I don’t know what it’s like to be the guarded girl. The one who keeps herself in the lines, who wears composure like a chic suit jacket, who takes time to ensure that each of her words lands just so and reads in a straight line. I’m the girl who pulls her beating heart out of her pocket and hands it to you, sheepishly picking off the pocket lint, and waiting eagerly to see if you like it. I’m the girl who shows up with a mustard stain on her shirt and blurts out that she rolled her ankle falling off a curb because she was looking at a dog walking by. I’m the girl who says too much, laughs too big, always slows down for squirrels in the road, whispers to trees and looks everywhere, in every face, for her mother.
I am this girl now because I’ve been the girl who had to shrink in order to survive, I’m the girl who was afforded false affection, false safety, false love by lying down and molding to the shape of the feet of whoever was standing on me. And even false affection, false safety and false love, the kind that sucks the very marrow from your bones, felt better than nothing at all.
Now I’m no longer lying down. I can’t say I’m diving in because that implies a sense of grace that this clumsy girl does not possess; but I am cannonballing in, with my eyes closed and my hands open and reaching. I’m showing up carrying my story in stacks on my spine. It’s gritty and shaky work pulling your heart out of your pocket and saying “please love me, blood and guts and all.” But I’m going to keep reaching in and pulling it out every time. Please don’t mind the pocket lint, if you look past it, there’s primrose and lupine in the chambers for you. And if you have a mustard stain on your shirt, there’s room over here next to me.