I am terrified that nobody will see.
I am terrified that someone will see.
I am terrified that nobody will ask me if I’m okay.
I am terrified that someone will ask me if I’m okay.
I long to stay hidden forever.
I long to be seen.
I long to suddenly cease to exist.
I long to live.
These are all stories we tell ourselves. All of it. The heartbreak. The childhood. The loves. The things we’re good at, the people we want to be around, the places we find joy, all of it. Every last drop is a story we tell ourselves.
Except the body. The body speaks only in memory. In grief. In imprints. There are no tales to weave here. The body cannot lie. Here, there is only an unraveling of what is already whole and perfect and older than we can imagine.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are.
This is our work, this task of ‘being human.’ None of us are prepared. We don’t know how to live. We try anyway. We want to allow our deepest desires to come up for air, but we are terrified of what they will do to our lives. We condemn our fears, even as we lean in closer to listen to their warnings.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are.
We long for a soft landing. We want beauty to be simple, joy to be pure, and growth to be painless. We are ashamed when our lives are complex and difficult. We condemn our darkness, even as it reaches up to us, a gentle suppliant.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are.
The body knows darkness. It knows the darkness that envelops the moon each month, the darkness of incubation, the bearer of life. Incapable of masking, paraphrasing, mitigating, or pretending to be something it’s not, the darkness simply is.
This terrifies us. We have no control. We try, desperately, to maintain the illusion that we are separate from our darkness. We are determined to chase our myth of perfection. We are determined to deny the murk collecting in our torsos, in our jawbones, our hands.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are.
The body knows murk.
The murk is the soft darkness after a parent says goodnight, when you can still hear voices murmuring on the other side of the door. The murk is the stillness of a summer evening, draping itself leisurely out over the white hay bales. The murk is not a sinister mystery. Instead, it is a circle of your younger selves. They are pulling memories out from the depths of their backpacks, showing you each precious piece, proud, triumphant, a little self-conscious. They are naming their grief. They are showing you their wounds. They are waiting for you to touch their shoulders, to smile at their tales, to come to know their desires.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are. Most often, they are scared children, desperate to be heard.
These are all stories we tell ourselves. The darkness teaches us how to notice our stories. How to ask questions. How to be quiet. How to listen. How to love. How to live.
Hi all. You can read one of the seeds for this piece here.
-Siena
Siena Rose 