What is growth if not the constant metamorphosis of grief – a constant loss and gain of the self over time, in a billion different ways?
Isn’t this how we all grow? Burying the children we never got to love enough, mourning the adults we never got to become, realising that the body is but a grave of time, each second buried in its tarnished soil – our bones the tombstones of our memories, markers of the thousand regrets inside of us, fractured links tying them all together, hoping that someday the anguish might be enough to make a bud of goodness bloom. Building our own skeletons with boulders of burdens, feeding on the decaying marrow just to satisfy our own hunger for shame.
But isn’t it also a miracle, this constant making of space inside of us? How our flesh is then the fragile keeper of our sins, mending and unmending itself under the confessions of our crimes, of which we were the only victims. Our flesh, moulding itself gently, laying our teeth-shapes to rest inside gruesome nail beds, taping little skin – band – aids over each clumsy wound, softening the blades of our fists – somehow forgiving us, over and over and over again.
Maybe you are not always in the form of goodness. Maybe you weren’t made to stand under the spotlight and be the only light left in the darkness. Maybe you weren’t made for the echoes of applause thundering against sweaty bodies. Maybe you weren’t created to be remembered in a history of greatness and bravery that will be told for years to come.
Then again, maybe you were made for the handshake you slipped on a crowded punching bag. Maybe you were made for the words that were left scribbled in the corners of pages, folded into clumsy airplanes and thrown out the window. Maybe you were made for all the love that was never given, only swallowed back up into a gnawing bruise.
Maybe your hands weren’t made to sculpt castles of gold. Maybe your voice wasn’t made for screaming into a microphone, I’d say it was made for whispering late at night, the phone pressed to your sweaty ear, muttering reassurances to the friend on the other end- we’ll be okay. Maybe you weren’t created to be written in books, maybe I think you were written in the hearts of all the people you’ve ever loved, all the cats you’ve let rest on your lap, and all the plants you’ve watered.
Hey, what if you weren’t created to be a form of kindness? I think it might just mean that you were created to be yourself – with all your humble ways, arms spread wide; yet endless, kind and brave hearts – instead.
