Of Knives and Words.

Mid-way through my boarding school career, I spent several months in confinement. 

Lest you have visions of chains and dungeons, this wasn’t the confinement of the Man in the Iron Mask. I was simply banished to the dreary, dusty walls of my dorm room when I wasn’t at meals, classes and required activities. But to an eleventh-grade student it was a social death knell that ensured I was the ignominious center of attention and speculation. It brought my father to my boarding school doorstep and the very real possibility that I would either be expelled or pulled from an environment that I, despite all of the misguided and foolish mistakes I might have made, truly loved and should never have risked.

And yet that pivotal moment in time would resonate across time – the eleventh-grade me was a hint of the woman I would have to be.

At the very moment that my father gave me a choice – start fresh or stay and persevere – I did not balk. I would stay and defiantly look them all in the eye. And I would dare them to look back. And I would watch as they whispered in corners and behind my back. I would hear the stories and the exaggerations until I didn’t recognize any truth in it. And five years later I would return and hear the fiction that had grown to become a story of humor and ridiculous impossibilities, and silently remind myself that I was better than the foolish and uninformed storytellers.

Tonight is the eve of October and in 24 days the clock will once again read 8:38 a.m. Tonight I am reminded.

Of the grieving fog that entrapped me and the seething anger that enraged me. The endless tears that fell in the dark and by the roadside and in the shower and on my running shoes as I tried to outrun the shell of I had become. Of the hours and days and months and years of loneliness. The outward defiance and the inner weakness. Of the fear that I would fail them and that I would lose them. Of the whispers and the stares and the subtle and not-so-subtle questions. Of the stories and half-truths and curious speculations.

Of fictions told without any care for the characters they maim and distort.

We are on the cusp of a new life. We have transformed our painful reality into a life filled with hope and love and celebration and adventure. We have chosen to live in spite of death and to love in the face of loss. We have chosen to take control of the pain and choose what we share and who we share with, learning and recalibrating against our missteps.

And yet the curiosity seekers linger. I silently dare them to ask the questions they long to ask, watching them as they watch me and I silently remind myself that I am better than the foolish and uninformed.

For years I have searched for the words that would give shape to the pain we endured, knitting together syllables and vowels in a lyrical catharsis. But tonight the rage at the gossipmongers has resurfaced on the eve of October, leaving me with but a few.

Fuck you.