Yesterday I made a bargain with the forest. I would return, body bare, open. Not a shirt to shield my skin against the sun. No pants to keep the blood suckers at bay. If I stood long enough, truly long enough, in one spot until the delicate threads of mycelium curled around my toes and the leaves of the trembling poplars beat away my skin, until the birds plucked out my eyelashes and built nests in my hair, until my limbs covered with plates of wooden bark and my gut, from mouth on down, filled with soil and microbes from her own body, if I vowed my immobility and surrender that long, would she take me? Yes, only then.
Dearest Tara, I read every word here and sobbed late into the night yesterday. I wrote two pieces today to try and move the pain. I hope it's okay that I share here.
"I think the problem is god has never begged to god
Offered limbs
and life
and last chances to god.
-
Bargained for beloveds instead of sun-bleached bones.
-
God has never pressed his face against the bathroom floor
Bent over by a weight words cant touch
Asking the cold tile for anything. but. this.
-
God has never bedded down in the underbelly of heartbreak
skin flayed
In that place of glass shards and arsenic laced thoughts
-
God has never searched for meaning in split hairs and dog shits.
“Found it!”
Planned the grandest of parties to celebrate
And had not one goddamn straggler show up.
-
God has never had to worry if water under the bridge is still potable.
-
God has never asked a knife to blood-let some of his bottomless pit.
-
God has never pleaded for tears as physical proof of the pain devouring his insides.
-
God has never wondered how to make room for air in lungs leadened with grief.
-
God has never been a teenage girl battling with demons that aren’t hers to bear, but rest on her shoulders nonetheless.
-
Demons of a dying culture.
-
A beautiful young woman is dead.
The lake took her
Or she gave herself.
Or the monsters consuming her mind offered a tired angel up to the water… to who? for what?
I want answers.
Where are your evidence based studies now, you evil mandating motherfuckers?
-
My little sister tried the same.
Just 5 minutes alone
And she attempted to sacrifice herself to the abyss with fistfuls of psych meds.
(Which came first? The psych meds or the madness?)
I stood beside my mother as she was intubated and ICU’d.
I don’t remember the deal I made with god,
There were many.
I tried 1000 variations until she woke up 3 days later pissed that it hadn’t worked.
-
Different ambulance timing and this would be a very different tale.
-
The chasm opened.
A grand tear.
It repaired.
Lop-sided and knotted with scar tissue that no castor oil will ever touch.
-
Stepping inside the outer-edges of your story is like sinking my barefeet into the hole that could have been.
-
I wonder if there are cosmic trades.
If my sister had gone
Would your Mila still be here?
-
Whatever the fact-checkers say, fairness doesn’t exist."
-
There are no words, but please know that although I never knew her, Mila pops into my head often. For some reason always with the image of a frog, I suppose you must have shared a story about her and a frog once.
My own mother and I have become rather estranged. The typical Covid curse… but as my lungs heaved at 2 AM last night with grief for how this culture failed your daughter, my mum texted me a round-about peace offering.
I also met a mother I sort of know on a walk this afternoon. An Italian woman and local organic cheese-maker (and also totally awake). We shared our heartbreak. Her daughter is 15 and friend-less and, in her perception, future-less. I will have tea with this girl this week and wrap her in as much love and hope as I know how.
Maybe reaching for serendipity and signs is the only way to keep going, but it seems meaningful to me.
Mila, the girl who lives as a frog in my head, may your echo heal in others what you couldn’t offer yourself.
Also this... how to even begin to articulate my rage at this culture? I'll keep trying to find the words. So much love for you Tara xx
"Child sacrifice
Is the new normal
Mask them
Inject them
Isolate them.
-
All the virtuous, mask-touting grown-ups too busy playing good-girl and boy.
To fight for the Good in girls and boys.
-
Making the young bear their fear of death until it kills them.
-
Making the young bear a hollow worry until it wrings all meaning from their lives.
-
Making the young bear the insanity of this culture as their own personal faults because the ruling class refuse to look Life in her raw and gristled face.
-
What kind of culture says goodbye to youth
And awkward hugs
And rainbow smiles
And first loves at high-school dances
in exchange for the fickle promise of a few more lonely days for the already-dying?
-
No elder would ask such things.
Only the old
Who gathered years
but replaced wisdom with fears.
-
How did we get here?
Asking parents
To be mother and father
To be the entire village
To be a defending army against a culture bent on a mass genocide of meaning
To be 24/7 dragon-slayers of a beast that has 1000 genetically-modified heads.
To be one-handed weavers of “new-normals” so that their kids don’t wither away
To be stuck in a twisted game of Whac-a-mole against the new horrors this culture births daily.
-
Parents with arms the same size as they’ve alway been.
Holding a weight 100x their ancestors.
-
How did we get here?
Prisoners for not accepting poisons
-
How did we get here?
Fact-ing Life to death.
Letting fear eat up faith until there is literally no tomorrow.
-
One of my best friends is 3 years old.
She giggles so freely that you have no choice but to join.
