If we have a personal big bang in our lives, ten years ago was mine. There was before July 15, 2014; and there was after. Though sometimes it’s hard to believe there was ever a before.
It was only the following day when a storm blew through Lewiston, New York; July 16, 2014. Eventually a double rainbow broke through and the sun set over Art Park. None of this is lost on me. Not the storm, not the rainbows, and not where I was. A town called Lewiston. A concert by the Niagara River. Just one day into a new life I was wildly unprepared for, and the synchronicities were already pouring down on me like the water from the sky.
Synchronicities? Premonitions? Signs? I shudder at those words. So, coincidences, right? My life is a steady flow of one coincidence to the next. To believe otherwise cost me my shoelaces and my sanity. Of course you’d have to know the other side of the coin to catch my drift. Or maybe it’s the same side, after all. I suppose that remains to be seen. Maybe it’s only in death I’ll know for sure. I think that’s my biggest fear. It’s always the unknown that gets us.
I’m not here to be called crazy. Been there, done that; as they say. And I’m not here to tell the story of the last decade of my life either. For as much as I’ve shared, I assure you I’ve barely scratched the surface. But why did I stop writing? Why did I stop sharing? Well, I no longer had the courage to gift ammo like an early Christmas present. Fear took hold in ways I’ve long been keenly aware of. Yet it never made a difference. Fear of failure. Fear of irrelevance. Fear of vulnerability. Fear of my words being used against me—again. And fear, of course, of judgement. No, it didn’t make a difference knowing any of that. It was something beyond writer’s block, something beyond exhaustion.
The bottom line is that it’s not time to tell this story. I’m not ready. I’m not the only one involved, or the only one who got hurt. My big bang was the fundamental awareness of another person, an existence that’s hovered over me for ten cruel and beautiful years. Sound insignificant? You have no idea. Needless to say, I didn’t handle it very well. But I did the best I could with what I had, what I knew, and with who I was. I did the best I could considering. Considering what? Well, I’ve left crumbs in previous writings. I wrote a novel. But the truth is, I’ve often feared sharing any more would be career suicide. Of course I don’t have a career. And I’ve been unsuccessful with suicide.
I’m also not here to lead you down a rabbit hole, so I commend you if you’ve made it this far into this ambiguous tale. Because at the end of the day, I still have too many questions and not enough answers. Did what destroy me also save me? Does that remain to be seen, just like the coin? What good are wings when your feet are in cement? How bound is my soul to my body?
It’s like I was an addict, only it wasn’t drugs. But that’s how it affected my life and those in it. Friendships were lost and my life took turn after turn until I could no longer recognize it as anything I had ever dreamt of. There are still some nightmares I wish I could wake up from.
But amor fati, that’s the motto I try to embrace, the one that’s long been written on a note above my desk. Love of fate it means in Latin. “Life happens and we accept it,” reads another note. “Experience and let go,” says a third. Why continue to resist the flow of the present, of the future, because of what happened in the past?
In lieu of any personal details, please forgive another analogy:
When you’re inside a tornado, you can’t see what it looks like from the outside. You sense it, but the scope of the damage isn’t clear until the dust begins to settle. And those on the outside, they may feel the wind, they may even get knocked down a time or two, but there’s no way for them to truly understand what it’s like inside. It’s only your tornado. We all have our own.
It’s easy to say that time heals all wounds, but the truth of it is, you don’t get to the other side of the tunnel without walking through it, no matter how much time has passed. In the past decade, I spent the first five years being thrust into my spiritualty. The latter five was getting a grip on my mental health. It was nearly a fatal combination. But chances are, it likely saved my life.
When I look at the photograph of me in Lewiston on July 16, 2014; I want nothing but to protect that girl, the one who just turned 25, staring stoically at her mother during a brief break in the rain. How unaware she was, how naïve, that the feeling she had felt the day before, that feeling of familiarity when she saw an unfamiliar face, would come to change the course of her life. She, nor her mother taking the photograph, had any conscious clue of what was to come. It was only a feeling, an inkling of the biggest shift, the biggest bang.
Of all the realizations this experience has given me, here’s the latest: You can spend your life waiting for forgiveness, for compassion, for any semblance of understanding. You can live your life in a sweltering bubble of guilt and shame. And you can spend your life waiting for someone to love you the way that you love them. Day after day after day, and then you’re dead. And what did you leave behind? A life spent waiting. Eventually you need to take your life off hold. Easier said than done, I know. But here’s to trying.
toys of the sun 