There was a ladder in front of me stretching up to infinity. I climbed. And climbed. And climbed. I wouldn't look down; I couldn't stop. There was too much at stake here. There was a place I hadn't visited in a long, long, time and it was finally time for me to pay some respects and clean up some old messes.
I arrived at long last into a dimly lit, cluttered, grimy attic. I had known that the place was going to be a mess, but this was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. There was almost no light; if not for the vast amounts of STUFF inside I might have called it desolate. I began to try and sort through some of the objects, unsure of where to start. Large projects are always hard to tackle.
I turned around, and He was there with me. "Start here," He said, handing me a hunk of twisted metal, some sort of mass of bent arrows tangled together into...oh. It was a heart. It was supposed to be a heart. Really it was just a twisted mass of mistakes and projects gone wrong muddled together into a rough approximation of something sensible. He took the heart back out of my hands, and began to caress it. The arrows began to melt away into nothing, and soon the heart was golden, radiant. There was some love, some joy, in this place of confusion and disarray. I put my hands in his and together we worked on the heart until it was casting enough light to illuminate the attic. He carefully took the heart from my hands, and put it back in its container where it continued to shine.
I looked down at my feet and saw a series of plaques, the kind that usually are given as awards and have nice inscriptions on them. I cringed. There was a whole stack that said nothing more than things like "If I don't do this, then I won't be accepted." Or, "If I don't do this, he'll leave me for her tomorrow." Or, "She'll take him as soon as he doesn't want me" Or "It's so hard to keep up" Or "The pressure and stakes are so high" Or "I don't want to do this. Why am I?" Or "I'm betraying my family's trust for this" Or "I'm guilty." Or "I rationalize my guilt." Or "I had no idea he was doing that." The plaques were everywhere, printed in some fear-powered factory long ago. He approached me with a garbage bag and we began throwing them away. Piles and piles of plaques seemed to appear out of nowhere, but there was always a bag ready and waiting for them. I looked around and
I was back at Carroll High School. It was November of freshman year, and I was meeting someone after school. A friend of mine said that he had something to tell me, and I had a sinking feeling that I knew what it was. I was standing with him in front of my locker on the bottom floor. I looked up and there he was, hulking above me in typical CHS uniform, with white golf shirt untucked and poorly fitting khacki pants. A pen had leaked in his pocket and his pants displayed green smudges from it. He looked at me with terrified jade colored eyes and I took his hands, which were drenched in sweat. I took a breath, and watched while he mouthed the words
"I *like* you."
I had known it was coming, but I still didn't know what to do. A pit began to grow in the bottom of my stomach. I knew that he wasn't the type of guy I was looking for. He was funny, he was a good listener, but...he wasn't what I wanted. He wasn't what I needed. He was a good friend, though. Beyond that, I was lonely.
I told him that I wasn't sure if I could date him, that I wasn't sure if I liked him back or if I just liked that he liked me. I gave it a weekend. A week. Finally, my resolve broke down. The friday before Thanksgiving I told him that I could be his girlfriend. I wanted someone to hug and to care for, and I wanted to be cared for. Things fell apart, but in the beginning, I had the best of intentions.
I stopped. I'd had the best of intentions.
The girl in front of me, the girl that was holding his shaky, sweaty, hands was still innocent. She, standing there in her own untucked shirt and poorly fitting khacki pants, still knew what she wanted. She still knew herself, knew right from wrong, knew mind games from reality. Most importantly, she was still me. I was still her. Somewhere. I froze her in her moment, preserved her for always. Once I was sure she was safe and couldn't be tainted, I hugged her. I hugged her with everything I had. I hugged away the regret, the layers of rationalizing, the mistakes, the guilt. I was back at the source - maybe not *the* source, but definitely *a* source.
A few other hazy situations unfolded in front of me. Memories of semi-consciously finding ways to rationalize guilt with criticism, of rationalizing hurt with self-criticism. Realzing that things that were serious to me weren't serious to him, things that cut me deeply were surface amusements for him. Realizing that he isn't a bad person and honestly never wanted to hurt me - he just experiences reality differently than I do. Very differently - and therefore, I took things to heart and made things a part of myself, made judgments about myself, my world, my life, just because of some silly (and in the long run, insignificant) experiences and discussions. I let myself be pulled in so deeply, so hurtfully, just because I couldn't understand how fundamentally different we were.
It was time to let go, and let go I did. My mistake was not letting all of that go years ago after we broke up, but I was finally realizing that it was a mistake I could fix, if I would only let myself. I gathered me to myself, and took a deep breath. I found myself back in the attic, and saw that He had been making progress while I was away. Piles and piles of garbage bags were stacked up all over the place. I pushed them over the edge - they were gone.
The attic was still pretty grimy. There were still stacks of crud, of junk, all over...but I could definitely see some improvement. With every exhalation some of the grime dissipated. We sloshed some soapy water around on the shelves and floor, and unearthed some more plaques. Some of them were worth keeping, and some got thrown out. Finally, I was finished with all the work I could do right then. I left the attic a bit cleaner and less cluttered than it had been when I came. I don't know how many more visits it's going to take. Things take time, and even changes that seem to happen instantaneously take time before they really take root. It was a good start, though.
Surprisingly, I still even made it to class on time. wootwoot.
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