When you're used to it

21

She was a beam of light. I swear she was. All I could see was light I never could see her face. And I was instantly jealous. Both of her freedom and her light. These were complicated feelings. Made all the more complicated by the fact that I hadn’t seen another human being in what felt like years. Of course, I had no way of knowing, seen as how the only things I could see were the walls, the table and chair I was tied to, the slight memory of being in the woods, the even slighter memory of having done this all for a very good reason…it didn’t matter now that this being was here. Her. She was here and somehow it made sense. The silliness of it all made sense because there was no sense to be had in the first place and so…nothing mattered including me. You see, this wasn’t sad. This was not a sad moment when I saw the light being because there is no sadness when there is nothing to be lost. Nothing, no one, no person, no love, just nothing. It’s a trade, a walk into a different state, a shedding of a skin immediately replaced by something else…how can I explain this…the gain or the loss is immediately made moot by a coinciding loss or gain. Net zero. There is no sadness, no loss…it does go against everything I believe. I used to believe…I used to believe there was a cause worthy of my life. That my life was worthy of dedication. But being confined to a space, confronted to my own limitations, the ego that allowed me to place myself on the pedestal of my brain eroded and left me feeling less drenched with purpose. So that I too became light, though not in the bright sense but in the weighty sense, I became less weighty, less bared down. This being of light–she–came in and reminded me of who I was back then, back when I was certain my head had been screwed on in order to fulfill some sort of…prophecy…some sort of accomplishment that would make me allowed to not be anymore. I simply wanted to go go go in order that one day I might retire from actively being and rest, and adorn myself with the love the world was taking from me every time I stepped into it and out of my skin. I remember being bright myself. I remember it because the loss of it is etched in the very bones of my skeleton, carved as they are with hieroglyphs that no one but me can understand. And how are we, beings of light, supposed to find peace and love when no one else seems capable of deciphering our language? The language of our past? The one that made us less being of light and more shadow, more ghostly, more and more willingly transparent, hiding behind the images of decisions we’d made under the influence of…other shadows? She entered, this being, and tormented me with her brightness, the way I must have tormented…the way I must have convinced him to follow me into the woods even though his brain was almost wiped of…even though his transformation was almost complete. I, with my brightness, convinced him to sacrifice all that he had already sacrificed. And now, with my weightlessness, look back on that and think, why? Why was my quest more important than his intentional death? How annoying. I had made peace with being here, stern, soft in my abandon to the darker lands of self-erasure. I was safe here, being as I was confined to this space by unknown forces, but safe nonetheless, accounted for, desired in some strange way that felt new and improved from being desired for my flesh. And then, and then, comes this new being, one who has chosen to stay bright, in her light, obstinate in her refusal to give that part of herself away…and am I able to care? If they end up breaking her as they did me? I mean liberate me. Not break me. I was broken before and from the shards did the light emanate. Now that I am liberated, free, I do not have to shine. I am–have been–relieved of my duties as they were and allowed to rest. Albeit trapped. In this restful state. I am able to contemplate. And contemplate. And contemplate. Which is…a treat. She doesn’t talk, this fairy, this source of sight that brings clarity back to my weary eyes. So that the room comes into greater contrast. So that my confinement to this…fate bounces off the very walls with scratch marks the shape of my nails. I have not invited her and yet she is here. Did they invite her? Would be strange, seeing as how they told me–barely anything but–they were simply waiting for the complex to pick me up once I’d stop being a threat. I had long ago stopped being a threat. Ever since puberty, I imagine. After puberty people tend to stop believing people like me and if people don’t believe you then…can you be a threat? You see, these kinds of questions–of philosophy, of self determination, of value–I thought my conscience was clear of. But alas this light has come in and now here I am. Well, here I still am. Albeit now reawakened in a way, in a very small way, to the thing that brought me here in the first place: my willingness to be. She has come into this enclosed room and showed me that…if there is a way in, perhaps there is