Under Winter

Love.

I have a fascination, perhaps an unhealthy preoccupation, with words. I know many. I was gifted as a child with a lengthy and accurate memory, and I grew up among a generation of older adults who also seemed to share my fascination to a certain degree. Just as kids might challenge each other to a foot race to establish a physical dominance, I noticed that the adults would ask the kids (and sometimes, rudely ask one another) what was the longest word they knew in order to establish an uncharitable ordering. The rules for what constituted a “longest word” were somewhat convoluted and arcane – I am not certain I understand them even now. I often heard “strength” quoted as a person’s “longest word”, which I found perplexing. My spiritual leader and I enjoyed this game in the spirit of cooperation. As each of us learned a longer “word” (once again, defining what a “word” would mean for the purposes of the game was not fully clear, but certainly words without prefix, suffix, or plurality at the minimum), we would share it with each other, often showing one another after church and tasting the sound of it as we learned to pronounce it.

I do not have a word for the torment of my mental experience over the past two days.

My mother has often tried to teach me a very particular personal lesson regarding my history. When I was four years old, my mother gave birth to a baby girl, my first sister. I had high hopes for my sister, yet perhaps only for foolish reasons. While I did look forward to having a sister, my preoccupation at the time was with gemstones. I did not particularly like my own birthstone, but hers was to be an emerald; in my head, I had designed a emerald-laced tiara with which I would have crowned her as my princess forever. Due to an unexpected congenital defect, her lungs did not function; she died four days later.

I cannot imagine the loss my parents felt. I still remember waking in the middle of the night as my mother hugged me to her chest and cried. I do not imagine my own loss.

Having such an event at an early age, I began to heavily consider matters of life and death before many of my own generation. I asked many troubling questions to adults I respected and continue to respect. I put words together in ways I’d never heard and asked to know if any meaning was held in them so that I might more fully communicate the idea I held inside that would not let go of me. I am very fortunate to have had a number of faithful and wise definers to guide me. And through my imagination, I disturbed almost everyone I spoke with, because I spoke frankly as a child about ideas that continued to trouble even the wisest of my elders. I know that they did not mean it fully, and I have forgiven them all completely, but I also know that every adult in my life at one point or another told me to stop asking them questions. And as a child, I did. Seeing the faces of the pillars of our small rural society turn fearful at just a handful of words was enough for me to want to stop.

And I begin to dream. Not the fanciful dreams that I imagine a child might dream, but dreams seeking an answer. Some were cathartic, and some were disturbing, but all were lies. All of these dreams were alternate versions of events that actually happened, and yet twisted in some way as to suggest connections that were never present. And so my day-time imagination raced down these connections as my night-time imagination invented new ones without regard for pleasantness.

The following winter, there was a significant cold snap during a time when I seriously considered suicide. I required an answer. My spiritual leader saw my mental struggles and offered to host me for a number of sleepovers in the evenings. I suppose I am fortunate that our small country church did not dabble in the perversions of child abuse (at least, to my knowledge), because I can remember a number of evenings spent peacefully at the house of the preacher and his wife, sometimes quietly, sometimes with serious questioning, and sometimes with joy; the preacher had a wonderful sense of humor and a comforting, booming laugh. Towards the end of January, we all agreed that I was at peace enough to no longer sleep over, although I was welcome at any time.

And so I have been watched, since I was four.

This cycle seems to continue to this day, beginning with the first cold snap of the winter. January may be my birth month, but it is not my month. The days around Martin Luther King day are especially intense, for a reason I have chosen not to have. My memory remains lengthy, but I no longer know the difference between a remembered dream and remembered memory, and I am not certain I ever did. Neither dream or memory of this time period in the past is a comfort, and both are disturbing to me. I have chosen not to speak about either; I would rather be uncertain than know that either is true.

I am glad to have written this down, so that I might be reminded next time. I do not look forward to tonight. In this state of mind, I rarely look forward at all. How might one deal with the elemental pain carried by a four-year-old from which many powerful adult emotions have sprung? Sometimes I do not remember to breathe; sometimes I remember, and it does not help.

I am out of words. None of these are right. Amen.