In-between: The dash
“Be like water”
I read a book a long time ago. I can’t recall the name, just the power of the write. It is interesting how something one can read eons ago will come out and help reset your sense of being. Water calms me. I am a water rat after all. Besides writing the thoughts that seek to engulf me, water is the next best annihilator. Each wrinkle on the lake’s surface throws a dagger within.
I can sit hours on the patio being baptized by its magnetism.
Be like water, flow!
And poetry, the rhymes and rhythm, the effervescence of imagery, what happened to poetry?
My earliest memory of my writings was at age 12. I would carry my little notebook around, writing, playing with words. I did not much think myself a poet. I would say I am a lover of words, of imagery. Oh! How wonderful when one can create a piece so beautiful it pulls at your heartstrings!
I neither thought myself a writer. I am a thinker whose thoughts tend to overflow and when my mind can’t hold them any longer, I am forced to slow it down by writing. Thoughts have a pace: frantic. Writing forces thoughts to float, ponder, bask and wait.
I love poetry. Sadly, we parted ways over a decade ago. The child in me, the romantic in me felt compelled by to write, to listen and read. But in the end, the words were nails that pinned me to sadness, to misery. Bereft of dreams and hope, a forlorn soul I buried it. The muse often seeks to frolic about. I miss her sometimes and then I remember, hope doesn’t live here anymore.
I fainted once. I recall the moment quite vividly. I was fully dressed, was standing in church, singing and I felt a bang on my head. That was it. Nothing else. It was later, more than a half hour later, that I came to. Where was I? What happened? I had no idea, except that my head was hurting and there were many nicely mannered church-ladies hovering over me.
I think that is how death will be, similar to sleeping I would say. One second you are there in bed, holding the one you love or more likely the pillow and another second: nowhere land. That is known as la-la land sometimes. Maybe it is best when you dream when you fall asleep. When you do, you still exist somewhere and a part of you is alive, breathing, doing, witnessing, being. Even when people wake up and can’t recall anything about their dreams, they do realize they were dreaming.
I think a lot about death lately, about the when, the where, the how and how I would like it to be. I yearn for it often lately. It is the pain of emptiness, the heaviness of existence that pulls and have me begging for the last breath. Oftentimes, death does not come when we will it, it will usually come when you have a lot going on, and to people with pregnant futures. We can see it around, old men and women, struggling to walk, or breathe, doing nothing more than wake, eat and sleep yet they are still here. Yet, the young with unfulfilled dreams and goals, people who love them, adore them and people who depend on them, they are the ones to leave, go, called up yonder.
Where do we go when we are gone? Do we really want to know? Why do we go when we go? Too late or too soon, no matter the hope or the plans, poof, gone, there no more. We exist to die and every day we get closer to the destiny. Many wish not to think of the reality that we were born to die.
A preacher mentioned how the sole reason Jesus was born was to die. As are we or most, unless you believe in the immortality of one’s soul, the afterlife, the beyond. But what if you don’t and truly accept the idea that life was created out of a bang and a boom? Why do you go on? What is it about this experience, your morals, those you love or love you or respecting of persons that cause you to hold on?
It is funny sometimes, how no matter how much you wish for death, when it is near, you wish to hold on. I laugh often about Christian peers whose belief that we die and the next breath we will be with God, and yet any diagnosis, or disease, suddenly they wish for healing, for one more breath or more living or more days. Why would you not want to be with Christ?
Is letting go cowardice or courage? We will never know, will we?
I am in a state of neediness. I know it. I lack what can fill me. I have been a cheerleader, a lover, a friend, a caregiver, a provider, a protector a counselor and more. I have had to be all that for so long I am drained, drained of me.
There are days I can be there for others but of late, I am not. I cannot. If I don’t take care of me, I won’t be able to go on. It is not that I don’t want to or could. I won’t try to anymore.
I can’t loan you my smile, hold your hand, listen to your sorrows, cheer you on, cook for you, love you, be there for you when I have not had any of that for myself. It is not like I can turn to someone else or ask of anyone. The reality is that no matter how great your friendship with anyone, they will not leave their loved ones for you, just because. It takes one who takes you as his or hers to dedicate themselves to you. It just is. I see that in my girls, in my friends, in my siblings. They can’t part from love for you.
I need an embrace, a good cry, some laughter, a cheer. You don’t know what it is like to have no one to hug you, or kiss you, hold you, encourage you, drop everything to attend to you. You have not been in this place. So forgive me, if you are getting less of me. That is what partnership adds to your life: dedication, attention, sacrifice what love truly is.
Cocooned in the emptiness around me, I retreat in the hopes that one day, once more, love will overflow.
In the quietude of my aloneness, I sighed. There are days the tears fall unannounced. The yearning seeks an escape. It seems the wait is long. For what? For whom? For you? How much longer? Does it matter? And what if you never return? What then? The days keep getting shorter as the years creep and I age, sometimes gracefully but most times exceptionally particularly when I don’t succumb to the wayward madness of time.
If longing had its space, a time and a place, I would seek to return it for it’s been with me far too long. Is it mad to want and wait or seek and escape? I have yet to decide. I have indulged in both. I hardly ever choose. It often feels like a pull down an enchanting abyss. I fall upon or pull under. Unabashedly, I crawl in the crevices, prod, peek, touch and behold. It is when the search weighs that I pause and wonder: “Why here? Why now? Why me?
“It is the existentialist in you” you would say.
Am I really alone? Am I the sole being who often ponders why the dash exists or matters and what to make of it? Is this not the reason we are here: for the meaning of existence, or the search?
On days when loneliness nears, I wish I had a hand to hold, someone to be with, make them the reason for meaning and being. That is the only way I can stop the questions. I do that a lot you know “others give me purpose”. Am I my own purpose? Could that be?
How do others wake? Do they really open their eyes and not think of tomorrow or the now? Do you really go about your day without once asking what happens when you are gone and why you are here now?
I ask myself this every second of the day and maybe more of late. As I sit in the home God gifted me overlooking the water view I always wanted, yes I would prefer the sea but God…you know the rest, don’t you? As I sit and watch the sun kiss the leaves, the wind caress the water and listen to the birds’ early morning songs, once more I wonder why am I still here God?
One thing I must assure you of, I am loving the peace, the quiet of my solitude.
Life between the lines 
You must be logged in to post a comment.