Scorched

“I saw this light coming over the horizon and as I got closer I realized that it was a fire. A prairie fire. And I just pulled over and I watched. When the sun came up the earth, everything was black. Scorched. It felt  exactly like how I felt. Like the end of the world. But then I had Pearl. And I learned things that I didn’t know before, like sometimes you have to scorch everything to start over. And after the burning the soil is rich and life can grow there again. Life. Life that is even maybe better than it was before.”   (Little Fires Everywhere)

I still can recall how it felt to pull my wedding dress on. The weightiness of the fabric, stepping into the slim fit corsetted waist, the zipper bringing everything together. Nice and snug. The 128 pound vegan version of me full of hope and overly confident of her future. It felt a tad scary but I was certain it would be forever, and a good forever. That day, the day I got married felt more like a show, a performance, I was directing than it did the actual ceremony of vow taking. It looked perfect. Exactly what was in my head, maybe even better. No expense was spared. 

I remember struggling to feel connected to the emotional side of what I was doing. My head was in the game. This day was going to go perfectly because I was only going to get one of it. I was your typical twenty something bride that was trying to be gracious with those around her because that is what a lady of strength does. Yet, just like most young brides I reserved the right to make the whole day entirely about me. I still chuckle every single time I hear the preparation stories of a young women getting married. The idea that our whole life is hinging on this one “special” day that will only happen once, and our girl friends who stand beside us must act like the loving and obedient handmaidens we have given them privilege to be….it’s well, if I ever take that that vow again it will look much, much different than the first time. 

The show that was my wedding went on, almost without a hitch, and it felt and looked and smelled just as I wanted. We danced the night away and all my siblings and all my parents where present. When it was time to go I began to feel anxious. I was nervous to leave with my new husband, whom I had never been with before. I was anxious to feel the empty that was already creeping in as the planning and then the celebrating commenced.  I cried when we got to our hotel room because I had not prepared myself to abruptly say goodbye to my family that was in town. I know now that my husband and I felt more at home with others with us, then we did together, alone. I don’t know if this is a reflection of what was our romance, or the lack thereof, or if it was a reflection of our not knowing how to feel lonely and still be present. 

I fought many, many lonely nights off in childhood, in high school, most assuredly away in my college years. But I never knew that feeling, the empty lonely was all just part of the human expeircene. I wish I had known this lesson sooner. That it is OK to feel alone, even when you are with your people. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so overcome with grief on my wedding night. What I do know today is that even on my best days, even snuggled into the love of my life I will still have moments where I just feel alone. Un certain of it all. I also know it feels wildly wonderful to embrace that feeling in the moment, trusting it passes becasue it always does, and allowing it to bring my every fiber back to the earth. The soil. The root of me and my humanity. 

It’s ironic the feeling you try to avoid your whole life ends up being the feeling that reminds you of exactly who you are. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. I belong to the soil, made of the dust. My sweet, then husband embraced me in my tears and together into the wild loneliness we went. 

I stayed in that wild loneliness for many years. My husband was there too, but he was across the room in his own loneliness and couldn’t find his way out. He did things like get a bachelor’s degree, then a masters, then a Phd to fill the void and prove his worthiness to himself. He sought to hush the loneliness and the unbearable pain of his childhood with other women too. I used our children to quiet mine. I believed the idea we were all sold as women, that being a mother meant laying it all down for our children. A martyr mother. I paused my dreams because I truly believed there was no way two people could chase two dreams at the same time, and still give their children a full and present life. I was also exhausted, there was always that. 

Eight more years of that and the distance in the room grew larger in width. I remember I couldn’t get to that place deep inside my husband. I couldn’t get inside the space were the dark was and save him. So the way I loved him was by covering the loneliness. I threw parties and bar-b-q’s. I made our home feel like a home. I cooked him dinner and raised his sons with every single fiber in me. I filled our space with all the loyal certainty I had that day I married him. I was his constant in every way, and this, this is how I learned to love him, the only way I could heal some of his pain.

And then I just couldn’t anymore. I was bleeding out and I tried to hide it all. I asked for a fourth baby. I rallied myself  with my christian commitment to never divorce even though there was lies he couldn’t hide anymore. I outed myself  when I realized I had a crush on one of the kids school teachers and went to therapy because that was even hard to hide from my own conscious. I prayed more. I prayed harder. I threw less parties and started to go a little dark with my closest friends. I just needed to survive this next part, whatever that meant. Something extraordinary was about to happen and I could feel it all over me, but it did not register as extraordinary. It felt more like the apocalypse was coming. I had no idea that in roughly six months from the beginning of that bleed out I was going to let it all. burn. down.

In the late fall of that year, in an almost out of body moment, the world stopped spinning. The bleed was done and the rally cry of  death pangs where about to begin. I stood like a fucking crazy women full of rage and fury staring down at what was the field of my life. This was it. I was about to live, or die. The whole earth went quiet in a solemn bow, it knew before I did what I must do. The next moment was holy and then, I lit the match. 

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