There was Music

Prelude & Fugue I wander in abstraction—this place between my past and future, where even the present is hard to grasp. I am conscious, aware of my surroundings and responsive to them; I can touch and feel, so I am not entirely a phantom. Yet what does it mean when the external and internal do not agree? The summer sun shines, but I am cold; there are people, but I feel alone. Does time add meaning? Can it connect everything: body, people, history? Stitched together, do they reveal the whole of me? Who am I? This stranger says that my past contains hints of the answer. He asks about my life; but what does he really want to know, and why does he care? Is he trying to categorize and judge me, to imprison and control me like so many others? I am more than one idea—more than daughter, sister, criminal, survivor; I am all of these and none of them. I am past, present, and future: memory, pain, and hope. I am complete in my incompleteness. I am contradiction: power and frailty. Is that not true for everyone? I could tell him about resolve, but to what end? My resolve has faded. Where once there was flowing water, now there is only sand. I ache with thirst. For so long I have sought to be strong, to do more than cope. What I really want now, I think, is not more resolve, but acceptance. With all that has happened to me, with all that I have done, I struggle to accept who I am—what I have become. I seek something that will last through the difficulty of healing—patience, grace, love? I used to reject such needs as weakness, but now I am not sure. I am weary of doubt, longing, hate. “Do not give up,” Father would say. “Fight on,” Mother might add. “Triumph comes to those who endure.” All my life, these ideas nurtured my hope. Yet the truth is that hope does not always last. It can turn the heart into a wasteland, barren of the belief in goodness. If good is still out there somewhere, I am tired of looking for it. I am weary of words, of thoughts spinning round and round in my head. My will has grown as calloused as my flesh. I do not think that is bad, however. After all, I have lasted this long. I am still here, in this land between waking and sleeping that we call life. This stranger says that healing begins with sharing my story; that by claiming it, the fragments of my life can be reassembled to form a whole. Some are visible—the scars lining my skin—while others are invisible, maybe lost. I do want to feel again. I want to try.