wisdom, do you remember when you were young?

wisdom, do you remember when you were young? 

The following was originally posted to one of my journal blogs in September, 2010.

I am resistant. not hesitant. not timid. not shy. a little angry. and a lot more. i am not a follower.I believe that I can make waves, though I rarely do.when I was a small child i dropped a glass jar of peanut butter and the glass, though shattered, kept it’s form - held together by the glue like substance within. terrified I picked it up and put in the refrigerator like I had been told to do. that is the end of my story and the beginning of another. well, it is not the end. It was later discovered by my someone. and my father, who had instructed me to carry it in and put it away, locked me in a dark room until i promised to tell him the "truth" about why I had carried it in. I was terrified of the dark. I snuck out and hid under the bed in my brother's room, which was lighted, until I was discovered and dragged back into the dark, sat on the bed and asked why I was doing this. eventually the softer side of my father resurfaced and he told me not to do it again and let me back into the light with everyone else. I had been forgiven. or he had remembered. i do not know. I was relieved that the monsters were gone, for the moment. but that is the end. except there never really is an end, is there?no story ever ends. no human story anyway. but my other story is that I am that jar. a cohesively shattered jar. held together by the glue like substance within. left in a refrigerator because what is there else to do. because when the world is not a trusting place (and those of you who think it is, i have to tell you that you are wrong. if you believe it is, you have been very lucky, or you have been lied to, or you are lying to yourself, but it is not. the simple truth is that the world is an ugly and horrible place with a lot of love and potential for joy and peace.) little girls are pulled out of themselves by there vaginas and become frozen women, long before they are women at all and have even half a chance to find their voice, or not.and many do not, because it is a much harder, much rougher, much more trying journey than you might think. and it involves dragging beautiful people into the mud with you. and finding beautiful people who want to do this is quite the challenge. there are not enough of them.wisdom. do you remember when you were young?you think i am angry, and I am. but that is not it.you think i am wounded, and I am. but that is not it.you think i need help, and I do. but that is not it.you think i need healing, and I am. but that is not it.you wonder if I am sad, and I am, but you are wrong.If I were more of an artist with brushes than words, I would paint my life a large and beautiful mural full of colors; birds and flowers; waterfalls and lakes; bright tropical fish and snowcapped mountains; laughing faces and weddings, births, friends holding hand; and somewhere in a canyon, almost lost in the shadow between the orange and brown layers under a luminous setting sun a child by herself, surrounded by wolves, a human hand, angry teeth or blood... i do now know. I rarely flush it out. just a small fearful sorrow in the shadow. that you could miss, but must include.

Looking these 5 years back and re-reading these words I accept that I am remembering. I accept that it is all real. This doesn't happen to me anymore. I don't feel lost and invisible anymore. Because, for everything else, I have been seen. I have been seen. Wisdom not only remembers when she was young. But more importantly, because she does, she can see me. And she does. See me. Which was the question I did not know how to ask. For I could not yet see myself. Or know that I was not seeing myself. I just felt (inexplicably, it seemed to me then) invisible. Sometimes, it takes being seen, to see.