Home Again

Getting on that train Friday morning may very well have been one of the hardest things I have ever done. As the thoughts of what lay waiting clouded my mind, well... I cried for most of the ten hour ride home. It was all I could do not to get off at one of the stops along the way and never look back. I didn't, though, and ever so slowly, I remembered how to breathe again, and that this is not the end. My story hasn't finished being written, at least not yet.

The stark and terrible land that greeted me upon my return felt so very appropriate. The frigid temperatures, cloudy skies and snow-covered ground make for the perfect backdrop for the isolation, tension, despair and occasional violence that's been my nonstop companion for the past year and a half. All this conflict seems so jarring on a lovely summer day, and, as much as this visit has helped my mood, it's also cast the darkness of my life into much sharper relief. It's hard to adjust to my circumstances again, even though it's only been a week, and I'm just not in the mood for much sunshine.

In a way, of course, I've always loved living in the north, and the climate is one of the things I love the most. It can feel like a different world up here, compared to the more urban environment where I went to school. Even the forests down there are tamer, prettier... like something out of a fairytale. It always felt so insincere. It can be like a fairytale in the north, too, but of a very different kind... the sort we used to tell before Disney got their hands on the stories of old. The woods here have a dangerous and unforgiving sort of beauty, and our winters are long and bitter. We live in a delicate balance with the land. Even in our modern society, it happens with an alarming frequency that people wander off into the backwoods and are never seen again until some hiker finds their bones years later. The beauty of the world here will capture your heart, but it's never something you can take lightly.

The winters are awful long, though, and it's easy to get a bit of cabin fever. Of course, buried deep within winter you'll always find the promise of spring, but spring is a dangerous time of year, a season of quickening. I've never understood how people can view it like one of those Hallmark pastels of new life bursting forth. There is that, of course, but birth is also messy and hurts like hell. Come springtime, I used to like to burn old and bitter Morena, as winter and death personified, in effigy. Some cultures drown her, instead, but either way: Away! Away! Let those fearsome flames chase all that darkness away.

So, as winter comes... springtime is on my mind. I wonder if mine is coming soon? Will this season of darkness ever end? Will I ever get my life back again? It's been a long time, you know.

Except, I know very well that the answers to questions like that are not exactly comforting. Christ never promised us any happy endings, at least not here on earth. It's not unreasonable to expect that this season of despair will not end during my life.

A bitter pill, that. The house I came home to was dark and quiet - my mother afraid to make a peep lest my stepfather hear her talking to me. Nevertheless, he came out of the master bedroom shortly before I went to sleep to scream at her about how useless and pathetic I am. A violent situation that devolved into threats and thrown furniture. It wasn't exactly the most pleasant welcome home ever.

And me, well... the despair is a comforting friend, and I routinely find myself praying, or at least hoping, for a way out of this life. I want to go home. I have worked so hard, for so many years, to get free of all these horrors, and I have no real reason to believe things that will ever get better, and it's amazing how much these circumstances have worn me down. I know that God never sends us trials without also providing the grace to overcome them... but I just don't know how I can possibly keep living like this any longer. I'm so tired.

Except, I remember what it was like when I was younger... so depressed and so self-destructive. I walked though life in shades of gray, so sure I was like one of the walking dead. When I became a Catholic, I prayed regularly for help in feeling again. To remember what it's like to really cry. I remember, now. I understand what it means to feel. To live. Slowly, over the past several years, I have been awakening, and growing in my understanding. It hurts more than I could ever have imagined, and sometimes that's too much to bear. It can be so overwhelming.

In that pain, though, I'm reminded of just what a long winter it's been for me, and just what it means to be brought to life. It's no secret that I've felt as though things are changing, as though I'm deep in my own time of quickening. Could be, that things are about to change, and before long, my circumstances will finally improve.

Could be, I finally have a reason to hope.

It's hard, though.

And I have no reason to do anything but hope.

And I'm still so tired. I want so badly to be free of this desolation, and to be with the people I love, and who love me in return. May God grant me the humility to accept the crosses he has sent my way, because I don't know how I can survive this, otherwise.