a way out? She has laid a trap for me, the same trap that has led me to this trap, the same one that has led me to all the traps whose metal teeth still adorn my skin: hope. Which the complex had promised to eradicate in a positive way. There, there was to be no hope in the sense that all needs would be met and therefore hope would be obsolete. Here, in this room, hope was also to be obsolete, and this neutrality of desire would make me light enough to be carried back to the complex, reborn as I was–as I was a few moments ago before she interrupted–into the state which I craved so much in the first place, one of righteousness and certainty and limited thought. It’s her expansiveness, her willingness to fill this room with light…it makes me uncomfortable. My brain had been wired to order my body to shrink without accounting for the fact that my heart was continuously bursting with effort to be huge, and encompassing, and welcoming to uncertainty; charmed by surprise, enlivened by kindness, and ultimately incompatible with the forces at be…ultimately driven to the complex, a safe haven for hearts with brains too geared towards perfection to allow for discrepancies. The room is too bright to see. My eyes hurt. She has disturbed everything, made it look out of place, including me. And suddenly I am up, standing up, pulling on this rope that has somehow not scarred my skin. I am able to untie it–there is not even a sailor’s knot, just a folding of sorts–and I am able to step away from the table, from the chair, from the marks on the wall and the finger pieces on the ground beneath. She is lifting me a bit, gently, pushing me to continue this return to…to freedom? But I was free here. I was free for the first time all that was expected of me was complacency…like in school…like in that skirt…like in that bed. It was easy and I wanted ease because in ease there is no loss because there is nothing because there is no hope because all that is expected of me is complacency. Be easy, be ok, be…quiet. Steps can be heard. The house beyond this room comes alive with rattling and thumps, belts being dropped in the flurry of looping them into the pants that are being jumped into clumsily with one leg up and the other hopping around the edge of the bed where the pants and the belt were left in a pile on the evening that ushered in this night. She, this being of light, this mischievous girl dancing across the room in her refusal to surrender, she hears the sounds too. She radiates the imminence of their arrival into this space. The steps walk faster than her own, the ones she is taking now towards the door. I reach it, this small door I had never noticed before due to: loss of hope. I bend my crinkly knees that still bend despite my neglecting to let them move all this time. And the door is not locked. It has not been locked ever. It was simply closed, locked by…my despair? As keys are shuffled at the other door, the one opposite this one across the room, the one the people used to enter and leave with trays of food, toys, distractions, I click this small door open. The light, with an unabashed urgency, crosses the threshold of the room and breathes in the fresh air here at the outskirts of the forest I remember all of a sudden. I don’t want to go back there and keep running. I don’t want the complications. The light won’t stop beckoning me. The key is found I suppose for there is a stop of jangling. There is an insertion. There is metal finding another metal’s grooves, connecting, and allowing itself to be displaced. There is the familiar sound of this mechanism, the one I have grown to listen for and appreciate. I wonder what they’ll do when they see me here, looking out, not on the chair anymore. I’m curious. This feeling is uncomfortable. I teeter on staying here or not, on predictability or…care slams back into my body as the moon comes into sight. Suddenly it matters that I am naked. Completely, utterly naked, crouched there at a small door of…opportunity. Her light, her entire being cheerily runs into the forest as if I am following her. And I should–choose between these two types of freedom. Decipher which is actual…is easy the right option or a capitulation to fear? I hear steps behind me as I realize perhaps that freedom is not the easy or the hard, right or wrong, but an allowance–an unenclosed personal space–to make a decision. I should be allowed to decide…This realization dawns on me at the exact moment that she turns to find me. Her eyes, hopeful, ablaze, search for me and fill with panic as they find me, still huddled, still more inside than out. The shadows behind me are a testament to the company that has now entered my space. No more keys jangling and soon, no more decisions. It dawns on me that perhaps I have no option now that I have been caught. But then again the door is still open, what is left of my fingernails still dutifully clinging onto its frame, my heart quickly beating faster and louder and faster still, louder, shielding me from the consequences of–