A Cold November Night, perfect for burying the dead.

There is something haunting about winter nights, isn’t there? Driving home on a November night, just winding quietly and silently by myself, noticing the whiteness of the world glowing all around me in my little Maine haven of wilderness.  I see nothing but endless memories, and the odd feeling I just want to pull of this road.  I want to step into the cool night, have that crisp wintry, residual autumn air fill my lung. I see the fresh, hard snow leading brightly in the night into untouched fields of where my mind wants desperately to roam. But why?

Do you know this feeling? Have you travel down that back road? Have you seen how gorgeously lit the world is in the stillness of a winter night with a large moon?  Haven’t you just wanted to walk into the void of it, hearing your foot steps be the only sound crunching heavily across this sea of frozen-ness and just lose yourself in it- this world, this life, this place where time has seized?

I sink back down in my thoughts and all the silly fears I have piled up, year after year after year.  I can climb the greatest heights and peer over without a gasp.  I see whatever little uninvited creature scurry petrified across my path and my only response is a vague annoyance that I have to deal with it.  I go through trauma that punches my guts and you won’t see me shed a tear.  I can speak to crowds of endless rows, hear my voice boom across the plateau of faces and it doesn’t unnerve me. 

But if you shut the lights out in my world, I shut down.

I’ve stood in a stairwell when a blackout came unexpectedly, and screamed until my husband came to help me down.  I’ve spent nearly my entire adult and mostly married life alone at night.  I keep blinds closed, I keep lights on. I sleep with the soft glow of television reminding me, there is light and I am not alone. I just don’t do dark; dark has always gripped me in ridiculous ways. I am the grown girl that will trample paths to the light switch. I am the grown girl that thinks bad things of only imagination lurk right behind me, ready to pounce.  I am the grown girl that’s always letting everyone know how brave I am about everything, that is so afraid of the dark.

So, who do I think I am? Where do I get the nerve to this impulse?  Just what do I think I’d do? Pulling over in the dead of night, crunching my path through this cold night and just sit all by myself in a white field, with the only company a big moon a zillion miles away from me.  What bravery do I possess for such craziness!?

Oh, but these memories! These memories drive me to such places. Often times, I don’t wanna remember me. But these nights, I can’t let them go. I hold fast to them, allow their force to push forward. Sometimes, I’ve forgotten how much I’ve aged in 15 years. I look into a mirror and I’m thrown off.  Where is twenty-one? Where is she deep inside there? The youth, the strength, the brashness, the sexuality, the crazy, the drunk, the angst, the loud, the beauty, the deceit, the pride, the contempt, the hell, the out of control, the endless?  Where did she go, cause this girl standing here now, who is she?  When did she age? When did she transform? When did she wage a war? She clearly won, cause holy, the scars are everywhere.

So, sometimes, yeah. I wanna stop my car and run fast as I can down to that lonely, frosty field.  I want the haunted night of cold whipping wind to just consume me. I want to remember. Everything. The hell, the fun, the dizzy, the insane.  I have memories that would make you choke back your distaste for me.  And it’s hard to say that out loud. You might even hate me, if you knew me then. You wouldn't recognize me, and you’d leave me in that field with my empty pursuits and bruised ego.  If you knew me and didn't leave a bad taste in your mouth; well, then you must've loved me for a long time and must’ve wished at some point I had done some things with myself that was a little more worthy.

I waged a war and the thing about wars. Wars have story. I share my stories cause at some time, you might be ready for war and you might think you can’t survive it, but you can- just don’t expect it to always look pretty on the other side. Just worth it.  My war is something I pushed deep inside and I spill out little antidotes here and there about what it was like to be me then and be me now.  And there’s a very few minority that know me on either side of the battle.  I have no idea what they must think now, other then when I see them- they still hug me and tell me they love me- and I know I love them with my whole heart too.  My war resulted in throwing out the sins I committed and facing them head on. Not with a twenty-year old heart of hell to give and pride to prove. It was facing sins and admitting I committed them. It was saying out loud I did bad things. A lot. I hid behind my youth, my beautiful, naive smile that could fool a shrewd judge of character, I hid behind the right words and the all consuming alcohol that I voiced like it was gospel, truth that you must hear- never hearing the fool spew senselessness.  Alcohol.  Someday, I really wanna talk about alcohol and really explain how evil it is. Because it is.  And don’t throw that stupid word disease at me.  I’ll spit back at you.  I’d never say I was an alcoholic, I won’t ever say it.  I just say, there were points in my life. I was a pretty crafty, functioning drunk. I have too much experience on too many sides to fall victim to handing over their choices, my choices, living through their hells and my hells to the likes of eliminating my free will or my responsibility.  God knows better and so do I.  Nearly every evil deed I readily and knowingly committed was drowned purposefully down with some vile bottle.  Sins that weaved wrenching, claw scratching memories.  War is not an easy thing, physically or spiritually.  My war left me collapsed and weeping for what I had been and done, not standing prideful, tall to exclaim, “Hey, live and let live.” What a stupid, destructively damning saying that is.

Oh, these dark nights! Memories of wars, waging through me!  I am battered and worn down by who I was and how much I’ve worked to never see her horrid face in the mirror again. Maybe that’s my urge to purge it all into that field. This dark, frigid night illuminating its truth on everything, urging me to run out into the field.  Escape mirrors of looking for her and the legacy she carries deep inside of me. I want to bury her dead. She is useless! She served nothing but to torment me with the memories of the sins I committed. And boy did I commit some sins.  It’s easy to say, we’re all sinners and be done with it. Like we wiped a little dirt off our hands and cleaned up some. It’s another thing to face your fear of darkness- you! You, Jen. What dark thing you were, what you did and the wretchedness you can’t shake off.  Yes, I am forgiven. I can’t bleed enough emotion to make it worth His blood.  And that is the exact point.

But I need that field tonight. I need no mirrors. I need not my warm house or this oversized car. I need my lonely, November field. I drive now, hard and purposefully. I need to pull this truck off the road. I need to get a little brave again with Him at my side. Cause the war is won, not by my strength, but His endless mercy. She is dead, Jen. Take the shovel- bury her and let it go.  You keep saying to yourself, claw out the memories. Claw them out, so you don’t have to remember who she is anymore, what she did, how she did it. So you don’t have to look into that bathroom mirror, shock that she’s not standing there anymore. For dead girls don’t reflect images.