A Letter to My Bruised and Beaten Soul.
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To my beaten and bruised soul (and to yours, if you need it):
You and I, we are sunrises and stars and the morning dew hitting fresh eyelashes.
You are the creases in me, as I fold myself into the tiniest pieces, trying to rearrange myself to fit anywhere, to fit anyone.
And I am the exact shade of green in your eyes and the reason it changes based on the amount of sunlight hitting your face.
I am not the fabric that covers your flesh, I’m closer than that.
I am not the indentures made by the rings on your fingers, I go deeper than that.
I know that sometimes you live in this strange, in-between space that’s filled with cold and clammy air, and bouts of insecurity. It’s wholly uncomfortable there, isn’t it? But I won’t make you move an inch, if that’s where you feel inclined to stay.
Stay there as long as you like. Here, I’ve fluffed up a pillow for you. But before you lay your sleepy head on it, please read the inscription printed on the back.
I know you exist somewhere. I’m just not sure where.
Whether it’s inside me or on my fingertips. Or on every other fragile extremity.
But wherever you are, please remember that we are not here to keep things manageable.
There are no borders, no edges.
I will not write myself onto the margins of your book, I will take it up in its entirety.
Page by page, nospacesorpunctuationnecessary.
We don’t do lukewarm. Our bathwater won’t ever run too hot because we like the steam to clear out our skin thoroughly, leaving nothing behind.
We do intuitive lust and wide-eyed grins. We don’t do capsulated doses of love. Only full, rich entireties.
There is no holding back, there is no time for lukewarm love.
I just so often want to reach out, grab your face and whisper ever so delicately: you are loved. You are loved, you are loved.
Just so that you can know. Just so that you won’t ever have to wonder.
I hear you, each time you ask to be saved. You keep inviting people to lay with you so that maybe, a warm body next to you will transfer the weight off your shoulders and on to the bed where you can lay in sleepy cocoons of safety and warmth.
But you’ll still wake up alone. Even if someone’s arms are wrapped around you.
You keep asking people to save you, and they keep giving you the same pained but patient and slightly panicked look that says: I don’t know how.
I know that you want to grab them and shake the answers out of them, but you could rattle them tirelessly from head to toe and still get nothing. People are loving you as fully as they can. Please remember that.
They will love you fiercely and wholly, and you can inhale them deeply. But they cannot save you.
Will you try to save yourself? Will you try to always remember the things that make you feel?
Think about the way your body feels after a good, hard run. When you’re laying on the grass, starring up at the clouds move in that exquisitely slow way that only clouds can move. And you look away for a second, to try to catch your breath.
And you notice that your body feels like one huge, limber heart, trying to beat its way out of itself.
I know that you can’t imagine not ever feeling that again.
So stay with me.
I know that you want so badly for your pain to stop talking. For it to stop yelling at you. So you tell it to .You tell it that it’s not going to win.
You tell it that there will be love. There will be light. There will be goodness. There will be kindness, there will be bright shiny happy (ness).
And your pain retorts with a scoff, before informing you that there will also be heartache so brutal. There will be endless, lifeless shadows. There will be crippling doubt and overwhelming, obscene scenes of fear.
It will yell at you. But you have to yell back.
I don’t mean raise your voice as you would to the lover who left you. I mean the screeching, tearing of your throat muscles that makes your lungs proverbially collapse in pain and the sting of the scream.
I mean you’re going to have to yell in that other quiet way. The one that you don’t hear out loud, but that thrashes in your skull, leaving you with a sharp ache that doesn’t dull. This internal yelling is the harder of the two.
You’ve felt numb for so long, and your brain is so used to its usual commands that it will fight you on this. But you have to fight back. Your heart muscles pump quick and sharp, and they contract evenly at the quickest possible intervals in order for you to be strong.
Are you still with me?
Will you dive in headfirst with me? With you let the water fill your nostrils because you inhaled when you should’ve been holding your breath?
I know that you felt your kneecaps hug the floor and decided there was no getting back up. But can you just crawl for awhile, until the strength in your legs come back? Make friends with the rubble that caused your purpled knees.
Embrace the dark spaces living under your eyes from nights you spent hunched over, spilling out of yourself. Will you hold yourself here?
If you do, I will be the perfectly placed hand at the top of your back that rubs the warmth back into your bones. I will listen to you sob/scream/whisper diligently into your pillow as the tremors of your bones begin pouring through the mattress, expelling the noisy nothings that your heart is making.
We will not search for the tunnel with the light at the end. We will be the bright eye squinting lanterns igniting every corner. We will be alive in that way that people always claim they want to be. We will feel overwhelmed and hurt and uncertain.
All of these things will sting and stir us up, but once we’ve reached their avid peak and climbed down, we’ll look back at everything with tired eyes that tried.
So please, let me see you. Let me look at you.
Let yourself be gutted by this. Be thankful that the world rubs you raw. Run your hands over its textures and let your heart break with its sorrows. Its bliss will be your own. Its victories are ones you will share, and you will hold its failures at the back of your skull and always try to be better.
I know that you’ve been touched by those who didn’t care to really touch you, to really see you. Can I make up for them? Can I discover you with my eager eyes?
I know about the irrelevance that you find yourself battling with. The inevitable questions of: What makes me good? What will make me better? How do I do better? I need to be better.
I know that you aren’t ready to feel good yet. But please stop reaching for the bottle of wine and two handfuls of anxiety pills at 12 pm. It really isn’t helping anyone.
And I know that your mouth is going crooked, from all the backwards kisses. The ones that you rest incompletely on the necks of near strangers. You make sharp shapes on their collarbones and they coil their arms tightly at the hem of your dress.
I know that they chase the smile right off your lips with all the wrong words. They try so hard to collect the dust of past lovers’ fingertips, still visible, still pressed firmly on your torso. But they cannot wash them away. Only you can.
Please, stop doing these things that hurt, because the scars you’re leaving aren’t invisible and they aren’t minimal. They are felt from the inside out, echoing. Telling of a time when you were shattered. About a time when there were entire shards of broken things lingering inside you.
You were heaving them up, constantly, and the only way to rid yourself of them was to let them slice right through and out of the other side.
I see your pain. I see your fear, I see your scars and I welcome them. I weave your intricacies fiercely with my own.
For the first time, I want you to see yourself in the eyes that are looking back at you. You are not small. You are so eager, so hungry. Please don’t blink any of it away.
Let me learn your rhyme schemes and memorize your mannerisms. I want to dive into you. Into your fleshy parts and the simpler ones, too.
I will kiss your scars succinctly and dress them up in pretty ribbons rather than bandages because, to me, they should be put on display and not hidden.
You are vivid, but recognizable.
You are unpredictable, but comfortable.
You feel like home in the best way, in the only way that counts.
I just want you to remember that we’re all a little jilted around the edges, but there’s something about the speed bumps on our skin that smooths out our smiles.
Let me remind you that you are only broken in the way that all hearts are. We beat as one rickety machine. So please, be comforted by the fact that our collective hearts keep fighting even under the strain of all the world’s sadness.
P.S. I know that sometimes I am (unapologetically) earnest and I know that sometimes that’s unnerving. I’ll try to turn it down, and I’ll try to play coy. But I’ll fail miserably and instead, I’ll leave you tiny love letters like this one:
We were just edges of each other
Together in the woods
Our lungs stretched thin
The soft rattles resemble your voice
And I am forever glued to the tress
That mimic your noise
With all the love in my wide open heart,
Julie
*****
{There will be light.}
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