I’m writing this to live, to be magical, full of words that I can make meaning with.
Long ago, I used to know myself. At least I think I did, even though I don’t remember much of me. My mind is so clever and throughout this existence she built quick and reliable walls. She fortified them with barriers, spikes and other trappings so only bits and pieces filter through. She loves me so much, my clever mind. So, I may never show her to anyone but I’m writing anyway because I’m searching for what ever happened to me. To myself. To her. I’m searching for her. Her. She’s been known by many names in my lifetime. I dreamed them all into existence.
But first… A feral, dirty, unnamed child not afraid to share her sandwich with her trusty dog. Both left mostly untethered to explore woods, bogs and other unruly places for hours and days on end. Constantly finding herself mud caked, tired and exceedingly happy walking home with a bucket of slimy tadpole eggs that she’d place gently in a fish tank with pond water and carefully watch them come into being. Strategically placing rocks and other things for fledgling frogs to climb upon until the time came when they’d be carried back out to their pond and released into the wild.
Wild was all she knew then. The flowers and the trees of summer, the winters covered in snow and then sun bursting forth into skies of clear, bright blue. Her world was made up of other worlds that she formulated in her imagination, along with some that she did not. She hated getting her hair brushed, did not want baby dolls to play with and had no time for shoes or Sunday dresses. The forest was her scripture and her only daily plan was to slip into the fog as early as possible and to not return home until dusk.
Growing and learning the ways of the unforgiving world. Years of wandering about, mostly lost and pondering why she was “a little different” than everyone around her. Until the Huntress called her by a magical name and said ~ You belong to me. And so, she went forth in those early years of her craft, searching for meaning, kinship and another way of being. Feeling the rush of belonging and the slowness of sand sliding through the fingers of a cracking glass floor…crumbling away. Falling, crawling, stumbling forward and remembering backward. Losing what was and creating something else that turned out not quite what one thought it would be. Falling some more. Climbing, scratching, wiggling through dirt and roots and bones.
And somehow, arriving here. All grown up and older than she thought she was the last time she thought about aging. And still falling. On a winter night somewhere else in the swirling snow, she found herself in a globe all her own. A glass house without doors and a fortress for keeping her frozen and quiet. She looked into the deep black sea and heard the Wild One whisper ~ You are not being who you were to be. Make yourself known…
Before I was born, my mother thought she was having a boy. I don’t know why. Knowing for sure was not “a thing” then. My name was to be Keenan. And then, surprise! It’s a girl. Those were also the days in which babies had “girl names” and “boy names”. So boring, I think. And since no name had been chosen for a girl, I was given a name quite hastily because something needed to go on the birth certificate. This story is often told in my family. The story of “how I got a name I’ve never felt anything for and that didn’t seem to be really mine” became part of my herstory.
I remember so little about my childhood that sometimes I wonder if it ever happened. My main points of knowledge are that I was at home in the wilds, loved my dog more than anyone else in the world and that I hated wearing shoes. My “points of no return” all involve people, constructs and places of complete incongruence with my insides, my needs, my soul. Things like walking into kindergarten at five and attempting to work out how to manage my day-to-day life in an unsafe place. This was the first time that I can identify my mind being clever and taking over. It was the first incident of swallowing myself. There were many others after that, so many more that I have lost count. I don’t think I’m alone in this. I look at horses sometimes and think that if they too could pinpoint the first time that they went inside themselves and could relay the incident to me, I would find a familiar feeling between us.
I’ve lost myself within the swallowing, the retreating, the burying down, down, further into my own insides. I feel like there is no bottom to me. I can always go deeper, but at what cost at this point. I can dress up, wear the paint of the masses and make the words that people want to hear, but my stomach wants to vomit them up and throw them back out. I’m over it. Beyond anything else, I’m interested in digging out of myself, throwing aside the varnish of what is acceptable and howling with abandon just to see if anything will answer. I’m thrashing about within my clever mind, asking her if she’d like to take a break and just let me go out into the unknown and rage against everything that she’s locked me down with, pull the pins out of the fabric that she’s stitched back together time and time again and just leave the dress torn, my skin shredded and my eyes open.
What would I see? What would I see under everything that I’ve accumulated as armor? Would I even recognize the words coming out of my mouth if I let what I feel come spilling out and filling the void that has been left by my mute, convoluted soul? If I were to walk into the forgotten forest that was the beginning of me, would I ever return? I could make fire for the wolves and scratch at my wounds until they all bled out, leaving scars covered by soft fur. I could wander through time and space forever, staring up at the night sky and sniffing the air for sweet honeysuckle or the scent of a purpose.
And now I see her… Smirking thoughtfully at my contemplative meanderings. She turns on her heel and strides into the fog, her rags dragging the ground behind her. I hesitate, my clever mind whispers to me about danger and expectations, yet my soul has no choice but to follow. And then, as if some unknown portal has taken me there, I find myself standing beside the sacred door that leads to a place where the stars hang from the willow tree, where the Huntress and the Wild One are in consort with the deer and the owl. I open the door. And I am home.
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