I was driving home from work last week on an evening with one of the more saturated sunsets I’ve seen in my life- violet clouds singed with orange, crepuscular rays streaming upward as if God was about to make an otherworldly announcement.
The clouds then took on a strange, hazy filter until I traced the smoke line to a structure fire just off of an exit ramp. The flames reached up above the trees, and the strobe of a battalion of fire engines evoked the feeling of emergency in me. I’ve seen my home burn before, had police and paramedics called to the house I lived in in high school more than once; the urgency and grief in the visual leaked back in like time travel. Yet as the scene came and went out of the passenger side of my van, I just looked back to the road ahead and said,
“Ah, Paradox.”
_____
Labelling myself as a survivor doesn’t sit correctly. As I get further away from history, observer suits me more. It removes me from unwilling participant to autonomous documentarian. Where my focus was once on understanding how things happened, and why they did, I’ve begun to develop the ability to just look at what is happening with no need to understand simply because it no longer threatens me.
And somehow, I understand it more only then.
This year, I found a system of support that has provided me with safety for long enough that I have been able to spend less cognitive energy on acute problem-solving, and more on what my mind was built for. I’ve finally felt the ability to rest, and my body thanked me by nearly collapsing completely once we no longer had anything to run from. My most inconsistent and lackluster season has become the most affirming of purpose.
_____
I used to equate praise with safety, and silence with rejection. I have been surrounded by silence- like enemy forces closing in with no intent to ever strike, or ever allow me to flee. Praise was the breadcrumb, and Silence was overlord of acceptance that struck the gavel every time I spoke.
I’ve since learned Praise is often a cheapskate, and Silence is seldom brave.
_____
Papa, my maternal grandfather whom I recognize as my true parent, passed away before I had the grounding to ask him the questions I really needed to. He often attributed weakness to my thoughtfulness. Accepted only tangible gain as growth. Did not understand why I enjoyed running in the nature of his farm most when I listened to music instead of birdsong, and yelled at me to take off my headphones. Did not support my athletic drive until I broke a record.
And given the dysfunction of the family system on a broad scale, I have been left to wonder how much of his love was limited by generational difference, or a need for power and control. If my love for him was a projection of what I so dearly wanted him to see in me, because it wasn’t being accepted by either of us. Or, if it was because I saw in him its source.
And Paradox says,
“Yes.”
_____
For some reason,
Silence has entered the room with Invitation lately.
Someone I have long admired, someone I perceived as above me, meeting me and saying,
“I have so many questions,” with enthusiasm.
People who have perceived me as intense, or at least met me with no reply to my casual, loaded comments, coming back to me with paragraphs of their own deeper experience, unprompted.
People becoming warmer to me the more I dare speak, suddenly.
And between the extremes of I don’t see you, and I’m listening,
sits Paradox, as mediator- not judge, but arbiter.
And when I say, “I don’t know how to feel. I don’t know what the truth is.”
Paradox says,
“Yes.”
And so it is settled.
I will the machine. 