It’s so odd looking back now. Every relationship I’ve been in, how I thought I was a whole, interesting, solid person. Then years past I look back and see nothing but the scared girl I was.
I grew up thinking I’d had an idyllic childhood. Who else’s parents bring her up on her grandparent’s airport? Who else got to cross the country every summer on road trips to the Carolinas and Washington and Florida? Who else was encouraged to read as much as they could as often as they wanted? What girl doesn’t dream of getting horses and being free to ride as far as she liked?
My mind tends to wander along more pleasant lanes of thought than negativity. I find it impossible to hold grudges, even if they’re warranted. I didn’t think too deeply on the trauma of being brought up in a doomsday cult, being forced to go door-to-door multiple times a week, my introverted heart crying. The constant guilt that I felt, knowing I’d never live up to their god, and how I had more of a relationship with the trees and wild things outside than I ever did with him. I didn’t think much about my father’s uncontrollable temper and how I never knew if I was going to get praised or screamed at each day. How my sensitive heart lived in constant supplication to my parents, to an angry god, to the stern elders in the congregation. How my queer spirit was killed and quelled constantly, every day, until I wore a mask of compulsive heteronormativity and didn’t even recognize the little girl I was at ten, and how I knew who I was even then. Until I grew up.
Time changes so very much of us, and I welcome it, I don’t want to lie stagnant and fallow, I want to be ever-evolving and growing. And so when my bestie sent the above photo I had to pause and realize these are the things that I’m doing now. At least most of them. I’m still growing, after all, and shall always be until I stop breathing and close my eyes for the last time.
Growing up I was traumatized by my second grade teacher. I don’t even recall that year, everything I know of it has been told by me to others. She abused me in front of the class because I was a Jehovah’s Witness and from that point on until I graduated high school they thought it was “open season” on hunting me down each day and making me miserable. I was seven or eight, I didn’t know how to defend myself when she’d take me to the front of the class and “make an example” of me to my peers. I didn’t fight back when she shoved me to the ground outside of the classroom so that I was excluded from forbidden birthday parties like my parents and religion required. I was always separate, always other, always left out that year.
And I didn’t even tell my parents. I didn’t go to them and I couldn’t fathom why years later. For my entire life I wondered why this tiny child wouldn’t tell her parents that her teacher was abusive and that her classmates chased her on the playground until she learned to run so fast she thought she was flying. Until I realized why…there was no point. They wouldn’t stop her, they couldn’t. There was no point in telling them because I was ashamed and brainwashed by EVERY authority figure in my life at that point into thinking that I was wrong and did something to deserve it. They didn’t know until it was too late and the school year had finished.
So I became a loner, and found refuge in the fields and in books. I played alone outside and once I had horses I could ride even farther away from the things that cause the most pain of all, people. The only refuge I had, the only place I felt at peace, was outdoors in the arms of the wild places, and people only hurt. I could never be right enough for any of them, so I withdrew.
I genuinely loved and preferred to be alone. At the same time when I got older and started finally going through puberty at sixteen I needed confirmation from others SO BADLY. I only saw myself through the eyes of others and if they thought I was trash I WAS. I hungered for positive attention because it affirmed me to be more than I’d ever been to anyone else. I’d cling to my crushes or eventually my husband at the age of nineteen because I only saw myself through their eyes. Just as in second grade.
I wish I’d been strong enough to tell them all to fuck off. I wish I’d been told when I was ten that I didn’t need to compromise anymore, not EVER, not for anyone, and that I’d been told it again, and again, and again every year or more, as often as I needed it.
Instead I bonded with those I thought could save me. I felt whole when with someone who loved me, even when I craved being alone most of all. I loved myself into bonds and relationships and situations I had no idea how to handle but I still tried because I’m made of love and that’s all I ever had to give. And they took it, and took it, and called it cheap because it was so easy to come by. They forgot, they moved on.
I betrayed myself to be chosen over and over again until I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted and went through the motions to remain safe and needed and accepted. For forty years I did all those things, until I left my wifey in Idaho right before my fortieth birthday in 2020.
And then the world fell apart.
All of a sudden I had to face it all, and support myself with only the tools that I had, and I grew to see that they were never enough. That I was grasping for acceptance and love because I just never had them in me for myself to begin with.
The world was full of people drawing circles around themselves to stay safe from the pandemic. I had to do the same, and find safety in that circle alone. I didn’t know how to. The girl who preferred to always be alone had no one to depend on for confirmation any longer. I’d burned so many bridges, with my irresponsible inconsistent behavior, because I’d hidden from the world in as many ways as I could, including in whatever bottle of booze I could afford at the time. For so many years. And here I was alone and sober and it was all my choice and I was forty with everything left behind in Idaho and nothing but my car, my cat, a few clothes, alone in a circle of my own devising.
It’s safe here, and quiet. I can see now how much I’ve grown, how years ago I often thought I was at a pinnacle of growth and development. I couldn’t have imagined twenty years ago that I’d be where I am now and yet I can see that I’ve only just begun. And it’s beautiful and marvelous and grandiose to realize that there is still so much time ahead.
So I keep my circle tight, because for so long I betrayed myself to be chosen. For decades I didn’t think that I could be complete and content without someone to partner with. I fill my own needs and have to reach deep inside to find them still because I hid them on a secret shelf inside and sometimes lose my way to them. How long I’ve scrambled in the dark with my fingertips along fading walls just to reach them again.
I don’t want to fill my shelves with anyone else’s expectations and dreams anymore. There’s no room now, my shelves are bursting with stacked volumes I’d forgotten. Dusty little nicknacks remind me of the moments I found them and why I treasured them enough to hide them away. There’s no room for anything but me now, and it’s not scary anymore to stand in these abandoned hallways alone. My circle is tighter than it’s ever been and slowly slowly I ease it out with my toes until it feels safe enough to allow someone else to step close. I’m not sure if I’ll ever want anyone to actually step in again.
I’ve the whole wild world in my circle with me, there isn’t room for more. And that’s okay. Sometimes a woman needs to be the only person inside it.
A Burd in Flight 