I am reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. As I continuously recognize the magnitude of trauma through the story of others, I close the distance gaps between mine and me.
There’s a line in the book about how a human being could be so thoroughly bifurcated, and that has haunted me ever since.
Is that what I was (am), bifurcated?
And much more specifically not just from my other half, an other half, but from my personality, my soul’s essence. It’s heartbreaking to even write. As the truth seeps inside my skin and takes root.
I recognize, that I recognize the magnitude and then it disappears before my very eyes like the proverbial bird in the magicians cage once the cloth has been drawn back.
Each day a blank canvas in the way that only a survivor can understand, as if nothing has ever existed before. The only thing holding a human life together at times is the glue of the people around them, who they hold shared experiences with. I’ve taken for granted that hallowed glue, and yet I haven’t.
I have known how important and this knowing led me to rush desperately, or maybe it was the trauma and not the knowing that caused that, and to create these unions out of a place of desperation.
See what I do there? How I take responsibility for things I couldn’t possibly be responsible for. But then how does one figure it all out anyway. What is theirs and what is not theirs and what is fair has no place in the realm of humanity. Because things are simply not fair.
Fair is a striving if anything, it is not granted by some mystical or even judicial force, and it’s certainly not a perfect system.
Rather these days I think what is the lesson, and the lesson is always love. Not in simply a romantic sense but an all encompassing one.
Is material like this this so relatable because of my many life experiences and similarity or some divine force that has me connect with exactly what is needed at the time?! Both.
Do I bore you going on and on and answering my own questions in your presence? I cannot attach to that it isn’t my business anyway if you’re bored or not. And besides what do I always say?! You’ll never be bored. I’m not boring and my life is certainly not, though it can be quiet and peaceful now.
I’m learning to allow that.
Anyway this book and watching This is Us for the first time, has me breaking open daily.
There’s something about watching two people sharing life together that want their children that work hard at loving them well, that well just flays me open.
No surprise there.
Watching a father love his children and do his best, and the same for a mother. And how they balance their dreams and their own desires with that.
And how fucked up my path looks in comparison, which is why we don’t do that.
If I look at my life individually the whole story it’s so much easier to see the beauty in it. Watching families who love each other and have traditions and traditional anything just sets my skin aflame like the emotional burn victim I am.
Do you see my scars?
This book though. This show though.
Piece by piece I’m collecting me and I’m putting together a self that has all her original essence, from all the shards.
It’s slow.
There is no longer a rush. It’s slow and beautiful. Everything is art. Every meal cooked and eaten. Every dark thought banished by compassion.
This book opens me. My clients open me. Life opens me. It’s exquisite and excruciating and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
A continual surrender. A cease fire on myself. And finally burying my armor and replacing it with something realistic, something lighter…..
C