Resolve

Cue the resolutions and segue into guilt and excuses as each is broken, one by one. There was a time when I took pride in considering myself an optimist and while my glass isn't necessarily half empty, I know it's not so black and white. I've changed. 

To a searching and growing eight-year-old girl, the world isn’t anything if not confusing. And to say I was overwhelmed is something I wouldn’t have admitted even eight months ago; but it’s true. Avoiding misunderstanding, know that I was fine—I am fine—but that didn’t prevent long years of construction, ultimately completed to counterfeit perfection. My bunker.

For the purposes of this note, necessity does not lend itself to complete understanding of what a bunker is, except that it changes. The way that a strong river bends and shapes the land through flooding and famine, rolling over rocks and cutting the shore: it changes. But it’s filled too. Freezers laden with stale ice cream, deliciously cool bubble baths, corners roughly carpeted with pillows and untucked comforters to pull over your head. And my inspiration: Diamonds.

Like Christmastime garlands, they adorned my bunker. Captivatingly beautiful, the gem always reflects such a glow, no matter its surroundings.  It was exactly what I wanted to be, shining, if not for myself, for others; despite any curt hand that wore me.  Years of pressure create the diamond, strong, unyielding and standing alone.

I’ve learned. Living in a bunker makes a certain type of person. Like a balloon void of helium, the heart becomes emaciated; the soul, tentative and tired. While this place is all my own, I’ve seen others retreating, yet longing to be beckoned out of their similar false retreat.  My battle is far from won and I find it nearly impossible to decipher my journey, marked with bird-pecked bread crumbs; but it is not unlike hers.  If ever I question being alive, the ache I feel for her counters any doubt. Her blood-shot eyes once gleamed at the moon. Her tired thoughts no longer fathom a happily ever after. Her fists don’t clench to justify her words. Her heart no longer searches for understanding. She, herself, offered the scissors to clip the wings of her soul.  An unknowing community of hardened diamonds, who are we dazzling?

The reality of scarred histories, the refusal to trust, married to continuing silence and plastered smiles: maybe that’s why I look with skepticism upon the hoopla that is new years.  Instead, my hat is off for those who try, fail, try again, give up, and start again through all the mess and hurt. Not because the calendar and culture say it’s time.

The pearl is the only gemstone that is created through pain, through imperfection. Precious as it is, the final product is not complete beauty. A grain of sand worked its way into the oyster who built around it, to smooth it. Each pearl is different in it luster and iridescence. Such unique beauty came only from allowing the grain sand to be exactly what it was, an irritant, an unnatural occurrence, a stumbling block.

I mean no offense to any dear friend who, this year, resolves to loose, to save, to change, but I won’t buy into it.  Casting long shadows, my bunker will probably remain, as will many others. But instead of cowering as an eleven-year-old, I have learned to stand beside it, knowing what is true and refusing to let the grinding grain wear down the value I have placed upon my heart. I choose to validate my struggle and slowly my decorations will change, diamonds replaced with beautifully painful pearls.