From Exile

Each that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides.

~Emily Dickinson

I remember once years ago driving by San Francisco's Ocean Beach, looking for places to take pictures. I was past the deepest part of the depression and dark night that had come over me after my marriage ended but I was still depressed. And I was tired of feeling that way, but even more, I was tired of bemoaning it, and I was especially tired of the fear of it. As we turned toward Golden Gate Park, out of nowhere a thought arrived: what if you feel this way for the rest of your life? Wouldn't you want to make the best of it? 

You can't photograph an epiphany but that moment is etched in my memory. Everything was gray: the Pacific, the sky, the smudgy line of horizon; the entire landscape except the long, thick bank of windswept Monterey Cypress trees, with their deep green foliage, and the weathered brown wood of the great Dutch windmills that lined the west end of the park. 

Yes~

Yes, I would want that. 

Lately I've been visited a lot by my young adult self, and want so much to write about her, but I'm not quite sure how without seeming trite, without reducing her or her experience to cliché. Or being overly sentimental, because the truth is I am feeling so sentimental toward her. She was so up for life, in spite of a hard childhood, in spite of being so alone during those years. She was creative, passionate, and adventurous, she and her little blue car constantly on the move. What she adored, she adored with gusto: music, books, movies, her cat; her first 35mm camera that took surprisingly good photos, and guitar, with its warped neck but surprisingly good sound. That strawberry scented lotion she would drive all the way to Berkeley for, already open and spread on her hands and arms so that the car was filled with its heady scent on the long drive home. How she loved to create her space, making the most of what there was, with plants and posters and sun pouring in through opened curtains.

It's no coincidence that in therapy my therapist and I have begun to explore "parts," those aspects of ourselves that for so many reasons had to split off, who exist side by side with the Self, the innate, authentic being within each of us. Through loss and pain and trauma and abandonment and neglect and isolation, we unconsciously exile those parts that make life too difficult, in order to do the very best that we can to survive.

The out-of-focus flowers in a still life painting.

At twenty-two, she fell in love with someone completely unexpected, who pursued her in spite of her inexperience and perceived imperfections~which were many. Those months were like a miracle, and those mornings, when she would wake up next to him, golden light filtering in through the window, were like a dream. So much so that when he ended it on a gray day not long before Christmas, before it could even fully blossom, it was almost like it had never been. Except that it had. Except that she had trusted. Except that she had been so vulnerable in spite of everything; had opened in a whole new way, and she had blossomed, or had begun to anyway. And unable to grieve, she began to change in ways that were too subtle to see at first, growing over the months into an inability to take care of herself, her cat, her space, some days, even to breathe. 

For so long this story and the depression that followed it have been seen as defining moments that changed everything. And it's true. For something did change on a fundamental level, and though the depression eventually lifted, some big parts had gone missing, joining other parts already exiled from early in childhood. But I see now that those parts are not gone forever. And even more, that the precious core, the innate Self, the light that we are had not gone out at all; the age-old concept replaced by direct experience and clearer seeing. It was there whispering to me as I drove into Golden Gate Park that day, and there when I answered. It's there when I feel her in me, her aliveness, her big adventurous heart. It's there each time she shows up, baring it all, the pain and the joy, seeking to not be so unbearably alone, asking for respect and understanding and space; for tenderness, but not too much, and for love, but definitely not too much, and definitely not too quickly.