An introvert abroad - day 5

Day 5.

Today was a day of scents.

The damp earth after all-night rain.
Stale cigarette smoke wafting out of the car upholstery.
The after-scent on my clothes after sitting in a restaurant with an open kitchen.
The peculiar, distinctive dry-damp odour of caves.
The changing quality of the air from green inland valleys to wooded mountains to salty coast.
Passing livestock trucks.
The homely smell of frying onions.
Fresh nail polish.

Inside an inky black cave, galaxies of glowworms. They are actually considered maggots when they are in the phase of development where they glow. But, as our guide eloquently summarised: "we didn't think anyone would pay to see glow-maggots". I tried to not breathe the unwashed odour of the backpackers shoulder-to-shoulder with me in the boat, and wished I could stay under that miniature night sky much longer.

In half an hour on this beach, so many sensory delights that I can hardly catch them all. Black sand, sprinkled with spectacular driftwood of all sizes. The shading of the clouds and the water beneath them, from storm-backed grey horizon to hidden golden sunset. Drying seaweed wafting its sticky stench over the beach.

The sound of rounded stones clattering over each other in the waves takes my mind into the past. Last year I briefly dated a man who was blind. Deprived of the option of sharing images of the quirky things I notice in daily life and the beautiful places I experienced, I started recording sound bites to share instead. I found myself listening to the world differently, finding unusual landmarks in the constant landscape of noise. It was almost 6 months ago, and I still haven't lost the habit, or a lingering kernel of sadness at how it ended.

Then, as I'm sitting on a rock overlooking the waves, two bull mastiff pups run to me. Ignoring the urging of their gap-toothed owner, and my nudges, they sit their warm flanks down against my thigh and lower back, and push their heads under my hand and elbow. The next person to walk past comments that I have "the best seat in the world". I agree. On the walk back, two young black cats with white bibs scamper under the boardwalk. A cluster of surfers whoop and holler further out from the beach. And I walk back to the house smiling.

Still the girl

This week three men wanted me. My year turned on the hinge of their desire.

This is a language I understand. How it begins is how it ends.

My answer, three times.

I am not for you.

Don't they know I'm still the girl on the beach with thighs twelve years too large, flesh bulging against the chicken-wire gaze of her father and uncle? My bicycle dubbed the gate to acceptability, to shrinking those meaty fillets down to a size that might make me invisible to scorn.

I am not for you.

Don't they know I'm still the girl, fifteen with billboard breasts proclaiming the ripeness of my sex to every man that passed. Before I had learned how to open the long library vault of my mouth. How everyone in a foreign country thought I was my father's wife, in that daisy dress made for a church I no longer believed in?

I am not for you.

Don't they know I'm still the girl in the warehouse, far from home. Seventeen so green, not a colour a person should ever be. His twice-my-age fingers moved like vine tendrils, brushing my waist, tucking in the tag of my shirt. Into my body a tree trunk, like my sapling self had always belonged to him. Curled in my grandmother's shower with shame.

I am not for you.

Don't they know I am still the girl, twenty-one and never kissed. The first time, my teeth were bars and I did not want to unlock them. His kisses tasted like ash and held a key to the library he would never enter.

I am not for you.

Don't they know I'm still the girl twenty and eight, when moan was just a word and pleasure an idea. Whose virginity became a trophy she was tired of carrying, fox-weary of the steeplechase, the sniffing hounds. So threw it to a pale-fleshed creature who did not understand how twinned desire and fear can be.

I am not for you.

Don't they know I'm still the girl whose no turned limp, fell like a body in a waterfall when he pushed and pushed again. Drowned when he said it was my fault. Two years gone and I'm breathing again but the timber of my belly is still waterlogged.

I am not for you.

Don't they know, I'm still the girl with a canyon named father in her chest? With a trickle, a creek called love in that chasm signed man. With a bear in the belly of that canyon. She roars at all the strangers stumbling in. There is no haven in this body, this tree trunk is not home.

I am not for you.

To the men that wanted me this week, and the ones that are waiting for me next week and the ones after that.

You can't fill in my canyons with the soil of your masculinity. There isn't enough of you to make it solid ground again. Didn't anyone teach you how earthquakes work?

When it rains, sometimes the creek floods. Sometimes the canyon is full and love washes the stone ledges clean. There are always traces of earth left behind. Maybe we can plant a garden in the crevices together, grow something that hasn't been here before.

You can't fuck my history out of me, can't rescue me from fires that razed long before you arrived. I have not been waiting safe in a tower for you and your steed. I have not been waiting. I have not been safe.

Forests always grow back after fires.

We can't dance if you are always stepping forward. If you move in the only place I can breathe is away. Don't chase me into the canyon.

I am still the girl that dances on the Sabbath day. Dances at midnight. Twirls in her skirts and howls at the sickle moon.

This is a language I understand. How it begins is how it ends.

If I am for you, remember the girl. Learn her too. I am the bear and the canyon and the flood and still the girl.

Letters to the future

When I was thirteen I started a ritual. I got the idea from a novel - the name of which has long fallen out of my memory.

Each birthday I sit down and write a letter to my future self. A real handwritten letter on paper and sealed in an envelope for a year. Then at 3pm each birthday (my birth time) or as close to it as I can manage, I open it, read it and write the next one.

