Coming out of the closet... the first time!

I made a vow once before God and my family and friends and I broke it. I am a horrible person.

 

I ruined not one but two relationships, uprooted the lives of innocent children, made my closest friends lie for me and to me to keep me happy, and put myself in a financial state that I can not get out of unless I am declared dead by a physician.

I couldn’t be happier about it.

 

Let’s start here: I went from being a sweet young girl all of 21 to being someone’s wife. I was someone’s wife for 10 years. In those ten years I went from being a creative and fun loving child to a scared and overwhelmed adult. I loved to sing. I did it everywhere and whenever I had the chance. I loved to dance. I’d dance in the supermarket if the feeling struck me. I loved to paint. I loved to write. I loved to live. Somewhere along the lines of the decade I spent being Mrs., I lost those loves. Those loves became things that needed to be put up in the closet on the top shelf under the sheets and comforter reserved for when guests came over.

 

He hated having guests. I never got to uncover those loves. They stayed there for a long time under the blankets with the pink and yellow flowers that he so despised. They stayed there for a long time in the dark waiting for the Spring when I would take down the bedding that was never used and wash them. Then they would stretch their legs and see the sunshine. They would say, “Here we are, world!! We’re the things that she loves!!” They did for the first couple of years, then soon.. .. I gave up hope. I gave up on those things that I loved so much. Thank God, they never gave up on me.

 

At night when I couldn’t sleep. I’d creep into the hall closet and pull them down. Not all at once. Just a little here and there. It started with writing. I’d pull out my love for writing and fill page after page of stories and tales that were full of my misery. My misery and the strange feeling that somewhere along the way I had lost myself, yet I didn’t know where and why. Then, I would tear them up and burn them and flush them down the toilet. I felt like a drug addict. I just needed to get my fix and let it all out just so I could sleep for a little bit. He found out. He knew that I was writing. That I was freeing my mind and my soul. He knew that I was doing what he was so afraid of. He knew that I was getting in touch with the person I loved and missed so much. He wanted her gone. He had the woman of his dreams and it took him a while to get her that way. He knew that the woman I was inside was actually just an older version of the girl I was once and he didn’t want me now and me then to come together and realize that the world was a bigger place than the 1500 sq ft slab house by the water. He didn’t want me then and me now to know that the water at the end of the road went all around the world and I could sail on it in a tiny boat or a huge yacht. He didn’t want me to know that 1500 sq ft slab house wasn’t just because that’s what we could afford. He knew and I needed to stop it. I needed to keep the pen down and the notebook up on the shelf.

He didn’t want me to know that we didn’t need to be rooted like trees. The trees that sway in the breeze. I watched the trees all the time and thought of how beautiful they are so statuesque. Towering over the world and seeing so many people pass by. How lonely they must be. How I understood them. I understood how they moved with the wind not because they wind was strong, but because they wanted to fly too. The wind made fools of them. “Look what I can do! I can go anywhere I want and see the world!”, the wind would shout at the trees. The trees would move and jerk from side to side and say, “I’ll show you! I can get out of here. I can move! I will move!” Then the wind would take things a little too far and move faster and stronger and the trees being so stubborn and strong would try to keep up and lose limbs. The wind would move on and the trees would be forced to stay where they were and look at their limbs on the ground and weep. They would weep big sweet sappy tears for their lost limbs, because they were ashamed. They were ashamed that they let the wind get to them that way and vowed not to ever again. They would stay there for days on end and see their limbs laying on the ground and wonder how they got to that point of feeling so sorry for themselves. “If only I could pick up my limb and make it whole again…” But others would find the limbs on the ground and use them to help their lives. Children made believe that they were horses, animals used them for their homes, people made them into paper and pencils. The trees began to realize that the moment when the limb was lost was a part of them freeing themselves. Someday the trees would realize that the wind was only playing a game with them and calling their bluff. The trees knew that sometime soon they would dance with the wind so hard and so fierce that they would pull their roots out of the ground and start a new life. The trees began to hear the wind coming and instead of cowering, they stood tall and thought silently, “Let me show you what I got, wind! I am not afraid of you. I’ll dance to your song and soon I will no longer be a tree rooted to the ground. I will dance until I pull myself out of the ground and wait patiently until someone comes along and finds use for my limbs.”

 

He should have feared the music and not the pencil and paper I suppose. I knew how those trees felt. I knew they had to be seen somewhere other than the acre lot they lived on in my backyard. They had a song they needed to sing. They had a story they needed to write. They had a dance they needed to dance.

 

I did too. That’s where my true beginning is. It is not in the place I was conceived. It is not in the womb I was grown in. It is not in the room I was slapped on the a*s in when I was brought into the oxygen breathing world with balled up fists and shouts of, “It’s a girl!” It was the day I got to sing my song. It was the day I pulled my journal from the shelf in the closet and displayed it proudly on the coffee table with it‘s pink cover shining in the sun. It was the day I got to dance the steps I had been waiting to dance for years.

 

THIS is where my life started.

THIS is where it will end.