Glow

Around this time, for the past two years, I've experienced trauma. August and September, in many ways, have become months when the worst unexpected came true, bearing open my most vulnerable parts, and demanding courage and resilience that I didn't think was within me.

Trauma, like all things-that-happen, occur some Place--a physical location attached to the feelings.

I was very conscience of this Place, where last year's event happened. Often times, when I'm near this Place, I held my breath while I passed. Other times, I avoided it altogether. No matter what I choose, I am aware of this Place, reminded by the anxiety swimming in my stomach. I remember.

Tonight, as I sometimes do, I decided to pass this Place on my way home. I felt my feet slow from a city gait, to a southern slug, and then, they stopped. I stood in the exact spot that it all happened. Before, I didn't recognize the particular house it was near, or the split in the pavement--I just felt where it was in my heart, as if it was tied to an anchor and suddenly dropped into the center of the earth. I understood that it was here, where I was changed.

I stayed for a moment. I let the tidal wave of feelings wash over me: betrayal, anger, disbelief. The feelings was so palpable that I could taste them, and yet, the experience wasn't overwhelming. A breeze brushed my face. And almost as suddenly as I relived last year, I felt myself in the present. I smiled and I was OK.

While I still held feelings from before,  they were vague shadows of what they once were. I recognized that I had survived it. I thought, "could I be sure that this was the same place?" However, what I was really asking was "whether I was the same person who stood here before?"

And I am. I gave myself permission to recede into my surroundings, and reflect on exactly what allowed me to arrive at this moment feeling so strong. I understood that it was the tremendous quality of love in my life that beat back the haze of deep hurt from the past. Love saved me.

Love allowed me to ask and receive support from close friends for which I never believed brave enough to ask, or even rightfully deserved. Friends who generously offer their cars so that I can visit my parents; friends who run a distance races with me to support my personal goals, and then hike with me to re-visit my sacred, self-retreat spot; friends who apologize for being distant upon realizing that their resentful reaction to your happiness is wrong, and that it was on them to make amends.

Love allowed my family to show up during my hardest moments in surprising and unselfish ways; family who listened to private things of the kind I have never shared or believed that I didn't have the capacity to feel; family members who challenged their own confidence of their abilities to hold more and be more responsible for themselves, in light of witnessing my complete depletion. Family who reminds me that they love me everyday, and always have.

Love that returned me to the queer politics of love. A belief that inspiration and imagination are the only tools in our war arsenal; people who celebrate struggle, honor ancestors, and realize that lost campaigns can't take away laughter; communities who value the Beloved, practice integrity, and reject fear as reflex in which to live.

The promise of Love that inspired me to build the most loving romantic relationship that I've ever had with a partner who genuinely accepts all parts of me; a partner who asks to create trust with me everyday; a partner who possesses the kindest heart, held together by gentle bones, and holds me as carefully; a partner who is committed to transformation, dedicated to learning whether unconditional love exists and what it means, and who treasures working toward the hard parts of love, as much as the easy parts, because the reward of each other is so valuable.

The memory of Love let me surrender to the Ultimate Love. A deep, inevitable Love that gave me insight when I could barely open my eyes; trust when I didn't believe; and instill hope when I was drowning in my own morass. I followed goodness when doing so felt almost foolish.

A year later, there's no doubt that I've arrived and stayed in that Place because of Love. Thank you to all who made that Place more like any other, and a Place of my own power.

Emotional Memory

*Trigger alert: This post contains racially offensive language.*

Recently I had a very precious moment when how I related to myself no longer made sense. This moment didn't surface from a crisis, like a sudden spring of distress that rushed from underneath some deep, subterranean layers of myself. Rather, it was a quick, simple shift, which occurred like a switch turned on in a dim room. I had seen the collection of my experiences in one way, and now, here, I see them differently. The "this" became "that," with a snap of my fingers, and the most terrifying part is that it maybe the "that" was always so.