I did it for ten years, then stopped for ten years, and started again last year. Ironically I think the years I wasn't writing it were probably some of the hardest years I've had: the ones where that annual reflection and reminder from my past self might have been more useful than usual.

I've only ever showed those letters to a few select people in my most inner circle, but maybe there's something in there for other people too. So here's a snippet from last year's letter:

"When you are lost, you only need to remember. Look at who you have been to remember who you are. Look to the dailiness of love that you have lived, even when the softness of it was not there. Trust your reserve and your patience and kindness. Follow your sensitivity."

For me those letters have become a touchstone for the person I am. A way to reconnect with who I have been all along, a reminder of my ambitions and daydreams and yearnings. Sometimes reading them makes me sad at the contrast between one year and the next; sometimes it leaves me with a wry smile at the surprising wisdom of my younger selves; and then sometimes it's incredibly grounding.

People write letters to their younger selves all the time, but that seems pretty useless to me. We can't go back in time. Our youth cannot be shaped by the adult we will become, but the reverse is usually true.

So, what do you want to say to your future self?

The rest of the story

Direct link to video

This.

Remembering all the other ways there are to tell the story of my life.  More than the stories I was born into, the words I have gathered about me like garments. Behind the grief and wanting to howl at the moon: the rest of the story lies waiting to be told. The strength of women, their straight backs.  The sheer joy of living, the pleasure of sating the senses.  All the fierce, deep love.  So much that it spills over sometimes, even if it comes out in the wrong language. 

A kind of relief blooming in my chest.  An unfurling, breathing easier.  Everything will be okay.  Happiness is not beyond me.

The time it takes to remember

Some people that I love have told me they want less of me in their lives. That I am heavy, holding them back from the dazzling lives they could be leading.  I feel weighted with grief, with slow recovering, with trying to remember and forget. It is the same grief of all women who bear the pain of witnessing.  How can I be buoyant and sparkling when I know too much?

I am afraid that I don't know how to love. Not the dailiness, the living of it, the trust in it.  I can feel it: can crave it, yearn lavishly, give it all my attention.  I am too quick to affection for people I do not yet know, and for those I know too well.  When I leave, when relationships end, I feel no different.  After the hurting and grieving and raging and forgiving, I still feel drawn to them as if by gravity.  I can only stay away by putting distance between us, removing them from my life. I am as helpless as the moon; circling, never touching.

I fear I am guilty of holding onto anger, of nursing my wounds in its heat, for fear that without it the world will be utterly cold, and I will be bereft.  I shield myself with my words and my names for wrongdoings, but I don't know what their opposite is.  I don't know what it means to be loved and unhurt.

How long does it take to recover? How long do we allow people to heal?  It has been 17 years since I first realised that the world is not safe for women and children, not even in their homes.  12 years since I left home and tried to learn the nature of the world for myself.  7 years since I left the haven of university to turn my history into the futures of others; trying to save the world since I could not save myself.

5 years since we got away from my father. Even now he still reaches, grasping, into our dreams, our relationships, cutting us apart.  3 and a 1/2 years since I learned for the first time what it means to be actually relaxed in my own home, to not be constantly waiting for the sound of that car in the driveway; waiting for the cold shoulder to turn back towards me; for the next rage over something I had forgotten.

2 years since I realised, through the ultimate act of intimacy, that I have never been loved by a man. 18 months since my brother left us in a towering rage, only to turn back to the father we tried to save him from.  4 months since I wept uncontrollably, curled tightly on my couch, for learning what a child can be like untouched by the hand of human evil.

How long does it take to recover?  Only the time it takes to remember.  And I have forgotten so much.

Uncrowning

Last year I lost ten kilos, grew my hair and started dating. This year I've sworn off dating, gained ten kilos and cut my hair. Several times.

If hair is a woman's crowning glory, what does it mean when it's gone? Is she less a woman, not feminine, making a statement, seeking change? Is she suddenly edgier, more interesting, sexier, less soft?

Hair and grief have a long history together. I only have to look around to find it. This week I learned that my aunt's new partner shaved off his facial hair after 30 years... and a divorce. I have made an art of cutting mine off. If l look back at my many haircuts, I can find a heartbreak - small or large - to match most.

The body of a tree records everything that happens to it, lays down history in the rings of its trunk. Seasons of growth, debilitating droughts, lush summers. A wound in the trunk of a tree will leave evidence, even if it's only a ripple in one year's archive.

Our hair does the same, showing the history of our bodies, our health or unwellness. Wouldn't it include our emotions, our memories too? It might explain why so many turn to scissors after ending relationships, a death, giving up a way of life. Declaring ourselves fit for a fresh start and unburdened by the past. Revealing that we have a past worth cutting off.

Slow remembering

Remember how good it feels to just stop... look away from your destination from a moment and revel in where you are... to come home and slow down... to breathe and remember who you are without the rush.

wishes make for danger

too long to be articulated -
the resonances that aren't heard
much felt in the heart's cavity
the hunger disappointed
the rage not easily corrected by experience
a longing for clouds
wishes make for danger
for all of these
compelling, doubled,
were fated
only in memory

(found poem - Trauma and Recovery page 111)