So, it’s been called the apocalypse by some.
I’ve told my peeps if they want to de-friend me they can. Not just in cyber space, but in real time. Whatever real time is. I seem to have lost the ability to remember days, dates, names.
(But honestly, some of that was pre-apocalyptic…)
In my cloak of self-protection, I wrap myself from all thinking. Bury myself in being busy. As I tell myself I’m protecting them. Working for them. Providing for them.
Even though I know I’m not.
I won’t take offence if you choose not to be around me anymore. It’s hard not to greet the world with shades of pain.
Don’t ask me how I am. I never knew a palate could hold so many colours of sadness.
I don’t want you to see me cry.
Any lump, any bump, anything a shift away from the norm freaks me out now. An out-of-character sound holds me paralysed. Someone singing high G blurs my eyes.
I don’t want you to see me cry.
So I tread quietly. Looking down. Like a faded, jaded goth. Water-proof mascara doesn’t work y’know. Especially the stuff from Coles.
I keep thinking it’s going to be a better day today. That I’ll stop worrying. That my eyes will stay dry. Because I’ve asked my peeps to dis-engage. I’ve tried to dis-engage myself. Like an old dog lying and licking her wounds – I hide inside.
I don’t want you to see me cry.
Last Thursday night, my eldest wise one – sometimes wiser than the earth herself – had her eyes open and wild.I thought I’d held my palate close. Thought my darkness had been kept to myself.
I hadn’t let them see me cry.
She confided,”My chest is sore.”
We hid in her room as she lifted up her school top. Her right nipple swollen and bruised. It had been sore a few days but she didn’t want to tell me. she didn’t want to worry me. Not hit by a ball. All bumpy, lumpy. So different from her left side.
With my voice straight but my goth eyes down, I deflected.
“We’ll ask daddy when he gets home.”
Because in my apocalyptic mind, I was looking at 9 year old breast cancer.
My lover came home. Smiles and light. Lifting the energy of our little home by the sea. Not wanting to spill my freak-out-dom on him, I quietly asked in my goth like posture to check on the breast of our little girl.
Again she hid, again she shyly lifted her top. Again I looked to the ground.
My lover looked into our eldest wise one’s eyes. With the fierce and gentle love only an adoring daddy can give – and said.
“It’ll be better in a few days.”
And kissed his angel goodnight.
We sat on the floor of the lounge, my lover and I. Him quietly calm, me wondering how I could I have not protected my smalls by be-friending them as well. To save them from the coloured palette created by loving so many so hard.
My lover held my hand in the kind strength of his own. “She’s growing up. We’ll have to have the talk with her soon.”
The talk.
Two words.
One sentence.
Think chest openers, throat openers, kapalabhati.
My eldest wise one’s breasts are budding. With a beautiful life force and colours I could never dream. I’d been wrapping myself up and painting everything around me with apocalyptic shades of grief. And in doing so, lost the knowing of the embodied ancient beauty of vitality. Of the spirit of my eldest growing, changing and shifting. Leaving the body of the child she has been. And stepping into the body of the woman she will become.
I let him see me cry.
My darker side of fear has paused in it’s painting of my world. I’m still in the midst of the apocalypse. I’m still angry and sad and scared. But I’m walking taller in my new colours. I’m re-friending everyone I can. I’ve dropped my cloak and wiped my face. There’s still some black under my eyes. Lack of sleep and cheap mascara. But I’m not afraid to hug you. Not afraid hug you hard.
Because life is exquisite in it’s beauty. Where there is challenge, there is kindness.
And extremes come hand in hand. And now you’ll know why you see me cry.
“You have whatever it is
That makes the stars
Decide to radiate their tiny
Pins of light”
– Whit Leyenberger.
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