Ascending

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. A warm glow, beckoning me forward, but I hesitate. I steel myself against it, without any idea as to why. This cabin, this place on the lake, a second home in which I was loved beyond measure. My grandparents were a port in the many storms of my childhood. A respite from the internal battles I waged in the darkness each night, haunted by an inability to conform.To mold myself into the person I thought my family could love without any ‘in spite of’ attached. A version of me that would fill me with pride instead of shame. But as I felt myself pulled forward by an unseen force, I noticed her standing in the window.

I had never seen her face clearly, and so it was all I could do to keep from unraveling as it slowly came into view. My feet now reaching the stairs, then on to the front porch where I spent summers helping nana make sun tea in jars almost as big as I was, but something wasn’t right. And as the ever growing winds whipped around me, the illusion began to crack. The once warm and beaconing candle, a flame of soft amber, now blackened and twisted.

I glance downwards at the light blue high tops on my feet, the laces untied as they always were when I was a child who was too ashamed to admit the bunny rabbit trick my mother showed me, hadn’t worked after all. That the hours I spent crying in my room, my small hands still too uncoordinated to help the bunny find the burrow, would be my first dance with the crushing blow of failure. The first time I doubted myself, but certainly not the last, and it is in this moment I notice her feet in the threshold of the now open door. Her feet are planted firmly on the ground, a detail I find myself lost in, suddenly aware that my feet are not. That at some point as the house pulled me towards it, I’d been lifted a foot off the ground. Just enough to get me to where she wanted me, but not so much as to set off alarm bells, until it was too late.

And there she was, her hand reaching out for my throat, pulling me rapidly towards her until I could no longer avert my eyes. Inches from my face, was a twisted, pained version of myself. The me who I worked so hard to hide away, fearing the burden it would place on those I loved if they knew the depths of my pain. If they discovered the silent war I’d been waging for as long as I could remember.

Wherever I was, the voice that sounds like mine, the one in my head I had tried and failed all my life to wipe away, had materialized. As she began to apply pressure to my throat, squeezing the breath and soon the life from my body, I felt a tugging at my heart. A warmth that slowly spread throughout my body and as it took hold, her grip began to loosen. Suddenly and with a decibel the likes of which I had never experienced, her shrieks were all I could take in. The pain of a lifetime, compressed into a single, piercing scream, and then all it once it was over.

My eyes shoot open, my heart galloping away as though the four horseman had found me, only to change their minds and ride off with my heart in tow behind them. I clutch my chest, trying and failing to force air into my already scarred lungs, decades of asthma having left their mark. Only nothing seems to work. I cannot slow my heart, my lungs refuse to help me, and in that moment as the earth beneath me threatens to rip apart at the seams and suck me downwards, the warmth engulfs me.

I look down and as I take in the hand resting on my forearm, the distortion that had been left in place of my usually clear hearing, beginning to lift until I hear her calling my name. The desperation in her voice is enough to break my heart. How long had I been sitting up in our bed? How long had she been holding my arm, waiting for her wife to resurrect and return from whatever world that was? After what feels like a century, I am ripped forward, the sound sharper than I think she means it to be.

“Calliette? Sweetheart, can you hear me? It was only a dream, doodlebug. Please…..please come back to me….” I can hear the sorrow in her voice. A heaviness I am intimately familiar with and never wanted her to know. I go to answer her, but my throat feels as though I have swallowed sandpaper. “Here, right here, baby. Try to take a few sips of water for me, alright?” I try to hide the confusion and fear from my face as I turn towards her, taking the glass with my left hand and struggling to bring it to my lips. The nightmares have always affected me physically, but never this badly. My entire body feels stiff and weakened, but I manage to guide the glass to my lips, gulping it down as though it had been days since water last quenched what feels like an unending thirst.

“Whoa, whoa. Slow down, doodlebug. It’s alright, just take your time.” But it was too late. I had downed the entire glass and I would soon regret it as my body continued to reacclimatize to consciousness. “The screaming must have dried your throat out, love.” I struggle at first to process what Charlie is saying. If she heard me screaming….I don’t dare to connect any dots at this stage, for fear of what the obvious truths will do to my already weakened mind.

It takes all the energy I have left to attempt to assure her I understand anything she’s said to me in however many minutes this has gone on. “I…I’m sorry, baby. I’m…so sorry.” And before I can stop them, the tears overtake me. In an all too familiar sequence of events, Charlie helps me lay back down, pulling me into her arms as the cries grow deeper. There is a desperation to my cries I rarely allow anyone to see, but I can’t seem to stop myself. Where usually I am adept at wrapping up my pain and setting it in various corners to be sorted later, my encounter at the cabin with my own internalized pain has taken away what little control I’d had.

The whispers that haunt our dreams, at times, seem to contort themselves into more than we can dismiss. They seem to know us intimately, finding every weakened spot within our minds to curl up inside and shred sanity from within. Every wound we thought healed, a perfect fit for a self imposed knife to find its center. And so it is with these demons of self, these fragments of our own doubts, we dance and spar, but never seem to satiate its thirst for self destruction.

