What remains but the ruins & memories
The thing about heightened sensitivity is that nothing goes unfelt. Not a harsh word, not a sharp look, not an awkward silence, and certainly not the quiet dread sinking lower and lower within me. They pass through me like a needle through a cloth, weaving and stitching across the fabric of my being. On the days of my life is sewn both forgettable and unforgettable moments, small hurts, great love, subdued desires, and a fearfulness so ferocious its ruins are unimaginable.
Without meaning to, I find myself wandering along dead paths, lurking beside the doors and windows of my childhood. When I return to those moments, I am always a child. I try to take myself there as I am now—older and a little sure of myself. But I cross the threshold and there I stand, six or seven years old. A little girl I can see but can’t reach. The place is still the same, but it comes back to me in fragments and blurry vignettes. The walls, the curtains, the room, the fading voices of people, all in shifting watercolor. Why do I always have to go back? Is it because it is easy to pin it all on something, someone? Is it because I never quite left? That somehow, there remains a part of me etched in that time and space, and no matter how far I go, how much time passes, I am forever tethered to it. What a strange place to find oneself, in the history and remembrance of things.
I marvel at the catalogue of things that inhabit my mind at any point in time. No one’s head should erupt into the kind of wildfires that I have to learn to put out daily. I think about my friendship with N and how desperately I sought closure. How sure I was that if only I could understand why someone would disappear from my life, I would find comfort in knowing and letting go. And when finally, the answers arrived at a time I had stopped searching for them, it was nothing like I had imagined. There is the shock of looking at someone you no longer recognize and the pain that takes over when you come to terms with this new strangeness, this loss. The awkwardness of recalibrating your life and world to move forward without a familiar presence. A year comes and goes, and at first, you’re in disbelief because one precious thing came to an end, and it did not send everything else to its death. You’re too scared to admit it, but the evidence is all around you: even in mourning, life springs abundantly.
I think about teaching—its performativeness and vulnerabilities. When I walk through the doors at 7am and register the silence and emptiness of campus, I wonder how many times I’ll do this for the rest of my life. How many times I’ll walk with my tote filled with books down the pavement, up the stairs in Durham, as the darkness lifts behind me. I dwell on it a lot—the repetitiveness of living, how I move from one predictable thing to another, so familiar with my ways: the first moments of each day alone, the pacing as I brush my teeth and listen to a podcast or audio book, the quiet drive to work with D, how I look back to wave him goodbye from the distance, the deep breath I take as I enter into the world of work, readying myself for its demands. I know the day’s pattern like the back of my hand, and even then, I realize that all of it can change in an instant. The ordinary instant. It makes me want to take my time. It makes me want to look around me, raise my hand to my beating chest, and whisper, here, here, here.
My students and I just finished reading Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. It is the kind of book that makes grief tangible in its mysteriousness. It is the kind of book that shakes you awake and turns your gaze to how much you have, and very quickly, how much it could all disappear. Everything. Poof. Gone. What remains but the ruins, the memories, and the objects that outlive the dead?
If I have to be honest, a little dying happens within me now and then. I feel myself descending into a place, one I know I have to fight with everything in me. It is dark and crippling and forceful. Under its crashing waves, I come undone. There are moments, I must confess, that I let myself be caught in the vortex—moments when I am too tired to hold on and find myself swept up in the tide. I go through the day numb, alone, and without much hope, exhausted to the bone, and waiting to be yanked out of a strange misery. There is a sorrow that sits at the door waiting to be touched, and somehow, I keep reaching for the knob. What is it in me that draws me to the lowly places and seeks to keep me there? I must break free. I do not know what to call it, except that coming out of it feels like being pulled from furious water. The raging surface of the sea breaks to reveal a body. I am safe. I am held. I gasp for air and feel the pounding of my heart. I am, at once, struck again by the astonishing gift of life.
