tree. My ghosts will play here, whispering in the branches and swaying the memories of the pretty things that once hung there, catching the light. They will float upon the roof and watch for shooting stars; easy, lucky, free. They will be at peace, because I’ve come back to tell them I’ve found my place. Life won’t be perfect, but I’m no longer lost. My ghosts will know that and rest. My tree needs a name. Something as sparkling and romantic and magical as it is. In some foreign language; something silver and glass and transparent colors. I love my tree.
And I like boxes. I like to hide things in them—little things—and forget about them so when I find them again and open them it’s like finding old friends. Once a boy brought me two turtle eggs he’d found in the woods. I put them in a tin box with some warm, wet tissues and shoved the tin to the back of my dresser. I don’t know how long it was until I remembered the eggs. Actually, to be honest, I didn’t even remember them by myself. I was being forced by maternal powers to clean my room, and I happened to find the box. Even then, I couldn’t remember what I’d put in it. I opened the lid. There was a baby turtle inside, scrambling around on his slippery metal floor, all lost and confused and shocked by the sudden light. The first light he’d ever seen. And I was the first face he saw. Not that it matters much with turtles, I guess. His brother egg was dead, but that didn’t make this one’s survival any less miraculous to me. I’d hatched a healthy baby turtle, almost completely by accident. There in the damp dark, where I’d left him forgotten, God developed his transparent claws, his quarter-sized shell, his soft, baggy skin, his tiny tail, and his efficient little beak with which he tore through the rubbery eggshell. And so, there in a metal box amid wads of soggy Kleenex and a miscarried sibling, a little life began and lived for days—possibly a week or more. He shouldn’t have been able to breathe; the box lid was sealed and secure. He had no meal to supplement his tiny strength after birth. It was certainly with no help from me, his negligent foster mother, that he survived. His ever-watchful, ever-loving Father cared for him. I named him Rocky and fed him wet dog food in a ten-gallon terrarium. He liked to sleep under dirt and peat moss, and when he was lethargic I would put him outside in the sunshine for awhile. Winter passed and Rocky stayed in my warm room, bypassing the normal hibernation practiced by the rest of his species out in the cold. When summer came again, I took him back out to the woods, to the pile of rocks where his egg was found. I admit I was worried about him; worried that he wouldn’t know how to survive in “the wild”. But as I walked back to my house after setting Rocky free, I remembered how God took care of him in the dark places when no one could see; when no one even remembered or cared. God would take care of him now, out in the sunny woods. And, because “are you not more valuable than many sparrows?”, God will take care of me too, in the dark places and in the sunshine.
I’m not going to pretend I’m at all unique or original in my thoughts and feelings. I’m not going to say that I don’t give a crap about what other people think or that I don’t base many decisions off of what I think they’ll think. To be honest, I think that anyone who claims not to care is lying. Not only are they lying, but they’re trying even harder than those who admit the influence. They want to seem cool and nonchalant, instead of being honest and real.
I’m not honest and real very often. Sometimes I am, I guess. It’s easy to be honest and real when I’m feeling pretty. When I feel pretty and I’m alone with my dog under three warm blankets with classical nocturnes pulsing from my CD player. Then I can gain some perspective. Then I can think about what a hypocrite I am. Because I am one, in several ways. All the time I think about the inherently sinful nature of man and how we have sunk lower and lower as time passes. About how many awful things are accepted in society; awful things like lying and cheating to get ahead. Or so easily breaking promises when things get rough. Physical and emotional abuse; the shame of the victim preventing the capture of the criminal. People screaming at each other over frivolous lawsuits on the Judge Judy show while lying under oath and it’s all so stupid stupid stupid and humbling because I know that I am human too and I think, “this is what I’m trying to ‘fit in’ with?” and it is all so simple for a second. Just one second, though, and with no words to shake it up; no words to figure it out with. But I keep trying and I ask myself why I’m so afraid of these people. Why I worry what this corrupted, broken culture will think when I blurt out something stupid. I stopped wearing miss-matched socks to impress this twisted world view? This is why I tried to lose weight? This is why I’m embarrassed to admit that I want to foster exotic animals someday? This is why I bought that Rammstein album (don’t get me wrong; they have some great music. But still.)? And I shake my head at how pathetic I am, caring so much about what others think when I’ve always wanted so much to be independent. So then I try to remember not to care. To live fearlessly.
But somehow I remember that it’s Sunday or Monday or Tuesday or January or February or March and I’m only eighteen with so much ignorance of the world and a lot of work to do before life really begins…Somehow the futile monotony of the day-to-day dwarfs my eager resolve and I go back to how I was, just an hour—just a minute—before, and I despairingly wonder if I ever really can change for the better.
I know I’m dramatic. I’ve had two funerals for people who haven’t even died. So I indulge my despair for a bit, even though I know God will work things out. That He is good and will grant me the desires of my heart, and He will change me into whatever He wants me to be. I know that but it’s so hard to actually believe it all the time because I am so picky in my mind. I don’t want to get my hopes up, or to assume that things will go along with my plans.
Everything is such a fine line in my mind and I wish I could simplify it a bit, because such a deal of unnecessary stress would be relieved if I could. I know I over-complicate so many things, but I’m never sure of what I’m over-complicating and what is really complicated. I want answers. I want my work cut out for me; my decisions made for me. But it never is and they hardly ever are and so when it’s up to me I’m truly terrified because if I fail there is no one to blame but myself.
And often times, as soon as something I’ve always wanted seems to be within reach, I discover that it is exactly the thing I am most terrified of. For the one moment of awe, I think everything could maybe, possibly, finally be settled. Then I realize that it’s not; that my wish comes with a storm of uncertainties more violent than any I’ve experienced for quite awhile.
