You were born in a faraway land, it doesn’t really matter where, as long as it is far away from here. Or at least that’s what you once said when someone looked a bit too close into you, past the two suns you have for eyes, and asked.
Truth is you know exactly where and somewhere deep inside you, you don’t want to forget. You also know that sometimes when it’s only you and your thoughts, reminding yourself of where you’re from and where you started, gives you strength, the way it used to before.
Once in a while, once in a very long while, when the moon is nothing but a shattered mirror hanging over you and you have only your un-pulled triggers, stained blades and abandoned thoughts to keep you company, it all comes back to you. For just a few minutes between your blur of thoughts and your dust-like handful of memories, you’re back there, at the starting point. You feel again that fiery rhythm that beats through you only on rare occasions, when you’re dancing or when you’re lost in a blissful moment. You’re in that magical place no one knows of, that distant land, an echo of jungle, music and laughter.
That place where you took your first breath of clean hot air. That place where your small brown nose smelled for the first time and it smelled the sweet flowers and sweaty bodies that surrounded you. That place where your ears heard for the first time and they heard your mother’s honey like voice, the chirping insects and the night owl’s songs. That place where you first opened your eyes and they saw the southern sky hidden behind long wet trees, that pulsing sky, spattered with never-ending stars.
You remember your mother, that warm blooded, thick and vibrant miniature of a woman, to whom you were born a bit too early in life. It only means you met a little ahead of plan, she would say to you. She would also say her life didn’t end once you arrived, as many around her had said, it had only started. But of course, those are some of the thoughts you now try to hide away, to remember them makes you cringe with shame.
Cringe with shame and lower your eyes with embarrassment, yes that’s what you do. But embarrassed of what? You can’t even answer that to yourself. What is that that makes you feel so humiliated? Is it shame of who you have become? You know it is, you just can’t say it out loud, not even let the thought hang inside your head. The thought that you’ve turned your back on all that you know, all that you are made of and given it all up for nothing, nothing at all? You know it’s true. When you’re hiding in your bed sheets and under your pillows, guarded well away from the world and its thunderous noise, in a faint voice you say to yourself that forgiveness is the first step. But how can you forgive yourself for something you don’t even have the courage to admit?
You then take the easy way out, just like you were taught never to do, and try to pretend it’s all okay, yes its fine, but there are your filthy lies again. You cover your mistakes with a smile that stopped being true a long time ago. You pretend there’s nothing to forgive, nothing you want to forget, nothing you have done that fills you with regret. But your dreams betray you and you wake up in pain every day. They remind you of that you try to hide away, or mistake as you do on purpose, for something…something else.
You remember how you began, with the proud head held high and that strong singsong voice that always spoke its mind. Newly arrived and with an effervescent happiness brightly visible on your cinnamon skin. You carried everyone’s best wishes with you and you were protected by the love all the young and old had given to you. You felt warm at the thought of home because it reminded you of what you were here to achieve, the dreams you could fulfill, your goals.
Now it’s all wasted away, you turned your head on them all because of all those nights that you made excuses for and that you thought wouldn’t hurt, it didn’t matter at the time, they were only once right? That’s what you would say before every single one.
You deceived even yourself, let yourself down and all just too feel you could lie next to that new-found someone and belong to him. Even when you knew he didn’t care the way you did. But you were blinded and wanted to feel complete, when there really was nothing about you that was not.
All those things you did, might as well try to fit in you thought, no one back home will know, its okay. But it doesn’t matter that they didn’t and don’t know, not anymore, because you do, and now that weighs a thousand times more.
You now look at an old picture of yourself, back from the times you still held those old saints and your mother’s voice close to you. Back from the times you were proud of what ran through your veins, happy you had come this far, sure of the fact you had so much to give. Back when you thanked that unknown something every night, thanked that you were still holding on strong.
In the picture your long black hair is flying lose, you were caught unready but what makes the picture beautiful is that you were unaware it was being taken. Your eyes in it say everything there had to be said, they show your naked joy. You utterly and completely didn’t care and yet you did, but only about the things you knew you were right to. What a lifetime away, you think to yourself.
Now, as you walk alone with your head bowed, staring at the cold ground and no longer savoring the taste of the sunrise when it wakes you, you understand why you’re ashamed and why you want to forget. You know it’s because you’ve gone astray, you know it’s because being who you are now, if you were to go back, you couldn’t have the strength to look them in the face.
Well, it was about time, recognizing it is all you needed. Now all you want is a chance to begin again and do it right this time. But you will, those saints and your sweet mother have heard you and they will give you your new start again, but just the way they do everything, they will do it in an unexpected way.
You will be forced to forgive yourself. You will realize you haven’t changed, you’ve only forgotten who you are, and only because tomorrow you will come close to losing it all. After gasping for air and after clinging to that life you still don’t know you love so much, your eyes will be opened wide and tomorrow will be again, the first day of your life.
Claudia Hennessey
