let everything happen to you
Why I Write | Terry Tempest Williams
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A "Ha" and An Exhale
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I pause at a stoplight, hands at the 10’ and 2’ and it hits. Not a moving vehicle housing an unaware driver (thankfully), but sadness.
The words of Miranda July repeat softly with the in-breath that follows; “All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life—where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.”
It is the third year in a row with no “happy birthday”. Blood is thicker than water echoes at the forefront of my mind with a “ha” and an exhale. Whoever decided that that idiom was a true representation of an impenetrable familial bond had little idea of the contrary. Water can be pretty damn thick.
Five days before I turned twenty-four I received several spit-fire messages from my dad. Out of the blue, without a trigger-warning or causation. It had been months since we'd spoken (about eight or nine) and about two decades of nonexistent emotional relationship. The last year or so of events became the turning point in finally severing and (emotionally) removing any blood-binding relations we most certainly share. I think of the DNA splitting itself apart; I visualize animated slides of a molecule binding and separating, causing some sort of chaos in the reaction, yet the singular molecule survives on its’ own. I’m left with a brain in my skull and a heart beating in my chest that bears no resemblance to his.
I demand respect.
You need medication so you can learn how to actually be around and get along with others.
You’re clueless to what real life is like.
Grow up and experience hard times. You don’t know what true suffering is. I need you to grow up and experience the real world, you pitiful little brat.
I imagine this is what many, many people do when they’re embarrassed, vulnerable, angry, and aggressive—they’re in pain. And what’s the easiest, easiest thing to do to alleviate that pain? Push and pull it into the false refuge that is displacement and pour it out onto others. I know this to be true because I've done it myself. Shamefully, sadly, but truthfully. But that scene of message after message, the maelstrom of emotion and words and adrenaline (all the while at a coffee shop trying to write and send out my writing) made me think on my past reactions in relation to his; the ticking bomb, the hidden land mine that is my father, and me, the solider in battle on the front-line knowing it can go one of two ways.
My reactions and displacements similar to my father's ceased at the exact season in my life when I began to love and accept my humanness, with all my flaws, and endure my proclivity of a harsh and judgmental mind. I learned to feel it all. I felt so much pain in so many of the meditations, mental and physical manifestations, that I thought I would not be able to continue. But I did. I did. My back would swell so much that lying is savasana sent radiating splints all over my body.
Eula Biss writes, “Assigning a value to my own pain has never ceased to feel like a political act. I am a citizen of a country that ranks our comfort above any other concern. People suffer, I know, so that I may eat bananas in February. And then there is history . . . I struggle to consider my pain in proportion to the pain of a napalmed Vietnamese girl whose skin is slowly melting off as she walks naked in the sun. This exercise itself is painful.”
I think of the girl too scared and worn to get out of her bed—her eyes sunken, glazed over; her sight hazy and spotty as an off-shoot symptom; her clothing loose as she can’t manage to eat anything more than kefir yogurt or amber colored soup. Yet she wears makeup and fixes her hair and wears nice boots because “doing so will make you believe you are okay,” she is told. And it works in some regard, but never enough to lift the brick off her chest that dissipates every belief that she will somehow survive this feeling of despair.
In The Faerie Queene it is transcribed that despair is the worst sin man can commit as it denies the mercy of God. Despaire was the personification of man’s worst fate, a transgression of every guiding thought that led man and woman far from the light of the Lord and into the deepest caves of mulling darkness. Once Despaire got a hold of him, the mired mind of the Redcrosse Knight couldn’t bear to believe that he was somehow worthy of this life. He couldn't fathom that his humanness was sanctified by God’s love and that he was precious and of value. Despaire’s own convictions were suddenly meddled with Redcrosse’s own voice, thoughts, and beliefs. Their declarations and thoughts were one in the same: hopeless, hopelessness.
If dread and despair are not synonymous with pain and suffering than I’m not sure how else to view the body and mind in the realm of connectedness—because that is exactly what they are: one interwoven and cohesive entity, one holy and heavy bone-house. Like family, like the blood and water in our bodies.
The pain of my father and his own demons, his own grim-reaping Despaire, is visible to me. The displacement, the reactions, the result of my own bodily reactions, the flooding of thoughts and threats in my mind. Pain. Past. Resurfacing, wading, sinking down again. Rating my pain against anyone else's is an injustice to humanity and to myself, as it lacks compassion and awareness to all living things who suffer in this realm.
The pain of my father and his own demons, his own grim-reaping Despaire, is visible to me. The displacement, the reactions, the result of my own bodily reactions, the flooding of thoughts and threats in my mind. Pain. Past. Resurfacing, wading, sinking down again. Rating my pain against anyone else's is an injustice to humanity and to myself, as it lacks compassion and awareness to all living things who suffer in this realm.
Losing the connectedness with my bloodline is an act of an exhale--taking it deeply within, pausing, holding it in, cherishing it for the nourishment, and finally, letting it go. For as long as I am alive the thickness of blood will move through me, the water, too. I need both to survive, but I don't need them in anyone else. I already have them here, at home, in me.