But when my stomach flips and I lose my appetite in the nervousness and my joints get sore in the stress and I’m so so tired but I can’t sleep, I try to remember that there are bigger things than this and ultimately it doesn’t matter and I’ll get through it and chalk it all up to experience; life lessons that couldn’t be learned any other way because I only learn through my own mistakes and maybe I’m a masochist and I just don’t know it. Or I’m afraid to admit it. But I’ll figure it out and hopefully do fewer and fewer stupid things as I get older, until I’m wise enough to live but old enough to die. Because that’s how it works.
And it’s ok with me, I guess. If others benefited from my life in some way, it’s ok that I’ll never really figure anything out. Even when I’m right in the element, when I’m in a little cemetery in an old churchyard, I still don’t quite get it. I lay down on a grave, my head at the tombstone and my face to the sky, and thought about the person beneath me, separated only by earth which we all become eventually and from which we were made. Dirt to flesh to dirt again and my flesh touched the dirt which touched the dirt-flesh of a departed soul who had once had a life and a personality and problems and dreams and maybe some of the answers that I am missing, and we’re connected. I read her name and the dates that summarized her life so incompletely into eight numbers and a dash, and repeated them in my mind as I lay there. But still my mind didn’t wrap around the magnitude of the concept. I stayed until I could feel the grass pressing intricate designs into my skin. I stayed to see the sun set from the corner of my eye. I stayed to let a chilly evening wind pull the blood from my fingers and toes and still I knew I didn’t understand.
Maybe it was my state of mind at the time, or the weather or the city-smell beyond or the spirits haunting the graveyard that clouded my thoughts. Whatever it was, I rose to my feet and returned to the sidewalk, wishing I’d had more time and hoping that someday something would click in my brain.
But maybe I’m not supposed to understand that kind of thing. That realization of eternity and who was and who will be, in myself or in others. Even those deceased. Because if I understood I would be satisfied and my quest would end. My walks in the woods and in graveyards, searching through the Psalms and Proverbs and reading Revelation over and over and over again, climbing out on the rooftop at night to try to see--really see—the depth of the stars and the sky and the infinity of the universe. The mystery and the romance would be gone and I would have nothing left to look for and then where would I be and what would I do?
And besides, answers don’t usually come from the sky, or from lying above a corpse. They often times come from other people; and by choice, my social scope is small.
But lately I’ve been feeling restless, like something will happen; like something needs to happen. So many times I feel myself tapping my foot and my attention span is growing shorter and shorter and shorter and there’s not much I can do to make any tides turn in my life.
So I’m branching out. I’m thinking about meeting new people. Thinking about it is a start. I’ll think about it in a crowded room and imagine many different scenarios, just in case. By the time I’ve gotten the fear under some form of control, it’s time for me to go home or to Algebra or to the barn and I don’t mind because facing my fears isn’t exactly my favorite thing to do.
I’ll get around to it someday, though. Because as much as I feel like vomiting when I meet new people, sometimes I need new people in my life. It isn’t like I don’t love the old ones. I do. But sometimes the undiscovered souls out there intrigue me and my curiosity starts poking holes in the bubble of fear clogging my throat. When it’s deflated enough and I go on the hunt for a kindred spirit, it’s like breathing cold, fresh air through a sore throat when you have a fever. It’s extremely uncomfortable to do, but once it’s done you feel refreshed and revived. Unless you inhale a dust bunny. Then you choke and hurt yourself. That’s what happens when you are getting to know new people and you say something stupid or rude by accident.
Even if the initial meeting does go well, though, there’s always a lot of risk involved in building relationships of any kind, of any depth. Sometimes it’s worth it. Sometimes it isn’t. I’m always afraid that it won’t be and then I decide that I’m happy here, surrounded by who I know and what I know and my routine and I can endure the occasional restless spell cause that’s not nearly as bad as stepping off the edge of a cliff without knowing what’s at the bottom.
I have dreams that I do, though. Wonderful dreams in which I’m full of courage and dive straight into danger and mystery like I’ve always wanted to be able to do in real life. He reached out his arm; where are we going? A cold grip pulled me from the light. Stabbing ivory, my angel’s kiss, the pain so much better than any pleasure I’d known. Beautiful, biting, burning it spread through blood and marrow and bone. My piercing nightmare, my sweet maze of black, intoxicating ebony liquor, customized for my addiction. So pleasing the dream, so lovely the sting, that living is no longer enough. So rise and burn and freeze, my love. No one else will do. Watch me close with hooded eyes, and I’ll pretend you’re real. That you are more than a spark in my brain; than the broken fragments of my sanity.
Even the melancholy dreams are sweet; a healing balm on my short-circuiting brain. Tranquil dreams, even though they may stir an enigmatic sadness in me. Listen; I whisper, wait for me. Wait for me, Beauty. Wait for me, Hope. Wispy things, melted with the dew of morning. Melt me, Sunshine. Drink me, Dry Earth; for my dreamy pixies have gone where I can’t follow. And Romance is sleeping, an eternal rest as ink on a page that will never be mine. They inspire me, these dreams. They make me want to be a scribe—to write beautiful things that stir others’ souls like mine has been stirred.
I don’t know what to write sometimes though, so I put my pen to the page and just let it move, sliding along the paper in shapes that please my fingertips to form as they guide the ball point. I like the way it feels, the subtle roll of the ball and the way it leaves black lines in its wake, my code down on paper forever. Usually I can feel the buildup of words in my hand; behind my fingers, waiting to flow out, but sometimes I don’t know what they are. They’re there; I know they are but I just can’t identify them and I want so badly to put them down on paper but I can’t, and I feel almost like an addict desperately in need of a fix. And there’s nothing I can do except wait.