Bag lady
You gone hurt your back
Dragging all them bags like that
I guess nobody ever told you
All you must hold on to
Is you
One day all them bags gone get in your way…
~ “Bag Lady”, Erykah Badu, Mamas Gun, © 2000 Motown
Today is an interesting day …
**sigh**
While I've known for some time that today was coming, I have not really been certain how I wanted to approach it. A few days ago, after a conversation, I
thought it would be easier to just begin writing about my feelings on this
day. Last night, however, I listened to
the above song and the ground fell out from under me. Allow me to clarify in that it wasn't a bad
thing. I've just been presented with an
opportunity to look at things from multiple angles. This day COULD be hard. It could be easy. It could be a mixture of fantastic and
terrible, nostalgia and/or heartbreak.
As thoughts begin to flow through my fingers and I read them for
the first time as they appear before me on the megapixels of the LCD before me,
I realize it is a mixture of everything previously stated … and then some.
Today, you see, is my anniversary. Well … kind of. Last year, on this day, I was to stand before
God and my family (blended as it was to become), and declare publicly that I
would spend the rest of my days with him – my love, my heart, my breath, my
soul, the ‘Moon of My Life.’ Unfortunately,
my anniversary has been replaced. In its
stead, this date currently holds the reminder of what should have been or what
was to be.
It’s funny what symbolism a song can conjure up within the
mind. I realized last night that, until
I heard this song, I had been living a lie of sorts. I had grown accustomed to a certain level of
weight being added to my person. I was
content with allowing it to be my new norm without even considering its
source. I walked around touting this
persona of forward movement and clear-minded, daily, new beginnings. All the while, I was completely oblivious to
the fact that I had a tremendous amount of invisible (at least to me) baggage
that had been holding me back in a number of ways. Despite all the forward momentum and progress
being made in other efforts, I was still tethered to an invisible source within
my past. This song shed light on so much.
Honestly, how could I not want to hold on to it? It was, and still is, on top of the list of “Greatest
Things I've Experienced Within My Few Days Upon This Rock” and therefore requires
a certain level of respect. I was in
love. Truly. Madly.
Deeply. Completely. Irrevocably (?). On May 5 of last year, I wrote a post
entitled “Orange Moon” (click and opens in another window) to give a glimpse into a love that had enveloped me and
every fiber of my mind, body and soul. I
was so happy and so excited to be in love with him that I needed to share with
the world just why it was that I was to marry him. In truth, I wanted everyone to fall in love
with him just a modicum of how much I had already fallen for him – to show off
the blessing I was so grateful and humbled to have received. I couldn't wait to walk down the aisle
to/with/for him.
Anyone who might have attempted to tell me that day was not
actually destined would have been a liar.
Unfortunately, 2 short months later, our love would fizzle from what was
then its physical manifestation. Our dynamic
as ‘one’ had transformed us into more of a ‘duo’ working together to bring
about something – I could no longer tell what.
We had become two individuals on the precipice of doom. We were building a ticking time bomb. We fought against ourselves in that we were
continuing to build it while also attempting to dismantle it – any stray
movements sending us into a catastrophic blast of destruction and chaos, hearts
flailing about amongst the debris and rubble.
There would be no return from either of these scenarios. Two months, a moment that doesn't even seem
significant enough to be a quantifiable measure of time. The rapid deterioration depleted blood from
the heart, the mind and the body, leaving in its wake, an emaciated shell that
once was a house of love. Now there were
only 2 choices: continue to build the bomb and await the blast, or work to disassemble
it – touching so many wires that the detonation was more than an inevitability,
it was an absolute certainty. The
gravity of such a decision could suck the body of an elephant through a drinking
straw.
Eyes wide open, I still saw nothing but total and complete darkness
around me. The void of light, this black
hole that was my heart, consumed me more and more until I became one with and
within it. Differentiating yourself from
a pain so black that no sound or light would dare come close is a task no one
should have to endure. The brain begins
to play tricks on you and mirages form within your mind. Because you have nothing but your mind, the
mental representations seem to form themselves before your eyes.
A white speck seemed to form before my eyes and I figured I
was creating another delusion. It got
closer and closer until it became a blinding light. It was love – more specifically the love we
once had. Having become one with the
blackness, it hurt to look at this love.
It hurt to feel this love upon my flesh.
It felt as if I was sitting upon the sun and slowly melting. In the slowest of slow motion, I felt every
layer of my skin bubble and incinerate – each piece only finishing its pain
long enough for the next portion to begin its slow and painful
deterioration. Relief came only upon the
realization of a third option: we would only be spared the fate of tragic
destruction and complete obliteration if we left things as they were - separate
ourselves from a love so pure and so amazing but also from a tragic fate that
would consume us until we became one with it and lost ourselves (and each
other) completely.
**side note: the New York
sky just opened up and began to weep for our lost love**
On this day, one year from the day I was to fuse my spirit
with his, I allow my limbic system to push forth a single secretion beyond my
lashes and down to my chin, depositing itself along the surface of my
shirt. It sits there for a moment until
the fibers give way to allow for its absorption – only just in time for the for
a few hundred of its friends to join in the now mushy graveyard along my chest. It doesn't take long for me to realize these
aren't caused by pain. That it’s taken
me this long to come to the realization that I must put down this large
receptacle and leave it there is one thing.
The realization itself is the focus, however. Awareness that there is actually a bag to put
down – that I’d never let go – now means that I can do what’s necessary to
truly move forward. I am finally, some
fourteen months after our relationship’s dissolution, able to completely let
go.
The initial reaction is pain - tumultuous and immediate - not
unlike ripping a band-aid made of duct tape from the chest of a man covered in
coarse hair like that of Steve Carell in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” Just as it’s pulled off though, there is an
immediate subsiding and the body does what it needs in order to repair the lost
skin cells, replenishing what was removed from the heart. The heart begins to replenish the mind. The mind rejuvenates the spirit.
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Since there’s no more you or me
It’s time I let you go
So I can be free
And live my life how it should be
No matter how hard it is, I’ll be fine without you
Yes, I will
Thought I couldn't live without you
It’s gonna hurt when it heals, too
It’ll all get better in time
Even though I really love you
I’m gonna smile cause I deserve to
It’ll all get better in time …
~ “Better In Time”, Leona Lewis, Spirit, © 2008 J Records
I miss you.
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