My girl was unaware of the bloodbath inside of me when she touched me for the first time. It happened slowly, innocently, with bright eyes and steady hands. Her solid presence seemed immovable to the turns of the earth and the moon. My tides crashed into her and she held me up, tucking me in, folding me into the current of the universe. She whispered belonging to parts of myself long-slept. They woke with a roar, a slow blink, a snarl and a slow stretch. Old psyches die viciously.
But die they did. Slowly and painfully, unwillingly.
As my frozen overwhelm began to melt into glacier-cold tears that flowed from my eyes, I knew that this was the only way to expel the bloodshed inside of my heart and mind. Once I had choked on blood and now I was drowning in it.
Does the seed believe it’s drowning when it first tastes water?
Does it believe it’s being murdered?
Does it know of what it will become when it lets go of its shield?
She was all over me, all around me. When we weren’t touching her presence electrified me, whispering hair-raising embodiment from the crypt of the versions of me that were dying, wilting, screaming for air. I was sobbing, constantly, feeding them hemlock, cutting their throats, and pulling the rope tightly around their necks. Desperate to unlock the springtime-drenched honey-warm parts on which I was determined to build my life. Mercy killings to make brutal room for my higher self.
The murders weren’t just versions of me that liked pink and sparkles and that one pop song from 2014. These were parts that entrenched me, woven so deeply into my fabric that exorcising them felt like killing myself. These were parts of me that shut down whenever someone touched me, the parts that believed I would never have what I yearned for, that spent the last two decades battling with my desire for a husband, that had visions for my life that were no longer an implied guarantee. The parts of me that I held like my own children, that I thought would be my foundations for survival and continuity. These were parts of me that I thought would form the basis of my life, handed down to me from generations before, a sacred vow made through millions of moments of unsafety. They were a rocky foundation, needing constant repairs, but they were mine. Broken and unwilling, they were built by my 3, 6, and 9-year-old hands, pulled from the core of the earth into the real world with the hope of sacrificing them to the universe as justification for my soul’s existence. They were parent wounds, grandparent wounds, and great-grandparent wounds. They were my lineage, sacrificed one by one at the altar of a few pomegranate seeds.
I was taking a scythe to every one of them. I looked them in the eyes, the daughter inside of me weeping for her future, asking me if what she’d done wasn’t enough. Begging me to put her art on the refrigerator and say it was good enough. She screamed that this was all she had to work with, and she was sorry it wasn’t good enough, that it wasn’t better. That she was only a child, and that she promised she’d get better as an adult. That she was sorry for these coping mechanisms that she invented and took inside herself and carved into her skin to survive. Begging me to love her. To cement her work as permanent, to give her a sure answer. She wanted to know that there’s such a thing as good enough, that she can get an A+. She still wakes up screaming from nightmares about missing exams, of failed tests, of how being chronically late will finally destroy her life.
I guess I’m just the worst child ever, then, she says. I carried you through this childhood and I can take you out. I’m not perfect, but I did my best. Look at all I did do for you. You’re just ungrateful.
How do you look into the eyes of your child-like mother, your innocent-eyed inner child, and your baby daughter and hold them close and say I know I know I know you did what you could but we have to escape? We have to reach towards the sun now, we have to escape the ground. And how do you murder what you create? How do you crack the cocoon they so lovingly built and watch it crumble to the earth? How do you look into their eyes and watch the light fade from them? And do it over and over? Was this killing me or removing dead weight? Could love be murder?
After all, the only constant in my life has been my lovely coping mechanisms. Like a sick parent, I nurtured them wholeheartedly, waiting at their bedside and allowing them to berate me into submission, seeping my life force. I saw no other way. Life was a dark hallway with a flickering light at the end, an ill patient funding your emotional way through the world.
Everything was outsourced. All my emotional development and responsibility were in the hands of these creatures. They convinced me that I needed them, and the trouble with fighting them was that they were right. I did need them. For a long time, they were my best option.
I was giving myself chemotherapy, attempting to kill the cancer before the poison killed me. It was a race to the finish line, and I was desperately clinging to my headstart, blisters and clawed hands pulling me forward, my teeth gritted against the wind.
I worried my girl would see the macabre scenes behind my eyes, a wildfire razing everything to the ground. I wondered if she could see that that fire longed to escape, to raze my entire life to the ground in her name. The smoke would form visions of her eyes, the crackling flames whispering her voice, looking over the destruction she’d caused to me, and I’d be standing before the scene, scythe in my hand, screaming at what I’d done. At who I’d murdered for her.
I wondered if she’d turn away in horror, say that when I told her I was a chaotic mess she thought it would be in a cute way. A few clothes thrown on the ground, a forgotten mug of half-drunk coffee on the nightstand, a silly half-written poem fluttering under the fan. That it would be whimsical, fantastical; that I would be a fun rollercoaster of easily diverted meltdowns and giggling mood swings. That my chaos secretly meant passion and longing and perpetual highs.
What would she do when she discovered it meant clawed hands and gritted teeth and torn-open chests and scratched skin? That it meant I couldn’t always tell whether I was sharpening my teeth against myself or her, that I might look up to find her blood mingling with my own self-inflicted wounds, and how deeply those thoughts haunted my days until I felt I would go mad with the terror. That I might be revived but never fully, and a part of me would remain a demonized, half-underworld creature, both wild and rabid.
Every time she touches my bare leg my skin sparks, and I have to murder the fear inside me all over again. How when her tongue parts my lips I have to strangle the part of me that says to retreat. When she bites me I have to remind myself to let it flow through me, to not dam it up, to take a hammer to the bricks and mortar that block my desire for her, keeping it safe and secure in a fantasy instead of subjecting it to the crushing reality of the light.
This tsunami was soaking me all the way through, breaking houses and wrecking the shoddy shelters I’d put up, the ones I’d labored over my entire life. I was exposed, wholly and fearfully, standing over the wreckage and realizing how ineffective my home was at keeping me safe. Had I really built a foundation so weak, so fragile? Not only was I destroyed, but I was humiliated by how easily it had been to do so. How would I murder this shame that exposed my inner wounds so brazenly for her? The flush in my cheeks, the choke in my throat, and the retreat in my breath were all I knew.
She touched the sharp, broken edges of jagged wreckage with soft hands while I tucked my face into my knees. I was sure her soft hands would come away bloodied and torn. I wailed in anticipation, but her pain never came.
Instead, the wreckage was transformed into new building materials at her touch. She showed me patience, a steady hand, and an unfazed caress.
In her hands, I wasn’t a half-crazed demon, but a holy ghost.
In front of her, I looked at the scythe and bit my lip, redness blooming in my mouth. It tasted like rebirth, like hope. I took the hands of my shame and humiliation and kissed them on the mouth, and we made love within the wreckage.
And we finally put to death the destruction, and began to sigh into contentment.
She offered her shelter to me while I rebuilt. And for once I had no shame left, no humiliation, just gratitude and grace. They had room to be planted, and I would plant a garden in her shelter, in her home, for us. And I would build a new home for myself, for us.
My soul had time to be redeemed. And the world cleared of smoke, and where I thought her face would appear in the destruction of the war, her voice and her eyes shone brightly in the clear air above the bare, fertile soil. Where I had been drowning, choking, cutting myself from the sirens dragging me to the depths, I am now submerged in free and peaceful waters.
The kind of water you stick out your tongue to taste.
The kind of water you use to water flowers.
The kind of water that will baptize you.
Blessed holy water from the divine feminine mother.
Sacred, nourishing, and full of hope.