Originally posted on Medium.com
I stood in the frigid darkness, white banks of snow piled behind me, looking across the plowed, black asphalt of North Service Road at The 403 as cars sped back-and-forth. Earbuds pressed into my chilly ears, I listened to Björk’s impassioned music, embracing the pain and sorrow riveting my heart — without fully acknowledging myself.
I wanted, needed love.
For whatever reason, I don’t remember the feeling of being cold, though I remember that I was. I remember the strange fondness of constantly being chilly in the office where I worked all day as a temporary data entry clerk, needing to bundle under sweaters to stay warm. I remember enjoying the company of the girls in the office, being admired by the rough-hewn men for my work ethic, skill, and speed. They all wanted me to stay; the supervisor worked with Corporate to hire me permanently.
Unlike the man I would return to at the end of every day, they appreciated everything I did.
And I returned to stand there, night-after-night, awaiting the bus that would take me back to my residence, unwilling to ask the questions I felt in tune with the blinding emotion of Björk’s lyrics:
Why don’t you love me, as they do?
If you could see me here, would you think so poorly of me?
You see? I’m not worthless. Why can’t you love me, too?
Looking back, my incredible sadness is so blatant that I cannot understand how I didn’t realize it, then. Outside, I was one with the terribly bitter, black nights; yet, I longed, every night, to return inside to work despite the uncomfortably cool temperature — and was afraid, every morning, that someone within would learn that I was as awful and useless as he encouraged me to feel I was.
I can’t remember the year.
I can’t remember how old I was, nor where that too-short assignment sits in my tumultuous history.
I blanked it out, held it sacred — as has been my tendency with such fond memories. For decades, I avoided listening to the music associated with that time and place.
Still, the memory does not escape me: Of standing in snowdrifts at the side of an empty road; of feeling, wishing I could disappear into the void of those winter nights; of wanting so badly to drive far, far away. Of listening to Björk and Imogen Heap.
In the years after, on trips to Toronto with the man who beseeched me for so many things, I’d look out of the window and yearn, as we passed the towering displays of construction equipment, for those nights, for the people I worked with, for the love I felt from them.
They weren’t able to hire me permanently.
I never spoke of it to him — or to anyone.
It was safer not to speak of anything.
The near-empty, silent bus drove past houses strung with colorful Christmas lights during the months when I worked for the construction-equipment company, past the tiny lakeside cottages that reminded me of those on Florida’s coast. Private joy lifted smiles to my lips, brought a touch of mirth to my eyes — and yet more distant yearning.
The man I lived with had, years before, banned Christmas decorations, celebrations, dinners, baking. It was too commercial, too expensive, he said. It took too much of my time.
I had only decorated, baked, cooked for one Christmas.
I didn’t know why I liked Christmas lights; I just thought they were pretty, a touch of glistening merriment against the pitch-black Northern evenings.
He tried to destroy even that, one nighttime trip down that route, telling me the people within those houses were impoverished, unhappy, squabbling, common rats.
(… As if we hadn’t been in the same state, so recently….)
The battery in my MP3 player died frequently enough, on those solitary winter bus rides, that I’d have to ride in silence, await to transfer buses while listening to the conversations of other riders. There was squabbling between friends, it’s true, and everyone seemed poor — but they were friends, family. They huddled together for warmth.
I watched furtively with uneasy wistfulness.
Was it possible that I grew colder as I neared my destination? I remember shivering, pacing, hoping to warm even slightly; glancing across the street, hoping the restaurant there might be open, simultaneously afraid that I might miss the last bus home. If I did, I’d have to walk five miles in the frigid air.
(It had happened before. I knew I could make it, but it was not in the least bit desirable.)
It’s the Christmas decorations, this year, that bring these memories back to me, that reminds me of music not-at-all associated with Christmas that I had abandoned years ago with the crushing memories of so many thwarted attempts to make beauty amidst the tragedy I lived.
Nothing existed, at that time, if it did not originate in his mind, of his will — unless it was my writing.
He permitted me to write; I was afraid to write, so I didn’t write. I agonized because I didn’t know why I couldn’t bring myself to write anything.
It was ten years before I wrote again.
— From Wikipedia
Why do I now share these torturous memories?
Because I know there are those living through similar experiences, who question themselves for wanting to leave, who tuck themselves into their earbuds, who hide silently in their work, who act the part of the good-girl-or-boy just to avoid the terrors of being themselves, of having feelings, of having thoughts disparate of their keepers.
The world is filled with oppression, even in First World countries, most-usually by those closest to us.
So, I write for them, to them; and for the young woman, so long ago, waiting for a bus in the wintery night:
Wake up; come out of your hiding places.
It’s okay. There are places to go; there’s life around the bend.
You just have to get away from them and come back, come back to yourself.
