Many years ago I learned not to cry.
I was a very emotional little girl. The one who makes the grown ups shake their heads and say, “She’s so sensitive.”
People weren’t comfortable when I cried — especially my mother — so I learned to hide it.
When my step-mother complained about my bad table manners, I ran to the bathroom to cry by myself.
When a teacher scolded me for talking in class, I swallowed the tears and clenched my throat to keep it in.
I couldn’t let anyone see me cry, and it’s still difficult.
I don’t have to try not to cry when someone is there anymore; I just CAN’T. The switch is flipped and there are no tears, only a kind of blissful emptiness.
I’ve grown tired of not having access to pieces of myself, even the tears that want to fall and cannot.
Sitting with this, “No one can see me cry,” belief, I go deeper.
I notice the part of me that learned not to exist so that I could live.
If I was myself, I wouldn’t be loved. I wouldn’t fit in. I wouldn’t survive.
It is a pale ghost contorted down to fit into a tiny box. She has chosen not to exist as herself so that she can live.
But the reason I decided no one can see me cry is more complicated.
There is another part of me that wants to die.
It is a dark, bristling thing with gnashing teeth that snarls, “I want to die so that I can finally be me.”
If I allow myself to cry, the sorrow threatens to wash me away, and the part of me that wants to die will win.
That’s how it feels.
I have limited myself with this awful choice:
Contort yourself into Non-Existence and live or Die to be set free.
I extend an invitation to these parts of me that cannot conceive of a life where I am truly me.
“What would you be if you could be anything?”
The pale ghost of Non-Existence leaves her box, stretches, expands. She grows big and fills with herself, takes on a turquoise hue with flecks of pink. Now she is the Radiant one who dances.
The Dark One who wants to die becomes a condor, spreads his wings and soars across the sky.
There is another choice, one I couldn’t see as a child.
I can embody myself, all of me. It is possible to dance and fly and know the power of being.
I choose me.
