There is so much past to troll through, so much promise and pain. So much John Denver and Mr. Future and the elegance of moments. They glimmer, bioluminescent so I can track them as soon as they move in the darkness. But I still have to live the here and now.
I still have to make it to the imaginary finish line I’ve set for myself. I still have to know the body, know the ol’ girl who has brought me here, and the pains and the softness she holds in this moment. This moment and no other. It’s not helpful to try and paste the way things once were onto what my heart holds now. Especially not when so often I was trying to run back then, run like hell into a wilderness that seemed so close but was not accessible. I had to convert street lights and traffic standstills into forests and treacherous rivers. I had to take what I could get.
And now I have so much, and I’ve been away so long from the gate to faerie that it all feels unnecessarily desperate. Some of it is the power of Lexapro. The ongoing tapering process for the medication has left me almost instantly aware of my need to write. To offload what I formerly couldn’t feel. Now, I have opinions and jagged thoughts and creative vices and a hunger for the old quickness in every realm where I can stuff it. It is taking up room in me again. Which has lead to the resurrection of this blog. And frankly is making me quite nervous. In a good way? In a nervous way.
I don’t have cars in the road to terrify me. I don’t have that reason to be medicated. But I do have, right behind me, bells and ribbons tied to my ankles that keep me so reminded of my griefs. The loss of so many solidly known knowns. A mother sitting on the couch, watching the Weather Channel or MSNBC, in a silence, in a pain, in an indescipherable state that a daughter daren’t to know. A father sitting in a chair, watching the same, making notes on a list he will one day cross off, but not just yet. Sisters swimming around, orange and black streaks in the otherwise still koi pond of our family life. That is gone from me.
America, broken and bloodied and busted up and with shame on her face, that too, is in the aether. It *is* like any other shared delusion affirmed now and again by a stranger, but I have to hold a faith in it that singes me if I ever dare to clutch it close. It isn’t underfoot. It isn’t being fed to me. It is starting to feel like a story I invented, its irrationalities obvious. This is my home, my knowing, where almost every memory and person who matters to me is and I almost forget it.
So the here and now needs words, but so does the past. The animal calling words made just for me and thee. I won’t forget what was. I promise I will be a faithful light.
