Child

A child was delivered to them, much awaited, much desired: it was the child they would love. In the years that came, they surrounded her with caring. They gazed expectantly upon her: her every move could cause them to feel safe and content, or plunge them into terror, suffering and rage. Lovingly, they took her by the hand to help her, to lead her into a life they had fashioned for her out of their best hopes and dreams.

The wild child, for a while, would rest in places where love didn’t act. Where solitude didn’t require a face, where morning didn’t need anything else to complete it, where profound indifference of spirit could speak for itself, and have nothing more to say.

But in coming back, there they were always, having anxiously waited for her, fidgeting on the doorstep they wouldn’t cross, extending their arms in anticipation down a path they wouldn’t take, so hurt by her leaving, but the force of their love would always let them forgive her.

The child-being had to construct herself in a way that would make sense. They, in their love, had entrusted their life into her hands, and hoped she would reward them with doing the same. So with their unshakeable teaching, she learned how to be the beloved rebel child, the little mistaken one, and then no longer remember that she was doing it. She had to completely forget, or she was sure to give herself away, and the people who loved her would be afraid.

In the act of forgetting, she had not realized yet how she had decided never to love, to not afflict anyone with the terrible burden of being loved. She would understand things, and that would be her calling.

But love would not be denied. So over time, she learned to subdue and divert it according to the custom of the age, according to what roles were known to be possible. She took on as her own the thought that to love was to risk, that to love was to give up oneself, and reserve it for those special ones who had been tested and judged to be safe. Then, two incompletenesses could fling themselves at each other for the hope of momentarily being whole, and living a story of what they mean.

And with others – she would pretend that there’s nothing to see, hide herself, tread carefully in her hurried interactions, to refrain from the offense of touching too deeply. She grew numb in the limited pleasure of painting the world by numbers, lingering at the rest stop of knowing and explaining, reining in being by telling each other who we are. Over time it became second nature, cheapening experience into words and believing that then it was had, like a commodity. Speaking the only language she knew, the language that suggested itself, the language of what could be said, that instantly, magically, materialized an invented reality.

But love was still knocking, and would not be contained. Time came when the pain she had taken on, of falling so short of truth, was ripe and exposed. What once stood so real, massive and solid, now seemed to be tied together by a mere silk thread of promise, concept and belief. Every “I” began to sound like an artifice, a common misperception, un-unique, entirely forgivable. For reasons that had forgotten themselves, her old habit still toiled to keep it together, to serve a purpose, to force something devoid of substance into existence. Meanwhile foreshocks of love threatened to obliterate knowing.

Once again coming back, there they still were, arms outstretched, on the doorstep where but minutes had passed, offering love to the child they had been keeping alive. How many times she had, through her actions, pleaded with them not to love her. And how constant they were and how undeterred. They had been her perfect complements. Now, she remained mute, while they gushed with the things that were not… Meaningless, meaningless; raw love spoke through them, saying glorious nonsense. It had never been about her, this was a place she had never belonged to, she was a stranger in the interpreted world. They could not see that they could not see her. There was no fault to assign.

But whatever the story – in the solitude that was vast, they were already in her. The outer forms that she now from her sovereignty disbelieved, did not account for much. Love was the gauge of what was real. Moving on, it no longer mattered from whom recognition sometimes dawned, because it was the same thing. In complete solitude, nothing was lacking, and all was alive. At such times, the world was her playground, and everything would be discovered anew. The empty too-much was being poured into humanness seeing itself. The gap growing narrower. And thus far, she had found that to look in the face of love was safe. It only brought terror to the one who needs to survive.