Several months ago I re-started therapy as part of my deep healing process. I originally began talk-therapy during college, once I had left home, but let it go as I discovered a "Sisters of the Yam" support group and meditation "spiritual community of friends" after graduation. I insisted, when I began to forge this new relationship with my current therapist, that my goal was to remember. I claimed that I couldn't recall significant events in my early life, and the fragments that I was able to unearth were the same traumatic stories that spooled on repeat from my mental library. I asked, "what happened to everything else?" I was certain that the anger that I discovered last year was a mask for a heap of repressed feelings, clawing through my memory cells to escape into reality. My mission was to re-construct my life by infusing it with new meaning. What was I missing?

Last month our time to call back my inner-child had finally arrived. I brought a college scrapbook to session, and prepared to talk about my Life. We began speaking about my family's brief time in Billings, Montana, when I was about four. We left after a year and a half, unwilling to tolerate the racially hostile town longer than necessary. I related how my parents advocated for me when another little girl of color called me a "nigger," when explaining why she refused to sit next to me during story-time, and how my parents became a kind of peace activists in their own struggle against racism for our family, and the few other families of color that resided there in the late 80s. I conveyed these memories with a passionate pride that I usually reserve for topics other than my childhood.

As the hour went on I had traced through grade school my mother's fierce support as I wrangled against racial stereotypes, chauvinistic boys, and other mistreatment levied on young, queer girls of color, which validated my intuitive sense of fairness. I remembered my father's commitment to public service, embodied by over thirty years in the federal government, and love of history, which imbued my sense of collective responsibility and the intellectual necessity for context. Most powerfully, as I conveyed much of my early life, I shared how both of my parents, unlike so many, offered me freedom to define myself and my world. I was told "yes" most of the time, and was better off for it.

At the end, my therapist made three observations. The first was that I shared happier memories--ones that made me sit-up and smile as I remembered them, and from which revealed seeds of myself that I like the most. Happy memories were a balance to the difficult times about which I relived during past sessions. Nodding. The second observation was that I actually remembered a lot. I had, in fact, shared a number of specific events, despite my claim that I had spanning gaps in my memory. Interesting. The last observation was that although I didn't remember many details about what happened to me--I mostly remembered how I'd felt at the time. Whoa. 

Within an instant, I was a repressed, intellectual who put in years of work to harvest my emotions into a revealed, feeler-of-a-person who had always had a strong, emotional antenna, but simply didn't know it. Such things beg the near-overwhelming, existential question: Who is this person?

I'm sure that there is a lot more to dissect from our little exercise, which I have not even begun to truly understand. I can say, however, that it was a great lesson about the ways in which how I relate to myself really creates my past, present, and future. It reminds me that I must be less of a finite being with history--a story filled with static paragraphs and punctuation--and more like a continuation of selves shaped by quirky moments--a living musical score with a vast divine orchestra playing "I" and "me."

It's sobering reality to sit in, for now.

You/Me

we draw lines, here and there

with our mind's eye, far and wide

your fingers feel warm

your hands are soft

but I don't notice these things

when we reach and touch

each other

continue into the surface, the seconds and the stars

as seamless as the universe

intended us to be

here and there

far and wide

this hand that you held

is the seed of other seeds

ones that ripened tens of years ago

yes, it may be that

my seed was never sown

into the earth, as intended

yet this once brittle seed of mine

survived wintertime

bracing and holding

lying still, here and there

patient passing, far and wide

a truth: I never understood

how to draw lines, of the real kind

jagged, sharp, thick

across to break, form negatives

collapse throbs, an echo through

when love must dry from the well

that we built with these bare hands

together

an end that was made

because this no-more

I could stand longer

scarcely more, than the other no-mores

a distant flickering light

you and me

here and there

far and wide

some days I wish for

solitude's escape

from the burden of the cold

as I inherit spring

remaining on the ground

a choice: should I loosen

to bear

piercing sun overhead? or

to receive

food from the watershed?

these cracks branched on my shell

are lines that belong, drawn

here and there, far and wide

now I see, you and me

continue in the wisdom

of choosing to exist

forever