I
know. Maybe one day it’ll actually reach me.
It was almost my last night at my parents’ home for a while, and I
was standing on the reed-tanned floors, wrapped in a red blanket as the sleek
white snow illuminated by the Christmas lights seemed to seep into my cold
bones.
My dad had told me he loved me, and that he hoped I knew how
deeply and unchangingly. I appreciate that. And as much as my father is so, so
human, I knew I was blessed to know that he meant it.
Because know it? I did.
Yes
Dad, I do know. Maybe one day it’ll actually reach me.
Earlier, I’d been perched on the edge of the hotel room’s 80s lime
green armchair. It was past 10 PM, and both him and my mom were there. We’d
come—come from me taking a final walk across my college campus with my sister
as she now graduated and we were both alum, a walk that symbolized much more
than just the diploma she carried. Then after that walk to a table talking with
relatives, some who hadn’t actually talked to me in over seven years. All the
while, I was coming to terms with the goodbyes and endings—to friends, to
someone who soon would be no longer would be the couple everyone made us out to
be, to a life I could have had.
I was coming to terms.
Dad,
I’m distanced.
I had gone camping two months before this hotel conversation. I
was about four miles up a Smoky Mountain. Asthma making my lungs feel like they
needed to be stretched for they were cramping and compressing, a nose and eyes watering
from the pollen, my mind could see more clearly: that—striding across a literal
mountain—I was strolling through a mountain inside myself. Lights flicked on
inside, and I later called my mom: it’s like I have this box. This big, white
box is in front of me. I stuff things inside of it. Feel something that I don’t
like? Stuff it in the box, keep moving on. It’s great, sometimes. But the box
is ravenous, taking the joy and the pain. It’s always there, and it’s thick,
and I can’t get around it, even when I want to. It’s three feet deep, separating
me from anyone. I see people, but they’re at arms’ distance, just out of reach.
Maybe
one day it’ll actually reach me.
It came out twice again. I had driven with her to soccer, to play
on a team that I had signed up for but had now checked-out of my own life to
such a degree that I couldn’t do more than stand on the sidelines. Maybe, it
really was a metaphor to how I feel that I am on the sidelines of my own life,
something I’m supposed to be participating in but I stubbornly am standing by,
arms crossed feet planted, unmoving. On the way back, she asked me questions.
Deborah,
tell me when you think you actually did something “good enough”?
I couldn’t.
Every crazy circumstance she had to remind me which others reacted
with “Deborah, you did what?!” I always had a counter to. Yes, but people
didn’t know this. Yeah, they thought it was great, but people just set the bar
way too low. Sure, people said I surpassed their expectation, but they don’t
know what it could have been like if I just would have gotten it together a
little more.
She said it, then, near the end, after my frantic stream of
consciousness that I hardly had ever let anyone in on to know that fully
before.
Deb,
I’m not even going to say that you’re too hard on yourself anymore. It’s more
than that. You don’t know what your worth.
And I put it in the box.
Shut, door, lock, key, chains, seven layers back inside my head. I
had to do math. When something strikes a chord, deep down hard, I do math. I
add 2 + 2. It’s 4, and 4 + 4 is 8. I did this in the bathroom stall one day at
work, and I got to over 2,000. This is what happens when I’m at the breaking
point about to lose control, and I do it to reel it back in. To keep from
having to go that deep. To keep the tears that so often just can’t seem to come
from emerging.
We talked again, last night. I’d let a pretty major thing about my
past just drop, and it didn’t get tossed around and come out in a better place
like usually happens in our conversations. It dropped. And landed. Heavy. She’d
left soon after, and I was left knowing something was up. She brought it back
up later that night, and I sat, white and grey blanket up to my chin, hair up
in a bun. We talked of real trust and directness, of fear and failure. I’d read
her something, at the end, something deeply steeped in still-yet-processing.
Deb,
you’re really good at writing.
I stared back at her, and then said the words I’d trained myself
to know should come after such a statement, even when they are not in my mind
or heart.
Thank
you. And this time, with her, I let myself add it, a little sliver
closer to the truth. Maybe one day I’ll
believe it.
I love you. Maybe one day
it’ll reach me.
You’re worth something. Maybe
one day it’ll reach me.
You’re good at this. Maybe
one day it’ll reach me.
I think maybe, now, all I can reach is this: that in order to
reach true, free life, I have to be reached by the One who exists far beyond
me. And maybe realize He’s always been reaching for me.
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I definitely don't want this to be a monologue. What are your thoughts? Questions? Ideas?