The Time Traveler's Life
- Colleen Songs
- May 8, 2018
- 8 min read
I zip my little travel guitar snugly inside her back-pack-case.
I particularly love this anniversary gift from my Husband.
I was through with diamonds when we met.
I asked him only to bring me memories.
During a light conversation a few months before our fifth anniversary, I told him that I dreamt of climbing Mount Kili with a travel guitar in my back-pack, and a goal to sing my song ‘Rainmaker’ at the summit to all of Africa, the motherland of human life.
So you can imagine how this gift that anniversary morning meant to me!
I settle her on the settee by the front door of our Oakfern cottage.
I slip on my Ariat’s and sweater, fluff my silvering golden locks and offer him a kiss before I make my way out of our door and down our street to a Book Club.
I still myself as we kiss.
I feel its warmth and ask it to travel the entirety of my body.
Full body ‘amour’.
My love shield.
My neighbour asked me to join her bookclub for their May discussion,
about my memoir, ‘INHALE’,
“with a song please!”
my signature at every speaking engagement.
This is my first ‘private’ sort of gig to talk about my story.
I am honoured yet observing a wave of ‘not sure what to expect’ fear.
I swallow the forming lump in my throat,
smile and take the steps from our front door
down to our driveway.
Up your's any more, Fear!
A slight tightening in my tummy.
A familiar sensation...
Fear of writing it.
Fear of re-living it.
Fear of exposing it.
Fear of real-easing it.
Fear of the topic:
the spouse (previous) of a narcissist,
the caregiver of a loved one with severe mental illness.
With every step down our driveway I open up the past door.
I hear the creaking of the hinges.
The room of jello opens and I walk through.
I am okay to walk through it now.
It is helping others.
The story.
The writing.
The publishing.
The questions.
The process.
The tears.
The awareness...
I feel the soft touch of the air on my cheeks.
I step onto the sidewalk,
turn left and walk:
keep smiling,
chin up,
chest out,
standing,
walking
on my story.
Everything seems amplified, accentuated, slow motion.
My neighbours’ houses stand like guardians winking their windows to reassure me they are remaining vigilant.
The familiar shrubs and grasses lining the sidewalk whisper reassurances that I am in a beautiful place now.
The flitting and chirping of each little bird sing me toward my destination, “You’re safe now my dear, don’t fear, never fear.”
And I arrive.
I’ve known about her Book Club, or as she puts it, “Wine club with books”, for awhile.
She was one of the first to purchase my memoir before it went to publication.
I step into her home, a time traveller.
I am to re-live over there, while standing present in the here and now, in the sanctuary of their comfy home.
Simultaneous multiple dimensions of Colleen.
My present self chats and mingles with the hostess and her adult family as their fellow Book Clubbers arrive, one elegant seasoned reader at a time, and I feel my body’s weight sink into the cushions of the couch as we begin the evening’s discussion.
Lightly at first.
Chitter, chatter.
Smile and breathe.
First dimension.
The milky white goo enveloping the yolk of my being shifts inside my skin
preparing to bear the burden of my story as the Hostess rings the subliminal bell
that it is now time to dig in to each readers enquiry,
asking the questions I am prepared for and always expecting those questions that I am not,
but know they may possibly be asked of today.
Second dimension.
I silently pray through my smiles and nods for truth to continue to pour forth,
for honesty to be unafraid to be bold
and kind,
full of love
and ‘present’ of mind.
I feel the warmth begin to fill me from crown to toe
and there I am.
Third dimension.
Safe.
Calm.
Honest.
Body in the present,
I split mind laying splayed across the borders of time.
Fourth dimension.
“What was the process of writing and publishing your book?”
I answer by expelling the story of my learning curve layers,
my new-found appreciation for the written word and its writer.
Layers of editing.
Crafting.
Reliving.
Rewriting.
Digging deeper.
Facing fear.
“While digging deeper, as your editors asked you to do, were you encouraged to embellish to get your story to seem more appealing?”
“There was no need to embellish,” I bare. “It was traumatic enough, though I held back some “why” details and it were those details they asked to fill in the blanks.”
“No, there was no need to embellish,” I reflect. “I prayed along the way to be brave, to remember truthfully, and what I couldn’t remember clearly except for the emotion I molded into a couple experiences to weave the impact of the emotion to tell the story for me because I did not want to embellish. The truth was enough.
What I could not yet speak about publicly I left out.
Some things do not need to be spoken of again.”
“Why did you stay? Why didn’t you leave in Chapter 17 when you were at the border crossing? Why didn’t you tell the officer?”
I breathe.
I describe the concrete shoes of fear,
the reel of scenarios that went through my mind when I saw my plan begin to unravel,
the panic that set in when the plan I had rehearsed in my gut left me with no eyes to see another option.
“I didn’t want his blood on my hands. On my watch. Imprinting me. His words reaching my Children before I could. A horrific story I would have to return home with, scarred by and explain THAT to my Children???
