I remember a time when going home was something hard to do; there were land mines everywhere. It was a place I carried shields in. Anger, hurt, sadnesss—it’s never those preliminary stages for long. In fact, one learns to dance in battlefields. Nothing is ever as beautiful as approach. Perspective can make a whole landscape of difference. What does it really mean to be renewed by one’s experiences?
We watch people grow, in observation or lack of observation, somehow our growth offends our illusion of order. Change is treated like a criminal offense in some parts of the world. I’ve learned change is only bad when people feel they aren’t directly benefiting from that change. Yet and still, circumstance is a weathering factor. I once argued about whether or not change could be both positive and negative. A misplaced effort on my part seeing as change is inevitable. I’ve discovered that intellectualizing nature can be very bad for health. As much as we grasp for words to articulate a lived transformation, there’s something that escapes us. It is in the living of life that we come to know anything about it. When I spoke, I was fighting change. Yelling at it’s bold shoulders, drinking self into a foreign object. Change tore me into a woman though. If you ask me now, change is always positive. With every intention of seeking positive affirmations in the world, we dim our lights. We neglect to acknowledge growth as a natural part of life and ultimately death.
I travel memories in triggered moments and I can see change dancing on my walls, jumping on my bed with its shoes still on. It does this thing where it wiggles into my body comfortable and unannounced. We are possessed. Change is like that. It’s like when I see a poem coming, when it storms over me, demanding that I let it in. It will get in somehow. You hope no one will notice you changing, with each waking moment, its the beginning of you meeting yourself again. A new language forms in your mouth. It’s always something unexpected and unlike you. When we make it through, when we see ourselves outside the door of this body, we’ll knock and ask to be invited in.
Change will make you hold yourself if you’re into that sort of thing.