I’m pulling this old poem out of my journal, dusting it off, and posting it here. I had spent years thinking I had moved on from my childhood and was functioning quite well, thank you very much. But I fell apart, and stood in the midst of my own ruins wondering what happened and how to heal. Life told me through a great deal of synchronicity that I needed to grieve what I had repressed. I spent quite some time trying unsuccessfully to grieve – to tap into the deep well of tears waiting within me. This poem was written during the dry spell. I’ve since been able to grieve and integrate – and may find a way to blog about that at some point in the future. Until then…
They took my childhood from me, and I don’t know how to grieve.
If it had been by force –
If it had been stolen or burned –
If it had been crucified by their own hands,
then maybe, maybe I could grieve.
But that is not how they took it.
We were so young. How were we to know?
How could we know that the things they said were poisoned?
How could we know that the things we felt were telling us something was wrong?
They said our feelings were deceitful and couldn’t be trusted.
Emotions only proved how messed up we were.
They called it the “flesh”. They called it “selfishness”.
They broke us down… broke us down so much that we believed.
We shook our heads as the tears flowed down our trembling faces.
Yes, yes, we believe.
Are we accepted now?
I thought I found what I needed in their affirming embrace.
Hands on my shoulders they took a good look at me.
Approval. For a brief moment…
if they didn’t look too closely and discover the things I hid.
And then there it was in outstretched hand.
The knife.
“We know.
We understand.
We’ve all hidden things.
Take this, you know what to do.”
They didn’t want to see it,
They just wanted to know it was done.
They called it death to self…
Yielding the will…
Tearing down idols…
And so many other things.
But I knew,
Acceptance hinged on it.
In the end it was my hand upon the hilt.
It was my shadow cast over that corpse.
I can’t go back.
I can never get it back.
I will never know.
And they got me to do it.
How do I grieve something I never had to begin with?
It wasn’t something I once had –
It was something I never had to begin with…
Something I should have had.
Something I should have taken for granted.
But it was loss nonetheless.
They told me it was wrong to grieve it.
They told me it was self pity.
They told me it was entitlement.
They told me stories of people who had it worse.
And so I dutifully gathered the only remnants of that once beating heart…
my tears.
I gathered those tears into a bottle
and locked it away in a chest
and buried the chest deep in my cold heart.
Emotions were from my wicked heart I was told.
They were not to be trusted.
They were to be crucified.
That’s why I did it, you know.
It was the right thing to do…
To crucify it. To kill it.
And now I’ve locked away my ability to grieve it.
I went looking for that box.
I turned my heart upside down and inside out…
but couldn’t find it.
How do I grieve the irreplaceable loss from my own irreversible choices?
Beauty I Have Known 