“At that point I really knew how bad I sucked at lying and making impromptu escape plans. My only way out was to ride the wave and trust I’d know when the timing was perfect.”
“I finished your book wanting to know more. I had so many questions? Did you make it to your friend’s? Did you get home to your Children? Did he find you? Did he find them? What happened to him?”
I smile, excited that I made that kind of impact on a reader!!!
“There is a sequel. And with these questions I am anxious to begin! I start writing it this fall, but it won’t take me another 5 years, I know the ropes now!”
I give away one insider’s scoop
James eventually committed suicide.
We discuss the sorrow, the sadness, the mystery of mental illness and the hole that is left behind.
We discuss the difference between a narcissistic and an ill mind.
We discuss the words we say, or not say, or if we should say anything at all when we observe someone in an unhealthy relationship.
“They are the words of honest love,” I admit. “The words I didn’t want to hear were seeds I clung to when it was time to find my courage. They were my courage seeds.”
“What was the purpose of writing this story?”
“I remember what it was like keeping it inside.
Haunting.
Corrosive.
Invasive of my current happiness.
I had to get it out of me in order to help another person.
To provide air for any soul gone breathless.”
“There is a difference between your personality choice and being mentally ill,” a discusser reveals, a little annoyed, honestly blunt and a tiny bit challenging. “I have had suicidal thoughts and have come to see it as an illness so I nurture myself through those times instead of act on my thoughts.”
I acknowledge her openness.
I thank her for challenging me right here, right now.
“Thank you,” I admire, and as tears begin to well I think about the words to her I can no longer say to him, “Thank you for revealing that truth about you. And your awareness that your Self needs some tlc when you have those thoughts. I sit honoured right now, because every time I meet someone who sat on the fence of life and death I feel as though I am talking to him. And because he did take his life, I cannot tell him the words that I wish I could say. My Children can no longer say the words they wish they could say. So with your permission may I speak them to you?”
She accepted my words as I shared them with her, heart on my sleeve.
"You leave a space bigger than you realize and you are deeply missed by many when you leave. "
Even though we were going through a divorce at the time, he could have had a beautiful life.
We could have had a better goodbye.
~~~~~~
And there were words I wish I had said in answer to her release of her story, but didn't.
I didn't for the fear that stepped in once again.
So I will ask You here right now,
You who are reading this story,
with your permission may I share them with You?
From the other side of suicide, may I finally speak the words I have yet been too afraid to say?
Let them sit with you if you find them true, let them pass by you if you feel they are not.
There is no right or wrong because we will never know that anything is until we experience it.
So may I share them with you?
Read no further if it's a no.
Keep on reading if you give yourself permission to receive it...
“We fill a space that is larger than our physical body.
It is called our existence.
It is a space designed specifically for our lives to fill, and we ARE life!
No one else can fill that space but you.
Ask any tailor when they fit a suit to your body.
Look at your fingers for a moment. Wiggle them. How did you get in there?
How does it feel to hold another person's hand?
The tingle of your lover's?
The magic of your Child's?
The warmth of your parents' or a friend's?
We alone are responsible for that space we fill AND how it affects the existence around us,
connected to us,
affected by us...
The void that is left behind from a life taken,
by whatever means cut short,
taken...
becomes an abyss,
a vacuum that pulls endlessly at the spaces around it that are left behind!
There is no peace in a taken life.
There IS a choice for peace by living your life.
We are given tools to live by called our individual gifts and talents.
Live them and live well. ”
~~~~~~
Going back to the night of the book club...
We continue the discussion with some tears shed.
I thank my fourth dimension and tuck it away for another day.
I sing a song that expresses the gift and miracle of the invention of word and storytelling and talent.
Gifts made visible by word,
made audible by speech and music,
made tangible by deed.
The evening closes.
Gratitude expressed, I pack my travel guitar and leave my neighbour’s sanctuary.
I shed my third dimension.
I feel the alone-ness of walking through the time zones.
Alone but triumphant!
Only I could tell this story I was given.
I inhale the freshness of the evening air.
I exhale the dust between my pages.
I slip out of my second dimension.
Stepping forward I notice the jello opening a pathway from where I stand to where I am going...
home.
The amplified chirping of the birds din to a slow song.
The neighbour’s houses close their eyes as lights flicker to off-duty.
The trees and grasses, shrubs and bushes simmer from a job well done.
The creaking door of the past closes behind me as I step onto our driveway,
and I am transported back to my present life.
My first dimension.
My now.
I look up to see our cottage and I’m so grateful to call it mine.
I walk up our stairs and life is simply delicious despite the weathering wood and winter’s remaining film on the window panes.
We’ll get to that tomorrow.
I enter our cottage and I wrap my arms around my heart-song!
I made it through the tunnel once again!
My past brought me to this perfect place!
I rest
and ground myself
for the next journey back in time
to inspire someone to move forward
past the fear.
For I am a time traveler,
a storyteller of word and song.
I was where I was and I am where I am,
I will always exist where I need to belong.
With all my honest love,
Colleen Songs
May 8, 2018
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