Even Good Dragons Make Stormclouds.

If your are only mildly stimulated by a girl pouring her heart out and have found yourself on this page, consider yourself in luck: It's a double feature today. True to redneck style, I found this small tale at my local thrift store. On some level, conscious or unconscious, it speaks to me of my life right now and all that is therein. I only hope that someone on this small planet of ours can identify with some part of my ramblings.

Emma's Dragon Hunt

Story and Pictures by Catherine Stock

Close the Door

 

Over the last few months I've composed numerous blog entries. All of which sit on my list of posts, unpublished. I know that there are relatively few people who actually take the time to read my blog. It is somewhat of an internal struggle for me that I don't know who. You see, I suffer from a condition that keeps me from posting. It's called:  a general mistrust of the human race. I believe, generally speaking, that people who don't trust others are themselves untrustworthy. Maybe I am, ask friends who've needed my listening ear, they'll be the best judge. Its not that I don't trust people to be honest, its more that I don't trust them with my emotions, with what's really going on in my life. I don't believe that they care. Though I am easy on the listening end, I have always had a hard time sharing things of myself with others. 

Too often, the things that are buried in my head come out only in writing. I consider that I don't really deal with an issue in my life until I have delved into it on paper. And I am willing to wait until it comes out on its own to really get it out of my head. The only problem with this is that it is usually only to myself.

I have, on blessed occasion, found confidences in others in letters or e-mails. The first of those was my brother Mark. I write not his name but in reverence, because writing is the only way in which I feel I could possibly communicate with him now. Though I haven't yet. There is a part of my psyche that doesn't understand how to make the words flow, yet. And so I wait for it.

Through these exchanges I have often learned about myself what I wouldn't otherwise. Of others I've learned to trust a little more with each strand of words on a page. I am much more an observer than a partaker. And I feel that through peoples written words I have observed more honesty in other human kind and in myself than in simple social interaction. But those places of language have been sparse in life (before blogging). And so I find myself in a general lack of trust. 

 My metaphor for what I have just described is this: There is a part of my brain or my heart where a very small box holds a key to a lock on a door with roughly carved letters that read "Do Not Open". Behind that door are all of my insecurities and all of my reasons for being. 

Throughout my life that key has taken the form of correspondence with some few who have helped me open the door little at a time until one day I created a blog and actually wanted to share things of myself to a public that was completely unknown to me. To this audience I flaunted my insecurities as if I were proud of them, because in a way, I am. They were miniature mosaics in words about what I think of myself, how I live and relate to the world.  A few months ago, a storm cloud hit. When the thunder quieted, I shut my door, locked it, and stuffed the key-holding-box deep inside a closet that holds all of my other favorite junk.

Some people are naturally accident prone. My family is naturally tragedy prone. Particularly in the years of 2005 and 2006. Though the tragedies themselves are for other blog posts and not this one, it is enough to say that every oh-crap handle was challenged. Every "well at least we still have..." or "well, at least...hasn't happened" was defied. Life was one hollow bellied hail storm, with no calm after it. 

We are all, as a family and as individuals, left scarred from the downpour of those years. I didn't think I would ever see a time in my life or my family that challenged that one. But in the words of a French pigeon atop lady liberty, "Never Say Never". 

Throw away the Key

This year does not yet beat 2006, but it rivals in close second. The effects are a bundle of words that won't write themselves on a page. And that door was effectively closed. I have tried on numerous occasions to sit down and write it all out, everything that I feel. And for some reason I've even tried blogging about it.  Maybe because on a level not too under the surface I want very badly to express what I feel to those in my family who have created this storm cloud. However strange it may sound, a public forum feels like the only forum that won't create deeper rifts, wounds, reopen closed scars, or strengthen the animosity that divides our family.  There is no other effective communication. And I don't believe that we are so special; that our tragedy's are worse or our inspirations more real than those of the rest of God's creations, including each other.

The door is shut. I didn't close it on purpose, but too dear to my heart are those stormy dragons to flaunt or even express the ways in which I feel injured. It is simple betrayal to me. However I know that if I don't share something and soon, that door will remain shut forever. I have no intention of alienating my family. I don't actually intend on telling a story about our joint trauma from my perspective. But I am just too damn tired of tragedy to let myself simmer this way. I want light and air and song to penetrate that door and so I write this. It's the second night in a row in the middle of the night, trying to force the door ajar,even if I can't find the key under all that junk. 

Break the Door Open

The topper on the cake is that I really do believe that as humans and as God's creations, whether you believe in that or not, we are capable of lifting one another more than tearing each other down. I write this message to the world, not as a public display of the tragedy that has touched my life, but because I believe that every life has been touched by tragedy and trauma. Every heart has small tears, and I am on a quest in search of people who, like me, want to sew them up. I tire of the idea that everything is suppose to be o.k. I tire of the expectation that all people should be the same. And I tire of expecting the worst in humanity. I rejoice in the act of celebrating our differences. Intolerance is the rotten core of a very old fruit. So, to any dragons reading this, I wish there was some distant star that could sweep away all those storm clouds. It just isn't really worth the pelting we're all taking from those ripped open clouds. But I take comfort in the idea that a friendly dragon is just under the hill waiting for the sun to go down.