And We Walked In Fields Of Gold
Last night I had a moment of clarity. A realization. An epiphany. A breakthrough. Whatever you want to call it. I was lying in bed, the white of my ceiling the only visible thing in the darkness, when my mind traveled back to another night over a decade ago. I was ten years old again, looking out the windowpane stained with running raindrops into the dim lights of passing trucks. They lit the distorted trail with flashes of fading color. The same indescribable feeling filled my chest then as it did in my present. I mentally stopped at this and saw an entryway to the memories of that time in my life, ones that have been suppressed and blocked for years. Always afraid to go from one side to the other because there would always be demons I didn't want to believe in or face. But in that moment my defenses were down so I took the leap without watching my feet.
I could remember lying on the twin-sized bed reading the Baby-Sitters Club book with the secret passages and tunnels of the old house. The thought that maybe our old farmhouse had something like that that one day I'd discover on accident. Days spent in the cornfields around our house in golden rays of sunshine where I found a clearing that I'd play alone on, with my own imagination to keep me company. How I loathed to pass the dilapidated barns because every time I glanced at their decaying panels a cold shiver would wrack my body. The crisp bales of hay my sister and I would jump around on, our laughter the only sound on cloudless days. The mud on my bike tires when I dared to ride down the path of the hill. The willy worms that stayed in boxes full of leaves and grass that somehow they'd always escape from. Never there when I went onto the porch to check the next morning. The big tree in our front yard that I'd always try to climb without success. The tree I did climb only to lay across a weak limb that broke with me on it. The basic television channels we had where I'd watch reruns of Xena and Hercules on days that were too cold or too wet.
And in all those rushing memories was a sense of peace, nostalgia, hope, and simplicity. I have never lived my life as fully and simply as I did then. Technology wasn't my companion, just nature and literature (as advanced as my mind could extend at that time at least). And in the flood that washed over me last night, a bad memory never struck me, it wasn't there to consume the good like it always has. Always there to suppress the start of anything good while shielding the extent of the bad. I finally felt free from the weight of all the painful childhood memories, in control at last. It made me cry the purest tears I have let free in over a decade.
I could remember lying on the twin-sized bed reading the Baby-Sitters Club book with the secret passages and tunnels of the old house. The thought that maybe our old farmhouse had something like that that one day I'd discover on accident. Days spent in the cornfields around our house in golden rays of sunshine where I found a clearing that I'd play alone on, with my own imagination to keep me company. How I loathed to pass the dilapidated barns because every time I glanced at their decaying panels a cold shiver would wrack my body. The crisp bales of hay my sister and I would jump around on, our laughter the only sound on cloudless days. The mud on my bike tires when I dared to ride down the path of the hill. The willy worms that stayed in boxes full of leaves and grass that somehow they'd always escape from. Never there when I went onto the porch to check the next morning. The big tree in our front yard that I'd always try to climb without success. The tree I did climb only to lay across a weak limb that broke with me on it. The basic television channels we had where I'd watch reruns of Xena and Hercules on days that were too cold or too wet.
And in all those rushing memories was a sense of peace, nostalgia, hope, and simplicity. I have never lived my life as fully and simply as I did then. Technology wasn't my companion, just nature and literature (as advanced as my mind could extend at that time at least). And in the flood that washed over me last night, a bad memory never struck me, it wasn't there to consume the good like it always has. Always there to suppress the start of anything good while shielding the extent of the bad. I finally felt free from the weight of all the painful childhood memories, in control at last. It made me cry the purest tears I have let free in over a decade.