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Writer's pictureShelly Blaisdell

Endings



On a 90 degree evening, seven women spread their mats on a weathered wooden platform under a tree in Temescal Canyon Park. Caroline led us through Yoga while a new Corn Moon rose over Los Angeles. Harvest season is upon us. After class, the happy women left the park. Half way back to my car, to husband and child, the tree called me back.


It’s almost quiet now. Somewhere up the road gravel grinds under tires. A single bird is stuck like a car alarm, choop, choop, choop. Three angry crows complain about the heat. The bugs are thinning now, and that's good, because Caroline took the bug spray as she left.


The light is beginning to change, darkness accelerating. No one knows I am here.  In a few minutes a choice will be made. Do I stay here in the quiet woods under a magical tree? Or do I go home, in deference to the visions that visit a good man whenever his beloved women and girls are unaccounted for?


As soon as I imagine him home alone, wondering where I am, my skin prickles like sunburn. 


I remember being monitored.


______________________



Years ago, in a crazy man's house, privacy was considered subversive. At 13 years old, I hid behind moving boxes in the garage. In the few minutes before he tore the house apart looking for me, autonomy opened up like night blooming jasmine in my chest. I'd never experienced it before. 


That cardboard cave became my sanctuary, my temple, my amnesty.  I hid here, for only minutes at a time, for many years.  The smell of new cardboard still shocks me like a first lover's perfume.


He watched me constantly, guarded me the way an addict guards his stash. Even today when I carve out a moment to myself, I feel imaginary eyes on me like leaches.  It takes several minutes to pull them off me so I can be my own subject. It gets easier with practice, but still must be done each time I'm alone.


Two weeks after my 18th birthday, I slipped out from under his thumb, but slid directly under the same thumb attached to a different man. I was watched. I was hoarded.  I was accountable.  But I was changed. In only two years the cardboard cave opened up to be the world. And the girl who was trapped became the woman who ran. For many years, at first hint of any constriction, pressure, entrapment, I disappeared.



At age 23, on a Thursday night, I drew a deep breath and walked out my door without consulting my roommate. This was the first time in my life no one knew where I was.  The freedom felt like fever.  Later that night, I tip toed back home and no one sat on the stairs, weapon in hand, drinking and cursing my absence. No one asked me to participate in choosing my punishment. 



Now, years after the cycle of dominator and subject has been broken, I still marvel at, swim in, these moments of unaccountability. No one knows where I am right now. No one has an opinion right now about what I'm doing right now. Here under this tree, I am free floating, untethered in space. An hour of freedom erases a year of captivity.


______________________


Caroline instructed us to find our center of balance and to stay there for a moment before letting go of each pose. She spoke about the stages of each asana: setting, holding, and releasing.  Releasing a pose with grace and awareness is just as important as how we enter a pose.


Standing still, firmly rooted in mountain pose, stepping into tree pose, I hold. For a split second, the woman I was races frantically around my head, checking the corners for danger. I catch her, soothe her, remind her that she is safe. That was then, this is now. Bringing mind back to present. Bringing heart back to faith. Bringing body back to balance. I wait until ready to release the pose. Despite (or maybe as a result) of great effort, balance gives way and the right leg crashes to the floor scattering the litter of tiny leaves. This will take practice. 


Shavasana, rest, gazing up through branches, a simple truth comes into sharp focus: I rush every ending. Cover up all traces of failure, wipe out all memories of botched friendships, slop the final coat of paint on the cabinets, gloss over all sadness after a loss, pick the scab before the wound has healed, start the next project before the first is done. Decide my trauma is over with out investigation or ceremony. Pack a bag and leave my clothes and letters and photos behind again. And again. Run away, run away, run away.


Here in the twilight, between dark moon waning and new moon waxing, the crickets sing a song I've always missed in my rush to leave. They sing, in comic chirps, a bitter sweet song honoring an ending.


______________________



The transition, from the one I was into the one I am, was ambiguous. It began with Susan, the co-worker who let me live on her couch and taught me how to take the bus. Add to this a parade of boyfriends, each a little kinder than his predecessor.  Enter Steve, my boss at Thom McCann Shoes who taught me how to drive and never asked why I flinched every time he corrected me. Each changed me as much as I could be changed before I vanished. Care and affection made me feel naked and burnt. Run away, run away, run away.


And then, almost a decade after fleeing my father's house, my husband arrived. I almost couldn't see him at first, as he was a gentle man who never wanted to own me, define me, use me as entertainment.


At first his lack of dominance was charming and confusing, then infuriating. Several years of anger at his refusal to play the role I was trained to play against almost drove him away. But through trial and error, my outbursts and his patience, my confusion and his humor, my good fortune and his relief, a self directed woman emerged. I became a person who could stay. 


______________________



The light has definitely faded now. Wispy strands of pink clouds stretch across the twilight sky. Mosquitoes no longer buzz around my ears. Now dime sized spiders make the trek from ground, to shoe, to knee. I watch them. 


And now is the moment when the man who will never hurt me needs me to acknowledge his fear of losing me. Like so many people, he believes that a woman alone outside is in eminent danger. He does not understand that outside alone is the only place I will ever feel safe. Even though the stone steps leading further into the green black park are calling me, even though the prospect of being enveloped in the silence of the darkening wood is almost more than I can resist, he deserves my respect. I remind myself that this is not control; this is caring. 


______________________


This is the end of a moment of solitude and autonomy. Rather than blast through it, I will savor its ending, quietly taking a few breaths of compassion for the injured child and the lost young woman who still live within me. And a few breaths of gratitude for the sane and loving people who helped me start a new life.  I will not rush this. I am present for the beginning, middle and end of a moment of privacy and reflection.

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