Day 106: The Shape of Pain

It's funny, the things that make your heart break.

No.  Bad.  Try again.

It's not funny.  It's achingly sad, and brutal, and it makes your chest hurt and your eyes constantly fill with tears.

It's not funny.

But it's funny, anyway.  Because you never know what the final straw will be.  The one that breaks not your back, but your heart.  Mine came because someone I admired turned out to be a child rapist.

I could have said that more gently, couldn't I?  Been less shocking, or eased into it or something.

But what would be the point?  No matter how gently I said it, the fact remains.

People rape children.

And maybe, if that were all, I could contain it.  But there is an avalanche of bad in this world, and I cannot stop it from crushing me right now.

People rape children, yes.  But grown women and men are raped every day, too.  And men are told they can't say no, because they always want it, and women are told they can't say yes, because that makes them worthless sluts.  Those in positions of power abuse and harass those that have no ability to defend themselves.  Black children are shot for playing with toy guns.  Black men die in police custody.  Sheriffs create their own personal concentration camps in the name of the county they serve.  Latinos are told they're lazy, job-stealing moochers, thugs and rapists.  Latinas are fetishized and molested and told they ought to be grateful because their brown skin means they are second class citizens.  Trans women--

I can't.  I can't right now.

Children who have grown up in this country find that their lives are in danger of being uprooted and cast to the winds.  People are dying from lack of basic healthcare in the wealthiest nation in the world.  Our children are taught that slavery was a type of immigration, and that Europeans negotiated for this land with the native populations.

Our rivers are growing more poisonous and our skies are filling with CO2.  We destroy our rainforests and our coral reefs and our wetlands, and our oceans are slowly emptying of life as we turn them into a toxic landfill.

Our leaders care only about retaining power, not about the people they are supposed to serve, and the people seem impotent and apathetic, to say the least.

I could keep going.  This is only a trickle of what could be said.  I could unleash a flood of words that burn like acid in the telling.

But the flood wouldn't wash anything clean.  So what would be the point?

Instead, I will tell you a story.

Last night I could not settle.  I knew I needed rest, but when I close my eyes...

When I close my eyes, I feel my heart bleeding, and I cannot bear it.

So I tried to distract myself.  Tried to soothe myself.  Tried everything I could think of.  And, at last, I turned on a guided meditation, and tried to fall into it.

I couldn't.  The sweet voiced man in the recording was trying to lead me to my inner spirit guide, but I never got that far.  As he was taking me down (deep, deeper... to a place where you can let it all go), I suddenly saw in my mind a small figure in black.  Not the brown-black of healthy human skin, or the rich, inky black of a beautiful velvet; but a sickly tar-black, that oozed and swirled in a vague human outline.

And I knew, in that instant, that this sick, black thing was a part of me.  And that I could either fear it, or I could accept it, but those were the only options. 

And if I feared it, it would rise up and becoming a thing that terrified me all my days.

So I opened my arms, and I pulled the sick black thing close to me.  And as I drew it closer I saw beneath the surface for a moment. 

I saw that it was just a child.  And it was scared, and sad, and so very, very broken.

And I cried.  In my meditation, but also in the real, living body that lay on my bed.  Because it hurt so much to try to hold that sad, broken part of me.

There was another me there.  She was made of light, and didn't even try to be human in shape.  And I knew she was there, and that she longed to help, but this isn't her place or time.  She cannot take primacy, not when my pain is so strong.

But she loves us both.  My conscious and my pain.  And she'll be there when we're ready to be more than this.  This weeping, tangled mass of thought and sorrow. 

I hope it won't be too long.