For Her, the Woman I Didn't Know I Was, and for You
Woke up this morning and walked into my kitchen. Straight to the sink like always, all Bambi-legs and heavy-eyelids. Did the dishes from the night before in a half-awake, half-dreamlike daze: my favorite time to lather and wash and rinse. Doing something with your hands helps ease it. Sat down on my living room sofa and continued to breathe. Felt it. Eyes closed, in and out, until I made my way, forehead on the ground, to my knees. Asking for direction. Welcoming the push and the pull that would take me where I was needed. Pleading for release. I know now that it’s necessary.
Woke up this morning (yesterday morning, the morning before, the morning before that), felt like there was so much inside of me that I might burst, so much that it might ooze out of my earlobes waiting in line for my coffee. Worried that people were staring, that they could see right through me, that they were looking at it. Worried that it might shatter the chest cavity.
Woke up this morning and felt it like I’ve always felt it. I’ve laid with it through years of mornings, let it tighten and swirl, make a nest in the afternoons. Scribbled lists and notebook entries and wrote essays until I heard birds chirping, put my hands over my ears, squeezed my eyes shut, patted its head to ease its whimpers. Shh baby. It's okay. We'll be alright.
I know this feeling, but I couldn’t place it then. Didn’t have space for it, then. Used to smash bottle after bottle over my head, dying to find its message. Couldn’t ever quite get my grasp right... Just knew there was never enough, never enough, never enough. How do you fill up what’s not empty?
I knew this feeling, but I didn't know what it would take for me to crack open wide enough, for it to have enough room to breathe. To flow through me nice and easy. In and out. Soft enough to compare to a stream; strong enough to break gates down and flood streets. Didn’t know the places I’d run to try to outrun it. The words I’d have to hear, over and over and over again, before I’d make peace with it: too much, too intense, too serious.
Didn’t know what I know now, that hearing those words just means they don’t feel what I feel: something vibrating beneath the sidewalks in every grid-locked city. Don’t see what I see: magic in each timeslot, in each action, in each key tap. The synchronicity, the serendipity, the reasoning. The depth. The meaning. And that that doesn’t make them less worthy.
I didn’t know how much it would take to tolerate it. Accept it. To respect it. Honor it, even. Mornings after mornings after mornings of surrenderings. Of bruised, knobby knees. Awkward ankles and angles. Of sleepless pleading. I need you, I need you, I need you. Didn’t know who I was speaking to, just knew that I’d made a commitment. Keep becoming.
Only one that didn’t leave me feeling caged up and suffocated and gasping. Banging on the holding cell door for someone to come let me out, even if just for a moment. Only one that felt like a filling-up-and-overflowing, instead of a draining. There were too many days where I felt the bullet hole through the center of my own eyes, leaking all my own blood out and onto the black sheets. No more of that. No more loneliness. No more longing.
I know now that all those nights, I was just speaking to me. So much inside that I might burst, scatter a couple more pieces of myself here and there and there without stopping to wonder whether there was enough left for anyone or somewhere else. Left for me. Too much, too intense, too serious. Leave their tongues thirsting for more, more, more right in the next breath. Lapping up the last drops. Wanting to suck their words right back up.
So much that the record player just keeps playing the same song, over and over and over on repeat: Need More Time. Knowing that the rhythm's right, but the words are all wrong: enough, enough, enough. So much that it might shatter the chest cavity. Shh baby. It’s okay. We’re alright. Almost wishing it would.
"I'm going to make everything around me beautiful. That will be my life." -Elsie de Wolfe
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*beautiful portrait photography by June Chara