I've always, ever since I started being discerning about who I let in my life, said that I'm good at being alone. Now, I say this, and I want you to know that this doesn't mean I like it. One of my very good friends heard me say this once, and he promptly told me that no one is good at being alone. No one likes being alone. No one wants to go through life unnoticed, unrecognized, and unloved, and that is what you become when you are alone. No one is there to tell you if you are a good person or a bad person. No one is there to tell you their opinion on the deeds you've done and the words you've spoken. No one is there for you when you are alone, and it possibly the most unhealthful feeling in the world to feel alone.
And that is what he thought I meant when I said I'm good at being alone. Had that been my meaning, he would have been right. But I don't like being alone. I'm simply practiced at it. I know how to survive long periods of time without contact with the outside world. When the task asks me to act the shut-in hermit, I do it without question and with uncanny finesse. It is like the saying goes: once bitten, twice shy.
There is safety in loneliness, despite how detrimental it can be to one's psyche. No one can take advantage of you, no one can break your heart, and no one can betray you. For a long time, I was convinced that it was all anyone ever wanted to do to me: all they wanted to do was use me for their own ill-gotten gains. I will admit that I am gullible. I still retain some innocence, and despite my protestation, I will even go so far to admit that I can be something of an idealist. And it isn't a bad thing. But in a world where people are so easily corrupted, it isn't the smartest thing either. So I broke off from my friends and from those I deemed too fallible to keep safely in my heart. After that, there was a long time when I had no friends, only myself and my writing to keep me company. Obviously, I went a little mad.
I've never addressed this dark point in my life. In that time, I didn't write poems. I wrote fan fiction and played video games and made a fantasy world for myself: an escape from my solitude. It was only last spring that I was able to reemerge from my seclusion. Now, almost eight months later, I will attempt to speak on that black time. I will try to convey the anger and the fear that I still strive daily to overcome.
Walking Through the Fires Unhanded
If ever I had tried to love, it was with an open heart and open mind,
and I thought the best of all I touched, believing so strongly
that the light I carried would shine bright enough to touch them,
to kindle little lights of their own.
But woeful was the girl who did not understand that darkness
is sometimes our closest companion. Our shadows are thick,
full of our hatreds and hurts, and we are daunted
by the prospect of letting in what small sunlight there is for us,
since with the sun comes the painful truth of seeing what monsters we harbor.
Since I was ignorant of whatever monstrosity festered and grew in my soul
as I was continually refused, the day it grew to match my height
was a shock, a stalker hiding behind the curtains leaping out with a knife.
However, death was not the foe that claimed me.
Black anger, tart and putrid, filled me, and all of a sudden,
I was the darkness. I walked through shadows as if I was one,
and they knew me too as one of their own, welcoming me to their
pitted ranks, their humble existence.
And no longer was I counted among human company.
So still, I waited for the light to capture me, and it was an unending game
as I eluded the candle that flickered once in my heart of hearts.
Until one day, my shadow-friends took fright from a glance my way.
I chased them, pursued them with anguished cries, but could not coax them.
It was that day I realized:
the candle had been there all along.
No comments:
Post a Comment