Black Stones

For so long I too was a wounded bird. There was nothing extraordinary about my basket of despairs though. As with so many other sad souls, mine began with little hurts, small promises that never came true, snide and insensitive statements from The All-knowing Ones, and that bit by bit realization that my life was a far cry from the fairy tale stories I so loved as a child.

Perhaps a big part of these wounds were really due to our inability to let go of painful memories. I clung to melancholy, just as you do now. And, yes, for so long it did its job and sustained me. I fed off that solitude, protected my discontent like blood from which I thrived and lived off.

I found that I could cloak my disappointments. Pretend that I’m a door, open but unyielding. It was easier to give for the sake of appearances so I gave, volunteered, laughed about, clowned around, brought sunshine, shared parts of me just as I denied these people my truths. Between them and my essence was a bubble of disenchantment, An act of omission.

Inside there was a cauldron. How friendships are broken so easily by time or distance.
My tata died when I was fourteen. The one whom I thought I loved grew tired so I blocked him out to save myself. And then my father had a hunger, and left us for fresh blood. Painful firsts. I found why we have to guard secrets, how sometimes we wish we could unlearn things, erase the parts where we were victims of circumstances, when I felt fate was ripping through with talons, ending my hopes. Sometimes I daydreamed how I’d unzip the coils of the past and weave a future that is both believable but hopeful. I was a bleak soul, my emotions black stones in the ravine of unbelief.

But this I learned too. Sooner or later you’ll snap. Just as I did. And know that we feel old and drained not because of our imperfect lives but because of these black stones, which we keep, polish and hold as testaments and convenient reasons for our failures.

There comes an age when we learn how to stop using the past to temper our hopes. Years and pain fade and we are left with nothing but a little more free space, a cleaner slate to fill with hope. And the answer is yes. Most often, it is love that beholds us to change. Between the glow, the hand grazing the skin, your silken words soothing the tremors of our fears, between them an emergence. An enchantment that maybe, maybe you, I, the world, we are ready.