One
The sun did shine but it seemed as dark as night. I remember reaching out to people who seemed to have authority, but they told me the same old lie, the same old kind of denial. They’re just boys, she said. Back then, it didn’t feel like the sun had completely disappeared yet (it felt like the way the sky looked when the sun sets but the beauty had long started disappearing when it all began a year prior) but it kept getting darker after those words and they kept spinning and repeating themselves in my head. Boys will be boys she said, we can’t call them out on that. That was the first night I found out my hands could turn into swords. I decided to start building up my wall and hide behind it, safe from it all. I’ve been collecting bricks ever since. If someone told fifteen-year-old me that things would get better, she would’ve screamed at them as she stepped into a four year traumatic entity. It would take two years and the rest of my life to strip away those misperceptions and redefine glory.
Darkness has no room for love nor has it room for light, I thought.
Two
The sun started rising again even when the demons yelled vigorously when I reached sixteen. Music kept being able to drown them out though and music built another wall that couldn’t possibly be destroyed. How wrong I was.
Three
You destroyed my wall way too quickly and I should’ve known you were as dangerous as a hurricane or an earthquake but I told myself that maybe that was what it should be; love was a scary thing anyway so who knew, right? I thought it was supposed to go like this and I thought you were my safe zone. But safe zones don’t make fun of one’s biggest insecurities. I didn’t care because you were my safe zone and I thought it was okay even though it made me hate my body. I loved you more than I should and I hated telling you no, but you got angry when I said f*** you because I wasn’t ready. (Maybe I never truly was but curiosity killed the cat). I remember the moments of panic and how you created so many new fears as if I didn’t have plenty enough, as many as fish in the sea but I wanted to please you so I pushed them away. My heart longed for rest and peace in you, but with all my might I was trying to swim in you to find it.
I never did.
And so I told myself that you were my safe zone even though I wasn’t sure I felt safe with you, but you felt like a type of quietness I craved so I couldn’t push you away — until you walked away in the utmost literal sense of the word.
Four.
I had been scared ever since and the darkness started to come back but then there you were with your familiar face that I couldn’t recognize completely but I knew we had met or at least seen one another before. Back then I couldn’t possibly imagine what this would turn into and if I could it wouldn’t have been as wonderful as it is now. But differently wonderful. Even before we started to know one another you seemed to be able to light up the entire room and you made me feel even when I didn’t want to feel and but those feelings quickly turned into an uncontrollable tidal wave of fear that forced every energy of my body to go numb and hide way from everyone and everything and especially from love but you, even then, became my fallen definition of that very safe zone.
Five.
It started as a joke and it started as a lie. I remember myself living in denial telling myself I couldn’t let anyone in like that even when deep down I knew I already did. I remember falling into denial time and time again, mismanaging this distorted slavery, even hell couldn’t recognize it. I was not wanting to admit to those feelings even when the butterflies in my stomach felt good and your calmness made me smile even when I was on the verge of tears, drowning. The demons kept coming back but when I was with you they crawled out of their caves and ate me alive. Then after nineteen months, after the date my body was torn to shreds, your face appeared before mine again.
You were the exact same.
I remember admitting to those feelings at last and feeling more free than I had for two years did when you wrapped your arms around me and that was when my fears shifted my body into complete hostility.
Six.
You taught me what love opposes and I began to fly searching for its truth and I haven’t come down since. I cannot possibly explain the things you’ve done and how you taught me that I should never feel forced to please anyone. You broke who I was but you gave me a reason to allow God to throw away the very fear the Devil blossomed in me. Even when I do get scared today, the Father holds me close until I’m calm again, and even thereafter He walks beside me. I don’t think you’ll ever be able to fully realize that you led me towards the safest safe zone. You destroyed my swords too, by the way.
You were winter in the desert.
Seven.
It’s now November and I gave myself a new name.
The twenty-second year is called my sweet summertime.
