Tastes Like Fear
I’ve known for a while that this was coming. Could feel the very first tendrils of the affection creeping up into dusty, dark and closed places of my heart. Places I never believed would find love, would be open. Places relegated to cold, to empty, to the dark realities of broken dreams.
But I have been caught up in my own perspective, so wound around what I could lose to realize that I’m not the only one putting it all on the line. That’s the problem with living in one’s own head. You tend to become the only one you think about in the long term and it can take a surprising amount of force to change that.
I was thinking of all I could lose when he struck me with his own question. Oh. Oh I see. How funny that we two fear the same thing but from opposite ends.
He asks me to swear I won’t hurt these children. That I won’t leave them and I’m caught off guard for the moment. When he asks, all I can hear is my own defensiveness in my ears, screaming all the things I stand to lose. But then I disengage that and hear him.
From where he stands, I can walk away. I have no strings, nothing to bind me. And if I do, he will be left to pick up the pieces of children’s broken hearts. Hearts already wound tightly up against mine, already on that verge of tipping into more. Hearts past the point of no return. And he would have no recourse, no way to call me back and hold me accountable for that damage. He would nave nothing but tears and questions in those little faces, asking why. What parent would ever want to see that kind of damage done? Wouldn’t think of how to protect those precious hearts?
And his fear meets mine. Mine that resides in that cold room, that inner chamber of my heart that I had been boarding up, laying mortar and brick to close off forever when they came upon me. Could I let them in? Could I let them become something greater than any child has ever been in my whole life? Could I let them into the one last place I’ve hoarded to myself and protected like the last horcrux that keeps my soul from dying?
If he decided to end it, to walk away and cut everything off, I have no ground on which to stand. Nothing. My heart, and it’s one final steady beat would be extinguished and I would be able to do nothing for it but listen to that sickly, irregular thump until it finally ceased altogether. And what then? How cold and bleak that future appears to me. How empty. How terribly sad.
And so, he asks me not to hurt them. To promise. And all at once I understand. It’s not that I’m holding them outside the chamber. They’re already here. They’ve been here, quietly opening the windows and adding warmth. I have no choice, but I wouldn’t change that anyway. I’ll die before I let them come to harm, especially from me. Not willfully, not ever. They have bound me to them as effectively as any ritual or paper, and it came so subtlety and so easily that I cannot say when exactly it started. Only that gradually, little by little, it did.
And then, it was Matt who laid the finishing touch. When I poured all this out of my mouth, out of my heart to explain, his response was simple. Was direct. And was devastatingly accurate.
“You’re in love with those kids.”
I am. He spoke it into truth. I have been. And we knew in that moment what we had been feeling was true. The reality was heavy, but that heaviness felt good. Felt significant. And he begrudged me nothing. He held my hand, and swore that he’d do anything he had to in order to make sure those kids remain in those special places of my heart. That we’re not only ready to make such a leap, but that it’s already begun.
And now the only question I can think to ask remains. How do T and I trust? How do we both look at this thing that has the power to destroy us both in a single moment and trust that neither of us will pull that terrible trigger? There can be nothing but trust to hold it together. Trust that I won’t walk away. Trust he will not banish and exile me. But what are hallmarks for trust to take hold? What can be done?
What can be done?
But I have been caught up in my own perspective, so wound around what I could lose to realize that I’m not the only one putting it all on the line. That’s the problem with living in one’s own head. You tend to become the only one you think about in the long term and it can take a surprising amount of force to change that.
I was thinking of all I could lose when he struck me with his own question. Oh. Oh I see. How funny that we two fear the same thing but from opposite ends.
He asks me to swear I won’t hurt these children. That I won’t leave them and I’m caught off guard for the moment. When he asks, all I can hear is my own defensiveness in my ears, screaming all the things I stand to lose. But then I disengage that and hear him.
From where he stands, I can walk away. I have no strings, nothing to bind me. And if I do, he will be left to pick up the pieces of children’s broken hearts. Hearts already wound tightly up against mine, already on that verge of tipping into more. Hearts past the point of no return. And he would have no recourse, no way to call me back and hold me accountable for that damage. He would nave nothing but tears and questions in those little faces, asking why. What parent would ever want to see that kind of damage done? Wouldn’t think of how to protect those precious hearts?
And his fear meets mine. Mine that resides in that cold room, that inner chamber of my heart that I had been boarding up, laying mortar and brick to close off forever when they came upon me. Could I let them in? Could I let them become something greater than any child has ever been in my whole life? Could I let them into the one last place I’ve hoarded to myself and protected like the last horcrux that keeps my soul from dying?
If he decided to end it, to walk away and cut everything off, I have no ground on which to stand. Nothing. My heart, and it’s one final steady beat would be extinguished and I would be able to do nothing for it but listen to that sickly, irregular thump until it finally ceased altogether. And what then? How cold and bleak that future appears to me. How empty. How terribly sad.
And so, he asks me not to hurt them. To promise. And all at once I understand. It’s not that I’m holding them outside the chamber. They’re already here. They’ve been here, quietly opening the windows and adding warmth. I have no choice, but I wouldn’t change that anyway. I’ll die before I let them come to harm, especially from me. Not willfully, not ever. They have bound me to them as effectively as any ritual or paper, and it came so subtlety and so easily that I cannot say when exactly it started. Only that gradually, little by little, it did.
And then, it was Matt who laid the finishing touch. When I poured all this out of my mouth, out of my heart to explain, his response was simple. Was direct. And was devastatingly accurate.
“You’re in love with those kids.”
I am. He spoke it into truth. I have been. And we knew in that moment what we had been feeling was true. The reality was heavy, but that heaviness felt good. Felt significant. And he begrudged me nothing. He held my hand, and swore that he’d do anything he had to in order to make sure those kids remain in those special places of my heart. That we’re not only ready to make such a leap, but that it’s already begun.
And now the only question I can think to ask remains. How do T and I trust? How do we both look at this thing that has the power to destroy us both in a single moment and trust that neither of us will pull that terrible trigger? There can be nothing but trust to hold it together. Trust that I won’t walk away. Trust he will not banish and exile me. But what are hallmarks for trust to take hold? What can be done?
What can be done?
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