To the part of myself I’ve tried to bury:
It seems a long overdue apology is in order. Your tenderness, your vulnerability, your longing to be held in your wholeness, they deserve love just as much as the parts of me that are less sensitive, more palatable, more (seemingly) loveable. I’m sorry I’ve shamed you in the way that our loved ones did when big feelings made themselves known in your tiny body. You were made to carry so much alone, and it’s no wonder I often find you drowning, fighting to stay afloat.
It feels hard to tell you that I love you. I’ve long practiced hardening myself against you, pulverizing you into silence. I told us both this was the only way to stay connected to the people we love, to not be too much. That rhythm of moving against you when you needed to be cradled cemented your grief; I still feel it in my throat and chest most days. I see the ways I locked you into my tissues because I didn’t let your words and ache be witnessed. I’m sorry I’ve expected you to be someone, an age, a heart, a spirit, that is anyone but you.
I love the way you’ve shown me the depths of feeling possible, even when it hurt. When you’ve been driving me, I feel you’re in my way, slowing me down, making me not safe. Really, you’re my teacher in a world that demands we feel less of ourselves and each other. Your insistence for your sense of safety, your right to grieve, your shouts and whimpers pleading to be heard have kept me from smothering our own humanity. You’re who kept me, in spite of my relentlessness, in my feeling, sensing self.
I adore the way you keep me connected to joy and play. Although we mostly make contact when you’re in the throes of pained emotion, it’s also you that remembers how much we love to dance, to don costumes for no reason, to make jokes that often only make us laugh. I tell myself the story that you’re who gets in the way of my happiness. I think without you, I’d be tethered to a version of the world encased in steel: cold & ruthless. Your softness keeps me from moving in a way that brutalizes, dominates, crushes.
The silly, unfettered you that shines when the clouds break, you’re so easy to love. You embody something that stretches beyond the trenches and tears you get lost in sometimes. I wonder if I told you I love you if the sun would illuminate the brighter parts of you more. I can imagine it wouldn’t hurt if I badgered and shamed you less. Would you forgive me, and let my love in? I barely even need to ask. Your spirit is striped, open, trusting, expansive. As I say that, I can feel the ways you’ve loved me, even as I attacked you.
I commit myself to be in a different practice with you. To let your love in, and extend mine towards you. To listen more deeply, to slow down, to make room for your sorrow & delight. Thank you for not giving up on me, and I promise to do my best to love you the way you’ve gently been asking all this time.
With love,
The part of me who tried to bury you
