Negative Space

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.” - Tom Stoppard


I get it now. Finally, this past year makes sense.

I lost so much more than I could have possibly imagined - love, pride, confidence, security, direction, friendship. It felt like the ground buckled under me and every time I tried to stand up again, my world shook violently; I have been terrified I would never find a foothold. But here it is.

The thing about loss is that when the dust settles and the fires burn out, there is just... space. Room to stop, get my bearings and see far into the distance. Room to stretch my arms and legs to the limit and reach toward something. Room to turn around and walk away. Room to just be.

The void, the solitude - they're really possibility. Without walls or strings or weights, I am free to rediscover myself, create a new life, fill up this newfound space with anything I choose. Or preserve it, leave it blissfully still and quiet for as long as I like... It's mine.

So this is the lesson: I was broken down so I could rebuild myself, discard the fragments of old lives and loves and bind myself together lighter and braver than before. I lost my way so I could discover I was on the wrong path. My heart was broken again and again so I could learn to mend it on my own.   

And now, it starts.

REM Cycle

My dreams have been invaded. The ghosts of solitude come stomping through night after night, toppling the tiny sanctuary walls I have been so painstakingly constructing, leaving me exposed, disheveled. Leaving me, for once, silent.

There is nothing mysterious about my dreams; maybe they are too overtly symbolic to inspire any bittersweet romanticism or wonderment...

I repeatedly have a dream in which I arrive at his house to borrow something - a bowl of sugar, I think. After he greets me at the door, I follow him up a towering flight of stairs for what seems like hours. When I reach the top, dazed, clutching a white, empty bowl, he is nowhere in sight. And so I stand there and wait again.

This needs no dissection. I arrive at his house and ask him to give me something I don't have, then climb endlessly behind him, then lose sight of him, then wait longer. I'm actually disappointed in my subconscious for not coming up with anything more creative.

A few nights ago I had a new dream. I open a tattered, white door and enter what is apparently his house. I walk through countless empty rooms, all impeccably clean, trimmed in white walls and wood grain, bright with sunlight. I hear him in the distance but never see him. I finally reach a small closet that is brimming with my clothes, then begin to empty them out.

Again, no enigmatic undertones.

What is noteworthy is that these dreams aren't really about him; instead, they seem to be centered around the walking. It's like they stall in the middle and I become caught in perpetual movement, step after step after step - a constant, monotonous walk. It really feels like I walk for hours.

What am I supposed to learn from this? Am I bound to keep walking toward an end I can't see, toward someone who isn't there? Am I trapped in the solitude of these empty houses?

Can I turn and run?

Somnus in Absentia

In the trenches of insomnia there is a place between wake and sleep, where the world around me seems like some sort of slow-playing movie that never reaches the end of its reel. Conversations and actions become removed; I hear my voice, register the movement of my body, yet they don't quite feel like my own.

Day 1 is long and tedious. By Day 3, a fog of delirium has settled over my every thought. It is then that the daily pleasures of living begin to lose their appeal. A hot shower, a palatable glass of wine, a flirtatious smile in my direction - and all I can think about is sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep.

I spend countless hours lying in bed, determined to only need to close my eyes should sleep so graciously arrive. I read. I watch television. I turn the light off and marinate in the darkness. I turn the light back on. I read. I watch television. I check Facebook. No, this definitely won't help. I sign out of Facebook.

And I repeat. And repeat. And soon I realize morning is almost here, even without having to open my eyes. The crickets go silent, the air cools ever so slightly, and then the countdown begins. Now I know my time is limited. If I can sleep for just a few hours, I will feel so much better. I just need to lie here... still and silent... like I already am, already have been... for hours. Damn.

Soon dawn arrives, light gradually filling my room, and I sit up. Arising is unremarkable without the punctuation of sleep, without my alarm's glaring announcement of a new morning; the day blends into night, which blends into day, and again and again.

And in this crevice, I wait.

A New Kind of Love Affair

Wait a minute.

What am I doing? How have I so quickly forgotten the uncoupling of all these sorrows, the lightness of spirit I felt without them? So easily they find their way back, scurry up my arm, rattle my ribs...

Deep breath.

The past year's avalanche of rage and tears and epiphanies unearthed the seeds of the beautiful parts of me. Bravery. Energy. Curiosity. Grace.

I discovered I am the best version of myself when I am being me - sentimental, chatty, slightly unsophisticated me - not when I am focused on wondering which parts of me were the ones he let go of, fled, discarded. And wondering if I should also run from them, run from myself. No more.

Instead, I'm going to run toward something. Run toward the dream I thought was out of reach. Run toward the tiny, seductive, illogical chance that I can still build something extraordinary from a legacy of ruins. Run toward this renewing, evolving self and not toward him. Any him.

Chasing down my own dream is a love affair in itself. And that's the one I really want to fall for this time. If there is ever another love of my life, I hope it will just be me...

Subtraction

I write about him less and less. Not because I think about him less, but because I think about him more. It scares me, saddens me; I don't want to love him forever, don't want to live in a state of missing. 

The blackness settles each night and fragmented dreams crawl in my window with the cool air. They pull me in and out of sleep, disrupt the stillness of my tiny cocoon. They pull and pull, tirelessly, until I begin again: I wade through the debris and silence and loss, and, eventually, inevitably, find myself back in a sea of living, breathing love. I always make my way back.  

Only he's not there.

How ordinary.

Gray Area

What came after is not an ending and not a beginning. Just a dull buzz, like the distant static that plays in your ears even after the television has been shut off. A succession of diluted notes echoing the sharp rise and fall of something much greater.

I love, but no longer out loud, no longer up close. Without a vessel to hold my affections, I write whimsies instead of confessions.

I dance, but the fervent momentum of my youth has wound down. This body I used to have unwavering faith in has been broken, rebuilt, broken again. My passion is brittle.

I reside in the almost, the in-between. Relishing freedom but undecided whether it is an opportunity or a chasm. And braver than I've ever been but suspended in this space where dreams and practicalities fail to intersect. A kaleidoscope of lives hover before me, yet I can't bring myself to reach out and grasp one with any sense of surety. How can I choose a life when I have failed to commit to a self?


"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree...

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home... and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor... and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America...

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

- Excerpts from "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath