Sometimes I am not sure if it is your memory or mine. I know so few of the details. I couldn't possibly remember it, not logically, not accurately, not the way I've created it within my head. I am certain I would never have thought of it had it not been presented to me by you. Surely it is not my story.
Surely the pain it causes me is sympathy. And when I wake in the middle of the night in a panic, when my eyes are filled with tears I cannot explain, it is your anguish I am feeling, not my own.
But sadness is funny in that way, in that it is never truly confined to just one person. The moment you shared your story, it became my story too. The moment you released the inner workings of suffering within your heart, it became intertwined with the inner workings of my own heart. The moment your burden was lifted, mine was made heavier.
Which is not to say that I am angry that you told me. I don't regret knowing. I never regret knowing. I just wish it was a problem with a solution. I wish that I had known sooner perhaps, or that I had asked more questions when we spoke. I wish I didn't have a mind filled with limitless possibilities of how difficult it might have been, how truly awful it might have been. Having only pieces of the story simply leaves room for me to fill in the holes with my own wonderings. And that tortures me.
You asked me once to never write about it here, so I am trying to work through it as evasively as I can. This is the only way I know how. To write it, to post it here where others can see it, even if they have no understanding of it. This is the way I begin to lift the burden.
Sometimes I think I remember you crying that night. Sometimes I think, even as a child, I knew something had happened, something was wrong. Sometimes it scares me to think that none of that is true, that I didn't know, that I never would have known. I am glad that I know that part of your history because it helps me to understand pieces of mine. It helps me to fill in those holes that have been left to my own imagination. Now there is fact. Now there is truth.
I wonder if after all these years, it still haunts you. I wonder if years from now, it will still haunt me. I wonder if any of us ever get to a point where we really can leave the past behind us. Of course, I don't mean healing. I believe people can and do heal. I believe it's possible to move forward, but to get to a place where it no longer sneaks in to your idle thoughts from some back corner of your mind, well that I'm not sure of. Have I ever really forgotten anything?
Because all it takes is a single moment, a single word, a single idea from someone else, and the wounds become undone like a freshly picked scab. The gates are reopened. The flood begins. And I wonder if you feel that way too.
There is a kind of pain that helps us grow, a kind of pain I am mostly grateful for, a kind of pain I revere as a doorway to something new, something better. It is the only kind of pain I have ever really experienced. But this pain, your pain, is something different. Something I hope I'll never have to experience, but something I wish I could better understand in order to better understand you. Would you tell me more if I had gone through it?
Of course I wish that it had never happened. God, do I wish that. But I wonder if you ever stop and think that you wouldn't be the same person if things had gone differently that night. I wonder if some small part of you is ever okay with your past. I wonder how you have such strength, to wake each morning and greet a world that has been so unkind to you, that seems so unfair. And I wonder how you have the courage to not share it, to not post it on some blog, to not want anyone else to. Sometimes I feel like the truly brave people are the ones who carry their heaviness alone.
I am not that brave, and so I write this now, because it flooded in this afternoon, into my idle thoughts from some back corner of my mind, and I didn't know what else to do but write it here. Surely it is not my story, but somehow now, it is.
2 comments:
I so agree that often just writing words down helps us to clarify our feelings, aiding us in sorting them out. But having gone through an episode of emotional upheaval that sounds similar to yours, I know from experience that there comes a time when you know it is all right to let go. Have faith that this too shall pass and one day when those niggling little thoughts come back to haunt you, you will be able to tell yourself you no longer have to distress yourself over them because you already have.
this is such an interesting proposition, one i have never given much thought to. i am glad for the opportunity to explore my own feelings about this.
i am not sure it is ok for us to ask others to keep secrets which are extraordinarily painful and/or perhaps shocking...secrets which may unlock pain and fear in those we tell but swear to secrecy. perhaps we could ask them not to reveal our identity, but allow them the opportunity to explore the feelings they find themselves grappling with. in telling our secrets we may be totally unaware of how that information will/could affect the listener, what it might unleash in someone else's history. you are right...even though the stories others tell us are NOT our own to tell, they do become ours in the way we hear and process the information. in the way the knowledge begins to haunt us, the story IS ours. it is a difficult position - wanting to vent, wanting to snatch the information from inside ourselves and begin to bring it forth in an effort to heal the broken pieces which sting.
courage to keep the secret intact VS courage to render the secret less powerful by sharing it? hmmmmm - i think it is more courageous to share that which has shamed us in some kind of way and which by virtue of that shame has been empowered to kill some part of ourselves. the reason we keep secrets is usually shame and shame is a killer of our deepest self.
(i am reminded of the john bradshaw book - healing the shame that binds you.)
even if you have promised not to write about this in your blog, you might write about it in a private journal in order to begin to begin your own healing.
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