Wednesday, September 6, 2017

The Long Fall (2016)

The Awkward Girl has Fallen. And it is rough.

They say love is a battlefield, but I've lived my life on a battlefield. When I close my eyes and I think of my past, I see flares of red and flashes of grey, hear the echo of screams and violence as dirt and flies around me.

Love, for me, even in its most simplistic sense, has always been war.

Those most basic relationships, those that shape us as we grow--father, brother, even sometimes mother--were bright beacons of siege for me from whatever age it was that I began to retaliate. I could not hit as hard, but I could find other weapons, and so I did. Fighting was in my blood. I was born to this.

Always, I am cautious giving people my past. There is a disconnect for those who hear these vibrant war stories and yet see before them, unassuming and (relatively) well-adjusted, myself. I keep them close, buried away and even forgotten, and yet no matter how I wish to escape them they drive me in everything I do. They burn hot within; over time I became a forge, glowing and searing, but hardened.

I was sharp, even as a child. I knew our "normal" was not what the world saw. I grew quickly to resent this insanity that I fielded each and every day. People confessed to me their troubles and I marveled what it would be like, to have such a trivial existence. For such trials to be all-consuming. I did my best to understand, but, mostly, I envied them. The violence in their lives was slaps and pinches; for me, bombs fell. Lights dimmed with the vibrations of distant explosions and I slept my nights in fear.

I had two faces: Life required one, and War required the other. Where violence and threats and fear became trivial to me, outgrown, I learned the damage of psychological warfare. And I thrived on it, in the most pitiful sense. It was exhausting, and bizarre, but over time I became good at it. I pushed back against the physical worry, daring them to touch me, seeing how far I could go before hands closed around my throat. Smaller and more delicate I might have been, but something more surged in me. I would not bow or be cowed. I might be bruised and damaged, on those times I pushed too hard, but my forge glowed with the knowledge that I had more than them. I could See them, for what they were, and I could strike down with my knowledge. Those beasts of war may froth and rage, but at the end of the night, they have made nothing of themselves.

I struck my blows, but blows were struck back, whether I wished it or not. One day someone discovered shame. Perhaps I was the one who discovered it for myself, relating some gory detail or another of my day-to-day. Somehow, I learned Shame, and Shame drove me. Shame of my family and the strange life I lived. Shame from my family, of who I was, how I thought, every detail of my existence from my musings to my developing body. I fought hard and struck true wherever I may, but wounds had been inflicted and bled freely.

One day, I woke up.

I never said a true goodbye to this lifestyle. I simply hung up my battered armor and my weapons and I avoided my eyes in the mirror, and I walked away.

Those stories I envied, the ones others could so easily relate to, that is what I wanted. I could no longer ridicule these people who existed in the real world. It was no longer a victory, what I did. I was tired, I had fought to no end, and now I wanted to be able to sleep at night without fear. I wanted to be able to look at myself without Shame.

These things followed me, however, and follow me still. I smile and I listen and I, for once, believe that I understand the stories others tell me. Yet still when I close my eyes the flashes of war haunt me.

They trailed along as I tried to make my own relationships out in the world. People have read about them--superficial and silly. I didn't understand them at the time and I scoff at them now. Something in me craved closeness, but, as always, that Shame rode up in me. I found men who pushed me away, validating this. I convinced myself it was my error. I found men who loved me, hard. I convinced myself it was their mistake.

All along I carried within me something cobbled together from the stories; an idea of what might be true. I navigated the falsehoods every day. Those I fell for never lasted. They were ambiguous and unformed. Cold reality shone in, eventually, often too soon, and I found them lacking. I tried dating men more distant-- geographically, emotionally--but eventually still, one day I looked at them and I had the resonating, overwhelming realization that I had been faking them entirely. Not our relationship, but them, as an entity. I let myself be guided, at first, and, after time, I myself took the reins and I led them on a merry chase. Come with me and it will all make sense, I teased. Poor men fell and broke. Stronger men became distracted.

It was a game. It was a sweeter version of warfare, yet everyone left the field just as bloodied.

I loved it and I hated it, like an addiction. Something felt wrong at all times. Still, no matter how much I played; convinced myself to carry on and fight a little longer or laughed and disappeared in a puff of smoke, something felt off. That drive was there, as each brief fleeting opportunity fell around me. I shook them off and carried on, instinctive as an animal. All of it was wrong. I didn't know what would be right, but I knew that, when I met its eyes in the mirror, I would recognize it as an equal.

All metaphors and dramatics aside, I gave up on the idea of love. I gave up on it long ago.

In my mind I felt I knew what something like Love should feel like. I wasn't immune to it, after all. Maybe I had never found romantic love, but after I walked away from the wars and opened myself up, I found things that spoke to me about love. I loved my best friend. She taught me loyalty in strange fashions. I learned I could be angry at someone and still love them. I learned that fights are not an end.

I loved my dog, too, and I learned from that. I discovered what it was to trust someone to return to me. I understood what it was to never stop thinking something was beautiful.

Silly ideas, and odd, quilted together with romantic movies and novels and pieces of brief happiness here and there, but enough for me to design what I thought Love might be like.

Impossible, it began to seem. I wanted too much and what's more, I wanted some visceral connection. How could I list these requirements on OkCupid? I often found what I wanted on paper, but the connection was lacking. Or, some flickering interest, perhaps, but soon to wane.

And then, almost on accident, a stubborn fluke, I found it.

I won't delve into the rollercoaster that was that relationship from the beginning. I think, maybe instantly, though my cautious nature was slow to warm, I felt that spark that implied something deeper within us both. It was that hint of a spark that kept me going against all rationality for months, while I battled with uncertainty and confusion and hurt and resentment and still a bubbling, overwhelming desire to break through the coldness and find that brightness I had seen glimpses of. That is another story, one I have partly shared, and I wish to put it behind me.

What matters now is that my hardened forge is crumbling to ash. The horrifying realization is that what is left is not strong, as I have always seen myself. Brick and mortal and metal are falling and what is there, deeply buried, is human and soft and deeply, deeply vulnerable.

My envy has returned, for those who have experienced this before and learned to navigate it. I have not. Everything I feel is new for me, and wildly confusing. Sometimes I curl within the crook of his body, as I have done many times, and I feel ripped apart. I have missed out on these things. I have never learned what to do with the swelling sensations that bombard me. What can he see? I am a ship on churning, uncharted waters, terrified and elated, and when he asks me my thoughts I have nothing. I love him, I can say. Small words but my own, for once. Yet they mean nothing when I compare them to the beating in my blood. There is a new war within me, and I do not know how to fight it.

On occasion, when old habits rear their head and I become my old self rife with conflict and anger, I rise above myself and I look down at the woman I am now, and I feel so terribly sorry for her. She screams and she lashes and she clutches to herself the falling pieces of the person she once was, because she is terrified. Had she known that to love someone meant such vulnerability, she might have ceased her seeking ages ago. This woman, small and fierce and much too proud, does not understand what this all means, and in her blinded fear she reacts with violence.

But the violence and terror die down. Each time they flare, they are a little less certain. Because in this crook of his body, so simple and quiet, she finds a strange peace. I don't think she knew what it was, for a long time. She hadn't tasted of peace before.

But now that she has, and found what it means to take rest and comfort, I know she'll continue to seek it out.

I look down at her, sometimes equally frightened, but I wish that she will find the calm she has been searching for.

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