It wasn't until I left tonight that I realized what I was trying to say. What I've been dying to tell you.
While anger was my access point, it is not the motivation. The same pathways can channel all sorts of force, now that they know where to go, right? There is something so profound about learning that my sword is available at any time, that I can protect myself when I need, that it starts to make parts of my armor unnecessary. I am no longer that girl, locked in the bathroom by her stepfather until she stopped sobbing, choking on my inability to use my voice, to defend myself. I can move freer and less hindered by my fears now, I can move from what I believe in NOT because someone else is able to hear me, but because I am listening to me- to my value system, to my boundaries, to my sense of safety and integrity, things I have learned how to cultivate since meeting you.
That is MY job. I listen myself into being.
In the same space, through this cracked filter, which in my mind resembles a muzzle, new and bizarre kinds of conversations and opportunities are finding me. After three years of being paralyzed on your floor, I have the capacity to allow myself to be immersed in these new situations. To commit to these opportunities even with the knowledge that they are going to change me, and that the work I do and things I create will be infinitely different because I am not too afraid to let that happen.
For the same reason I can declare my boundaries, I also have felt incredibly compelled to tell you how much you mean to me. But I am terrified that expressing something so huge would change some crucial aspect of our subtle relationship, that the weight of my love might be more than you are willing or interested in bearing. I know how much support you have offered, even just the gentle baseline of your presence has had a powerfully sustaining affect on me as I navigate huge internal shifts.
I couldn't voice any of this, because there is apiece of me still locked in the bathroom, and I would merely choke and cry in the attempt, so I let my opportunities pass.
Last week a friend really pinned me down in a conversation about my relationship with the idea of strength - it is something I am terrified of not being, the opposite of which is hard for me not to associate with weakness or helplessness, my two biggest nightmares. As we tussled with Strength and unraveled the knotted bundle of my associations with the word, I discovered that to me, strength is tied up with the idea of not needing help, and deeper still, my mother's entire existence is wrapped up in convincing others to help her so she doesn't have to take care of herself. So I think underneath my fears of hoisting myself on you is the truth that if you did change something, if you pulled away with all of this information, that it would feel like some piece of the ground had disappeared from underneath me, and I don't know what I would do if that happened.
I don't really need anything at the moment, but I have all of these feelings, and I don't really know how to handle them, or what to do with them other than acknowledge their presence, along with all of the other things that have finally found their way to the surface.
Thank you. For being what you are. For breathing and speaking and thinking the way you do, and putting yourself in a position where someone like me could witness it. For listening in the keen subtle way that you do. For not apologizing about the space you take or the values you stand for. For being someone the scared little girl I used to be could watch for clues about other possible ways of being in the world. Thank you especially for being a witness while I worked through all that pain, I know it can't have been easy to watch - but I couldn't have done it alone. Everything is so different from when I first walked in, and you were a really important piece of that process.
I think its time for that little girl I used to be to go live in her own time, instead of haunting me like a ghost - it's my turn to be in this body.
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