We’re 10 months into marriage and we decide to bare it all. We schedule a time. We sit down. And we share all of our trauma. All of our pain. All of our hardest memories.
He doesn’t run, in fact, he moves closer.
Afterwards, we walk around the neighborhood, hand in hand, and I realize that I don’t have any secrets left. He knows everything. I feel strange. Rung out. But lighter. Like I’m not holding it alone anymore.
This has been a year of healing. It’s amazing how much you have to recover from in this simple existence. Even mine, which has been arguably blessed. But that’s the truth that unites us all. There’s no escape from suffering. That’s what the Buddhists told us. If you’re human, you’re walking a certain path. One of love and pain and everything in between.
Here’s the thing about pain. Sometimes you don’t realize how many scars you have until you’ve accumulated them. Until they’re wrapped up neatly in your body, dictating your actions and reactions from within.
I’ve been trying to untangle.
I’ve been trying to rid myself of the darkness and walk ever closer to the light. I’ve seen that light. I know it’s there – always pulsing, always pulling us. We’re so good at turning away.
I imagine myself like a character in a children’s book. I stand in front of the scary monsters in the closet and I look them straight in the eye. I tell them that I’m not afraid. I stare and stare. I refuse to look away. In the void, their shapes soften. Their fangs shrink. They’re not monsters after all, teachers, even. I just didn’t see them clearly before.
I’m on a flight to a city. A place where I had only known self-destruction in the pursuit of pleasure. A place that forced me to examine how I coped. But 10 months have passed and I’m not the same. At least, that’s the bet I’m making on myself. I stare out the oval window at the clouds, and in that moment, a moment preceded by many moments before it, I feel something shift.
When I arrive, I experience the sensation of coming home to something. My friends greet me at the door. Big, full body hugs and smiles. It’s a friendship that has lasted through decades, something which has shocked us all. But it’s that passage of time which has made the friendship what it is now. Something stronger than choice.
Regardless, I’m scared to unveil this new version of myself. They say it’s hardest to change around the people who know you best.
But I’m reminded, as I will continue to be, that my emotions are more about me than them.
(There’s only love here, remember?)
In the mornings, I wake up with the sun, I make myself tea, and walk a few blocks to the yoga studio around the corner. On my way back to the AirBnB, I stop at a coffee shop. I drink coffee that’s usually too strong for my liking, but here it feels just right. I eat tortillas, purple and thick, pressed by a woman’s hands on the street corner. My friends and I sit by a fountain, with water misting our backs, shoving pastries into our mouths.
I think bread saved me. The way wild yeast turns into something nourishing. The way sourdough crust crackles beneath my thumbs when I squeeze a fresh loaf. It’s taught me that I can make that magic with my fingertips.
(Don’t you realize, my love, just how powerful you are?)
I’ve been saved by the stroke of a paintbrush in a bright color.
And the cold shock of the water as it rushes past my heart space.
By espresso in the late-morning. By recognizing that joy comes from my friend’s smiles and the feel of the air on the rooftop – not from what’s clinking in the glass.
I know that he saved me. By showing me that there were other ways to interact with life.
I don’t think I truly knew what life was until this year.
Until I stopped numbing, and started seeing.
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