I had been dreaming of the cabin for months as our lives shifted in ways that left me dizzy, even in the waking world. Nothing was going as I intended it, except for this love that refused to be shaken. Except for Charlie. She had always been my port in the storm. A gentle voice and guiding hand, reminding me that the voice that tells me I am hard to love and unworthy of my own dreams, was the true liar. She would convince me to talk more openly than I ever had about my demons, about the world my depression and anxiety had built and protected in the corners of my mind, but I never let her see all of it. In truth, I never let anyone see all of it. When the feelings grew too large to shove down into the various boxes I’d crafted to hold each category of unspoken fears, I allowed her to hold me and hear what was running through my mind. But depression is an iceberg, and I didn’t want anyone diving into those frigid waters to see how deeply rooted that pain is.

But now, I was too afraid to sleep. Too afraid to allow my mind to wander even in daylight, for every time I closed my eyes, there she was. The cabin with the candle in the window and the creature with my face, waiting for me to return. Waiting for me to face her again. The distance between us had gone from a manageable valley to inches apart, and I was certain, had she a second chance at it, I’d not survive the night.

Only now, she had grown impatient. Where her whisperings were usually subtle, sprinkled between my own thoughts, her intrusions were taking center stage. I had to think around her wants and desires. Had to become a craftsman in my own right, merely to get me through the tasks of the day. And when the intrusive thoughts were not enough to grant her my full attention, she began to sing me towards her. Gentle whispers and softly sung melodies, attempting to convince me how much better the world would be for those I love, if I were no longer in it. That my pain I was working overtime to hide had already grown too big to manage.

Blackened vines growing rapidly outwards, slinking and slithering overtop of every good memory. Every cherished moment, a gem for her to seek and destroy in hopes of bringing me deep enough into desperation, to willingly return to her. To long for peace enough to give myself over, but I knew that trap intimately. Knew that I could never give her enough for her to be satisfied. That there would always be a request for more and more of me, until there was nothing left.

And just as began to think I could never find stillness again, I remembered what we had worked on so hard on in years of therapy. In over a decade of trying to convince my own body and mind that I was not an intruder who needed to be managed and rid of. With Charlie gone for a gallery showing in New York for the next few days, I decided now was my chance. If I was ever going to face this thing, this unruly part of my own consciousness, it had to be now.

Gathering my favorite blankets, I set up a space on the floor of our living room in front of the big bay window. A window where Charlie and I used to spend most mornings, sipping coffee and talking about the random pieces of our dreams we encountered the night before. We had always discussed our dreams, equally fascinated by the ways in which our minds craft entire worlds and storylines, so we can process and discover the pieces of ourselves there is not enough time in a day to give attention. Only we hadn’t sat here together in months, because I could not bear to tell her what my dreams had become. That even on the nights I didn’t wake up screaming and in a cold sweat, I was still being haunted.Hunted down without mercy. Still awakening with a parched throat and body sore from a night spent running and hiding from the various monsters in my mind.

As I place the star projector on the floor to my right, I brace myself for what is to come. I know that the me in the window with the candle has grown impatient. I have attempted to push her further and further down into the depths, only for her to surge forward even stronger the next time. With Charlie gone, it was easier for me to drift into her domain. Into the corner of my mind where she was always waiting, and so I figured this was my best shot at getting back there without having to worry about whether I was talking in my sleep or waking Charlie with my restlessness.

Sleep came more readily than I was anticipating, the cabin rushing towards me much faster than before. It was as if the wind had grown hands, gripping my shoulders and dragging me into the cabin without stopping on the porch. Any gentleness I was shown before had long since vanished, and as I found myself held in place in a chair left in the center of the living room, I knew it wouldn’t be long before she returned. That it would not be but moments before she would be inches from my face again, the pain I held at my core, turned into a creature that wanted nothing more than to tear me to ribbons. That wanted me to share the load, and so I would.

As she approached me, her limbs an exaggerated and stretched out version of my own, I allowed her to get closer. I closed my eyes, dropped my guard and in an instant, she pounced. I suddenly found my back slammed into the hardwood floor, her weight settling on top of me as her knee dug into my chest, but I did not fight back. Did not allow a sound to pass my lips, nor did I open my eyes. It took everything in me, but I maintained my own calmness. I let her take the lead, and as she leaned down to place her lips beside my right ear, I quickly reached my arms up from my side and let my arms wrap around her. As I held her close, I allowed the pain she was burdened with to shift into me. Felt the sorrow and grief finding its home in my chest where her knee had been.

I had expected her to thrash and lash out, to attempt to twist my arms away from her and to break free, but there was none of that. She let her weight fall into my arms and as I allowed my tears to flow, to escape after so long of holding it to my heart as though I would be nothing without my pain, she grew lighter, softer even, until the exchange was complete.

And we stayed that way, embracing one another, for how long I’ve no idea. But as we continued to make our peace, I felt the air lighten around us. Felt the burden of attempting to pretend I was managing when I was so far from it, shift into a knowing. The blackened vines began to revert, a brilliant shade of green taking the place of the dripping black tar that had dominated the entirety of the cabin, as well as the valley it was settled in. Holding one another, I realized it was never her I should have been running from. That what I needed was to face the twisted, angry parts of me. The pieces of myself constantly afraid of being abandoned, whom I had abandoned myself. Who I expected to shoulder my pain and burdens without growing weary or lashing out.

I began to realize that loving her, truly loving her and being the one to hold her closer when the darkness was overhead, was the only way to free myself from the haunting. The only way my inner voice could become something I could take comfort in, rather than having to run from with reckless abandon. I close my eyes and give her one last tight squeeze, holding her the way my Charlie held me. The way the woman who saw all the good in me and who was never afraid of the iceberg, had held me a million times before. Laying there on the cabin floor, I let myself love her in a way I never dared to before.