If there is one thing I’m good at, it’s running. Threaten my safety or my ability to stand and I’m out. I’m gone. No matter how much it shreds me on the inside. No matter how many years, thereafter, I will invest picking up hobbies and projects to stuff the holes that your absence has birthed. No matter how many seasons I’ll be haunted by a meaningful presence that is there and not there at the same time.
It’s true. I have that Harriet Tubman, “We Out” energy on stay-ready. Except there’s never a “we” in it. I’m accustomed to starting again alone. I have a peculiar cordiality with separation.
I’ve tried to part with my two best friends more times than I’m proud of. They always startle me with a rebuttal that I have never found the appropriate clap-back for.
Well, clearly we shouldn’t be friends if I make you feel the way you say I do!
I’m not going anywhere.
Why not? If it were me —
Because I love you, DUH!!
What do you say to that? No, I’m seriously asking – what is the appropriate response? Because that rebuttal always stops me in my tracks. And their reason never changes – it’s always there. Steady. Even though I never expect it to be. I brace myself… each time I build my walls to walk away… I brace myself to do just that.
But their love keeps them right there. After decades of knowing me.
Somewhere in the last year, I stopped trying to walk away. I stopped trying to beat them to the punchline that my insecurity has always whispered was inevitable.
See… this is the part of my writing where I’d usually try to button this life-lesson up in a nice, pretty bow. It’s where I’m accustomed to projecting some resolve that I’ve found that mends this broken part of my psyche. But I’m not going to offer a silver lining.
I’m going to be honest with myself about the open-ended nature of my healing. The vastness of it. The fluidity of it. The fact that… I continue to heal and heal again. And that I’m so damn grateful for the people that stick by my side.
Aṣẹ.