She beams magic into the world with her every squeal.
She squeezes your face with her two spirited hands and your heart has to break because the fearful ones haven’t got to her yet and you cant bear the thought that they might.
Dearest Tara, I read every word here and sobbed late into the night yesterday. I wrote two pieces today to try and move the pain. I hope it's okay that I share here.
"I think the problem is god has never begged to god
Offered limbs
and life
and last chances to god.
-
Bargained for beloveds instead of sun-bleached bones.
-
God has never pressed his face against the bathroom floor
Bent over by a weight words cant touch
Asking the cold tile for anything. but. this.
-
God has never bedded down in the underbelly of heartbreak
skin flayed
In that place of glass shards and arsenic laced thoughts
-
God has never searched for meaning in split hairs and dog shits.
“Found it!”
Planned the grandest of parties to celebrate
And had not one goddamn straggler show up.
-
God has never had to worry if water under the bridge is still potable.
-
God has never asked a knife to blood-let some of his bottomless pit.
-
God has never pleaded for tears as physical proof of the pain devouring his insides.
-
God has never wondered how to make room for air in lungs leadened with grief.
-
God has never been a teenage girl battling with demons that aren’t hers to bear, but rest on her shoulders nonetheless.
-
Demons of a dying culture.
-
A beautiful young woman is dead.
The lake took her
Or she gave herself.
Or the monsters consuming her mind offered a tired angel up to the water… to who? for what?
I want answers.
Where are your evidence based studies now, you evil mandating motherfuckers?
-
My little sister tried the same.
Just 5 minutes alone
And she attempted to sacrifice herself to the abyss with fistfuls of psych meds.
(Which came first? The psych meds or the madness?)
I stood beside my mother as she was intubated and ICU’d.
I don’t remember the deal I made with god,
There were many.
I tried 1000 variations until she woke up 3 days later pissed that it hadn’t worked.
-
Different ambulance timing and this would be a very different tale.
-
The chasm opened.
A grand tear.
It repaired.
Lop-sided and knotted with scar tissue that no castor oil will ever touch.
-
Stepping inside the outer-edges of your story is like sinking my barefeet into the hole that could have been.
-
I wonder if there are cosmic trades.
If my sister had gone
Would your Mila still be here?
-
Whatever the fact-checkers say, fairness doesn’t exist."
-
There are no words, but please know that although I never knew her, Mila pops into my head often. For some reason always with the image of a frog, I suppose you must have shared a story about her and a frog once.
My own mother and I have become rather estranged. The typical Covid curse… but as my lungs heaved at 2 AM last night with grief for how this culture failed your daughter, my mum texted me a round-about peace offering.
I also met a mother I sort of know on a walk this afternoon. An Italian woman and local organic cheese-maker (and also totally awake). We shared our heartbreak. Her daughter is 15 and friend-less and, in her perception, future-less. I will have tea with this girl this week and wrap her in as much love and hope as I know how.
Maybe reaching for serendipity and signs is the only way to keep going, but it seems meaningful to me.
Mila, the girl who lives as a frog in my head, may your echo heal in others what you couldn’t offer yourself.
Also this... how to even begin to articulate my rage at this culture? I'll keep trying to find the words. So much love for you Tara xx
"Child sacrifice
Is the new normal
Mask them
Inject them
Isolate them.
-
All the virtuous, mask-touting grown-ups too busy playing good-girl and boy.
To fight for the Good in girls and boys.
-
Making the young bear their fear of death until it kills them.
-
Making the young bear a hollow worry until it wrings all meaning from their lives.
-
Making the young bear the insanity of this culture as their own personal faults because the ruling class refuse to look Life in her raw and gristled face.
-
What kind of culture says goodbye to youth
And awkward hugs
And rainbow smiles
And first loves at high-school dances
in exchange for the fickle promise of a few more lonely days for the already-dying?
-
No elder would ask such things.
Only the old
Who gathered years
but replaced wisdom with fears.
-
How did we get here?
Asking parents
To be mother and father
To be the entire village
To be a defending army against a culture bent on a mass genocide of meaning
To be 24/7 dragon-slayers of a beast that has 1000 genetically-modified heads.
To be one-handed weavers of “new-normals” so that their kids don’t wither away
To be stuck in a twisted game of Whac-a-mole against the new horrors this culture births daily.
-
Parents with arms the same size as they’ve alway been.
Holding a weight 100x their ancestors.
-
How did we get here?
Prisoners for not accepting poisons
-
How did we get here?
Fact-ing Life to death.
Letting fear eat up faith until there is literally no tomorrow.
-
One of my best friends is 3 years old.
She giggles so freely that you have no choice but to join.
She beams magic into the world with her every squeal.
She squeezes your face with her two spirited hands and your heart has to break because the fearful ones haven’t got to her yet and you cant bear the thought that they might.
-
She deserves a life.
We all do."
I feel that unending ache, the heartbreak, the numb flatness of life and the insatiable desire to reunite.
This. Broke me and built me up again. Thank You.