the depth of my fear
i am a little church (no great cathedral) - ee cummings
**content warning: experience of existential dread + brief (non-graphic) mention of suicide and self harm in 3rd paragraph**
the emperor, followed by the queen of swords and the page of pentacles. the six of cups submits to memory’s fevered washing. five fey children making their way(s) up a tree—some mesmerized by the ground below; others by the receding sun’s smothering kisses upon the mountaintop; one observing the insects that make their home in the broken leaves between branches; another focused on reaching the top left wild and unruly. underneath the canopy of trees, one can hear the syncopation of breath between wolf and fey child. somewhere in a river, an otter is reveling in the waves.
My heart has been bleeding out for quite some time, but the words have not yet moved from their nest on my tongue. The thing about words: they fail me every time. I have been thinking and not thinking and thinking again about words—how they burn as they sit lodged in my throat. How they disintegrate under the sweltering heat. The taste of ash—bound to rest in the pit of my stomach. I try not to think of my fear, enduring and persisting with ease. I am afraid of it all: being filled(full); pruned and left empty; maintaining balance; swaying off-kilter; looking at myself in the mirror; forgetting what my face looks like. Breathing requires the whole body to contract and expand—I only know how to move my lips and shut my eyes.
There are plenty of analogies out there about fear as a friend, or a lover. Fear for me is the three-second pause of an elevator right before the door opens. The idea of being stuck suspended between slabs of metal, 2 or 3 floors above the ground—the level of vulnerability it takes to call the attendant without your voice cracking or as your bladder leaks down your legs. Worse still, wrapping your sweater around your waist and pretending to not be embarrassed by the smell. To be rooted in something real, really real, has always been a dream. Always just a dream. What do you do when the fire goes out?+ Simply build another? And what happens when the kindling is your flesh—do you use a blunted blade or your teeth? Which is worse? I’ve contemplated taking my life before, knowing I would be the one to end it all felt safe enough. I knew my fear could do it—it had killed me many times before. But what will it feed on when I am gone? Will it follow me into the next life/time/place, or will it linger in my place and haunt my loved ones instead?
I fail at building a world with me in it. “To have me is to have nothing and that is not a thing you can have,” a true statement about a year ago or so, not quite accurate now. To have me is to have nothing and that is something you (I) can work with, in time.
I’m writing this with shaky hands. You reading this will not steady them but my shallow breath may deepen, if only for one inhale.