“…just because someone is eating the ashes of your protagonist doesn’t mean you stop telling the story.”
― Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows
In the past, especially in the last few years, some part of me has felt like my body is broken, like pushing it will cause everything to combust or fall apart right then and there. Stagnancy has felt more comfortable and familiar. Not exerting myself, and giving into my fears, has felt more known, more in my (perceived) control. The fear of not succeeding at relationships, of being seen failing, of not knowing what the outcome would be kept me from moving toward new beginnings, for many years, in many ways — ways that still linger under my skin at times, teasing impossibility and making the belief in possibility feel too vulnerable, like the desire is dangling over a cliff and in order to reach it, I need to jump and trust. I want to jump and trust – but the irony is, I’m afraid of heights.
I can’t think of anything that’s been harder for me than letting love in since R. left. I mean really letting it in — in the crevices I’d rather leave unseen by anyone but me, in the nooks I’m sure would make someone turn the other way, in the cracks I’m certain are better camouflaged as being full. But it’s never all or nothing. Letting people in — I mean really letting them in — is still so hard to fully feel safe doing. To trust. To let go.
Somehow, it has always felt safer to be alone. It has felt safer to keep people on the edges of me while craving being seen at the center. Or to seemingly overshare and prove myself worthy – of what? Love? Belonging? Forgiveness? Being human? It has felt safer to isolate before being hurt, to give give give instead of needing. It’s felt safer to be in a position of holding space, where reciprocal relating isn’t required. It’s no wonder I’m a writer at heart. It’s no wonder I’m good at holding space at my job for other people. I’ve grown and (shape)-shifted so much, yet I long for more people in my life to share my full self with. And I grieve for past versions of me who didn’t yet know she was worthy of that. I remember being a teenager and feeling a sort of friendship with my notebooks and journals, feeling like they somehow understood me, like there was room for all of me. I think this is why I turned to writing. The blank page was always there. It wouldn’t leave if I said what was true, or if I didn’t show up the way others wanted me to. It wouldn’t judge if I was awkward or quiet or shy. I couldn’t push it away and it couldn’t abandon me. I love a passage in Jeanette Winterson’s “Oranges are not the Only Fruit” and think about it often, because it describes my childhood so incredibly well: “In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn’t change halfway through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie” This is why I value honesty so much, from other people and from myself. It is still so hard to do sometimes. But I’m doing it anyway.
© Sandra Berger 2023-09-10