The Ferris Wheel
“There’s so much to heal from”
It was the sadness in her voice, the crack in the sentence. It was the way her eyes held mine, searing through my soul and reaching for the part of my heart that should inevitably relate with her, with her pain, with this. She was staring out now, into the night, transfixed, motionless.
Her breath came in slow inhales. She looked calm, like tea in a cup, settling and slowly twirling round the spoon but I had seen this too much to not know that there was a storm beneath all that quietness.
“There’s so much pain that we don’t speak of, not so often, not ever. We keep it in. We don’t address it. And like everything that’s planted, it takes root and grows, taking over everything else that needs oxygen to survive.”
The Ferris Wheel
The pause came at a time that couldn’t have been more perfect. She had moved to the rocking chair and leaned into it, taking in the back and forth sensation, eyes shut.
“No one wakes up with a trauma. They build it up over the years. At first, they don’t admit they have it. Then, they realize that they do have it but don’t wish to address it because its a part of them that still hurts. They push it to the back burner and it goes straight into the box they will never open.”
Then she opened her eyes.
“We all need therapy Lade. We may deny it as much as we want but we’re all broken deep inside. We all have pieces of our past that we haven’t made peace with. We left that phase of our lives unscathed, or so we thought. Just because we couldn’t find the physical scars, we wrapped it up, tossed it to 1931.”
“For a long time, I blamed my parents. They should have broken the jinx before my inception. They made me into this person. They passed down their fears and insecurities to me. They slowly fanned the embers of this person I’ve become. I blamed them for everything. For birthing me. I didn’t ask for it. Now, I was this whole person with baggage enough to smother a beast.”
I had not said a word. I couldn’t. I needed to let her speak. I needed to feed from her pain, maybe it would heal mine. Maybe not. Either way, she must have endured so much. I couldn’t imagine it any other way.
“I don’t blame them now Lade. I understand now. Maybe not everything but I do get it. We are all scarred, some in places they can’t show or tell you. Some in places you see immediately. It differs. We were put in a world which we have no control over. We do the best we can, and we leave the rest for fate, God, life, the universe or some person else…”
The Ferris Wheel
Her voice trailed off her. She began humming a tune I didn’t know. She leaned back again, eyes shut. It sounded like some country music. I couldn’t quite place it. Several moments passed and she had gone mute. The stillness was odd but somewhat comforting. Her breath had slowed down now. Too slow… I was bothered.
“Anna…”
She didn’t bulge. I called her one more time and she turned to look at me. I heaved a sigh of relief. She smiled dryly. The first smile in a while but it was a smile nevertheless.
“Lade, take it from me, count yourself a very lucky young woman.”
I was confused. How could anyone think me lucky? Me? She didn’t know?
“I know what you’re thinking. Don’t worry, you’ll understand soon. Everyone is carrying some old load around, we are all pretending to have our shit together. We think we’re okay. We must be. Afterall, time they say heals all wounds”
The Ferris Wheel
She burst into a little laughter here and looked me straight in the eyes when she was done.
“That’s a lie Lade. Whoever said that lied. Time doesn’t heal you at all. Time helps you hide your pain. Time helps you forget temporarily. Time lies to you. Time flies. Time does whatever, anything except heal you. That’s the lie we’ve immersed ourselves in. It’s what we believe now. So, we employ time to ” heal” us and we say to everyone listening that we’re okay.”
“We’re not okay. We let our past shape us and we think we’re okay. We let time pass through us and we say we’re okay. We don’t address the damages done to us, the childhood scars, the abuse, the toxic people we meet that left their prints on us, the emotional trauma, the unforgettable incidents that marred us, yet we say we’re okay. We grow into adults, broken adults, damaged adults, incomplete adults, scarred adults, violent adults, with our inconsistencies and rotten nature. We give excuses for our inadequacies. We blame everything except the issues we should have addressed. Then, we try to love each other with the same capacity of imperfections and expect something magical…”
I sat there, lost in her words, vulnerable to the truth she was revealing. I had never felt so naked as I did in that moment. Naked and suddenly meek. She smiled, knowing that it had hit me.
“You see it now Lade. You see it”
Written by Pinklady Ohakah
