To Dismantle A Life

2019

What does it take to dismantle a life?

To choose to pick it apart,

to reveal the howling chaos of the Unknown

lurking between the seams.

Sitting here cross-legged on the floor—

sorting through the rubble of the person I once was,

photographs and ticket stubs of the life I thought I wanted—

the soft white carpet splits before me

and The Abyss opens once more.

To make this choice is to choose to jump in

with no actual promise I’ll get out again.

Just faith in my own muscles to remember the path back up when it’s time to climb.

Just the crystal-cutting memory of having made it out before.

Piece by crooked puzzle piece,

I pull apart my world.

Sometimes gently, sometimes with a wrenching, ripping sound.

Each movement tears a hole in me.

Each movement makes me stronger.

I take the comfortable and place it in plastic bags and cardboard boxes.

Pack it away in the past,

or let it go for good.

Remove the splinters of the bad times, the wedges that slowly crumbled us.

Inspect them.

Cup the pain in my hands, cradled before me,

allowing it to wash over me until I understand.

Realize I’m not falling.

I’m giving up the ground so I can fly.

Not every moment looks like this.

There are ones when I scream.

Ones when I spew acid rage and victory is not running over a mailbox.

Ones where loneliness feels like a vacuum, and I can’t catch my breath.

Ones when I’m crumpled on the floor,

hanging onto a kitchen stool, sobbing from the bottom of my lungs.

But then there are the times when I’m finally standing tall on my own.

When laughs bubble out of me in uncontrollable bursts of joy and disbelief.

When I feel more myself than I ever have before,

when I no longer don Who-I-Am like a costume, but instead live and breathe ME,

lost in my new-found power,

doing things I never dreamed I’d do.

Alive.

I still feel sleepy-eyed and hazy much of the time.

But my friends say I’ve

blossomed.

What does it take to dismantle a life?

Courage.

And the strength to bloom with time.