I sat on the scratchy blue couch across from him as I bit the inside of my cheek, while my eyes remained glued to my sparkly pink shoes. My feet dangled above the floor; not old enough for the tips of my toes to touch the carpet but seemingly old enough to articulate my feelings to this cardigan-clad stranger.
“Did you hear me?” My eyes shifted up to his. “I asked, if you could be any animal, what would you be?”
This being what I assumed was how he would gauge my emotional stability, I immediately clamped my mouth shut and took a long pause. My gut told me I wanted to be a bird. But was that too cliché? And wouldn’t he then ask a million invasive follow-ups like,
“What are you trying to fly away from?” and “What are you trying to escape?”
No, a bird would not do.
Instead, I finally told him that if I could be an animal, I would be a giraffe. Slow-moving, could see things from a different view, a gentle creature. It seemed like the safest answer.
Safe, tactful moves became my art form. When asked a question, I would carefully study and mirror the person in front of me, until I was merely their reflection. Easily digestible, yet almost immediately forgotten.
I was made of water. Taking shape of whoever’s soul I poured myself into. It wasn’t until years later that my reservoir ran dry and had nothing left but a shaky voice in a foreign body that I finally asked myself the question in a quiet whisper,
“Wait, if you could be any animal what would you be?”
I thought about that couch and the itch it gave me on the back of my thighs as I stared up at the ceiling fan above me. My mind wandered to uncomfortable places trying to stay awake as the clock struck one, then two, in the morning. My breath remained quiet and still so I could hear him match his every inhale with an exhale.
“There you go. Take another breath,” I whispered to no one but the whirring blades overhead.
The pressure weighed heavy on my chest as I anxiously waited for the inevitable, yet hoping in that moment I would be anxious and waiting forever.
How I wish I could be a bird right now.
My grandfather had been asking for his mother, so I knew it wouldn’t be long until it was time for him to go.
The day before New Year’s Eve, I decided to make the two-hour drive home for the night. I needed to sleep in my own bed and pack some fresh clothes that didn’t have remnants of antiseptic and morphine. After I packed my car, I sunk my head close to his and hushed,
“I am going home for the night, but I will be back in the morning. I promise.”
I laid my head on the hollow part of his chest that always seemed to have space for me and told him I loved him. I lifted my eyes to his and quickly wiped away the tears before they could drip down and burn into his skin. I didn’t want to leave him scarred with my sadness. I kissed him on the cheek once more and left the bedroom, as the sound of his breathing followed me out.
He didn’t make it to the next morning. And in a way, neither did I.
As it turns out, losing him was like losing proof of my own existence. That is what happens when the one person who sees you in that perfect pink light slips from your grasp. And though by an early age, the claws of self-doubt already had me by the throat, the sweet words he sung draped around my neck ever so gently like iridescent jewels.
He and I were similar in that we found our refuge in softness. In a world full of sharp words and rigid expectations, he met me in our quiet corner and allowed me to stretch in the silence. It was like living in a hot, suffocating desert and the marble pedestal he put me on saved me from feeling the burn of the unforgiving sand. I knew that the lightest wind could knock me over, and most of the time, I braced myself for the inevitable incineration. But in the moments his hand was holding mine, I might as well have been made of sculpted marble too. And his words turned into emerald gemstones and shone brightly in what seemed none other than a misunderstood existence.
But the harsh reality of clinging to words that no one else will ever say, is that once those words leave with the breath of the only person who will ever speak them, they are gone forever.
What do I do now?
It was a question I constantly asked myself for the months following the loss. I burrowed beneath the surface and waited for the answer to come. I distracted myself and waited. Read over 50 books and waited. Numbed myself and waited.
I can’t say when it was exactly that I made my way out of the mountain of blankets and deceptive shadows, but once I realized everything in my life had been completely leveled, I knew there was no other choice than to return to the Painful Place.
And so, I have made my way back to the desert underneath the blazing sun and instead of trying to grab onto shiny falsities that pull me to higher ground, I have begun digging with ten toes down. Unearthing all the things I had buried long ago. And when my shovel hits rock I ferociously pull it from the sands and hold it up to the sky.
Is this who I am? Is this what I believe?
Sometimes, the rock is just a plain rock, and I quickly cast it away. But if there is one that has slivers of sparkle that catch the rays of sun just right, I store it away and take note:
Yes! This is who I am. I remember now!
Some of them are so delicate they could easily break apart in my hands like pumice stone, and so I make sure to mark them, FRAGILE: EASY TO BREAK. These are what I call my Sensitives. Others are metamorphic– heavy and sinkable. These are what I call my Traumas. I make sure to red tag those and label, DO NOT DROP – MAY HURT SOMEBODY ELSE.
When I find these Sensitives and Traumas, another piece of my Self finally makes sense. However, sometimes I unearth a foreign object and I know it never belonged to me. I call these my Lessons. They are the empty urns of people I have tried on for size. The hollow vessels I poured myself into to become somebody else. And for every version I find, I recall when my bones creaked and rattled underneath my skin trying to remind me, “This is not who you are.”
And so, I make the choice to let go of these ghostly chambers and let them slip between my blistered, bloody fingers.
Sometimes, you just need to let things shatter.
In this process, I have learned that The Dig is a hot and hellish process and takes a solemn understanding that it will be a lonely excavation. Not many people will sit patiently beside you and hold the shovel while you catch your breath.
Since this journey began, I have been reacquainted with the deconstructed parts of myself that have been collecting dust in the corners of my soul waiting for me to pull them into the light. It is a wonder how in-between the before and after, they still glisten after all this time. From when, in my first therapist’s office at six years of age, I was asked what animal I so longed to be, to my Saturn returning home to me, they neither rusted nor tarnished. It is as if I knew I would need to preserve them like artifacts, ready to be assembled again.
And now, I am building an existence solely based on my knowing. It cannot be proven by another person’s words, as beautiful as they may be. No, my existence relies on nothing but the divinity that shines within.
The sands beneath my feet have started cooling as the sun finally drops to the horizon, softly illuminating my treasures. With burning lungs and achy bones, I wonder in awe,
How long has it been since these have seen the light of day?
Yet, even in the orange glow, I still catch myself reminiscing about who I used to be. The girl who would live for moments beside the sea, as sweet nothings and ocean air softly tangled in the tendrils of her hair. And those memories seem to always sting as they collect behind my eyes and lump in the back of my throat, even as a small smile lifts my face.
I have come to see the beauty in endings, just as much as I do in bright, new beginnings.
I am reminded of this beauty – how we go from air to earth, then back to air again, when I hear distant waves crashing on the shore or when a white butterfly floats past me and stalls by my shoulder. And in those little pockets of time when everything quiets and stills, I wonder,
Is that you? Do you see how much I’ve changed?
Does he see that I have brought out my paint set that was collecting dust underneath my bed and have started working on a blank canvas using our subtle shades of solitude? Or how I have used both my voice and pen to create a world in which I finally use words that are my own?
I watch the seeds I’ve planted in this new landscape start to sprout and reach delicately to the sky, and I softly chuckle. Because whenever I start to feel the waves of grief for all he will never see, I remember that I have painted the whole sky in the same color blue that were his eyes.
CHRISTY MCCARTHY was born and raised in Southern California, always having a deep affinity for the oceanside. She has a bachelor’s in English Literature from University of La Verne and an MA in Arts Management from Claremont Graduate University. After having started her professional career in communications and fundraising for non-profit education, she has now also started making her lifelong dream of being a writer and poet come true. She currently resides in Claremont, CA.
