A Pile of You

I haven't posted anything here yet this year...and I feel this piece by Jennifer Louden articulates exquistely what's up for most of us.




A Pile of You
by Jennifer Louden


It is time.

You are ready. This time, you mean it. For real.

You are ready. You are shedding, dismantling, unbuckling, discarding: identities, accolades, glories, web stats, even your most treasured bio.

Impressive, glittery, sacred: past.

Scars, wounds, failures, shames, dents: they must go, too.


You unbuckle the past slowly, swearing to yourself, softly, repeatedly, “I am ready, I can do this” even as bits of you cling to your fingers.

Disrobe, unwind, unburden.

A pile of you forms on the shore of your future.

The water of the unknown laps at your feet, caresses your toes. So clean, so promising. You are almost naked, almost emptied, almost ready.

Then a thought: wouldn’t it be a good idea to hold on to just one wafer thin bit of you?

After all, like the Egyptian Pharaohs, you will need things on the other side. Maybe not 10,000 nubile slaves or a clay jar with your preserved heart in it but it shouldn’t hurt to take just one, or maybe five, of your degrees with you? Certainly the Oprah appearance would be useful. And being the youngest person in your organization to ever run a division, don’t leave that. And your divorce and bad investments and the semi-abusive relationship - you aren’t really ready to let go of those.

It would be silly to leave all of you. You might get cold. You take back more slivers of your identity from the pile. You worked so hard for them. Especially the stories that gouge and pinch and humiliate.

You put a few bits of you back on. Now you’re ready to dive in, the water looks so fine.

What’s this? You can’t swim. You can’t even float. You are sinking.

Your toes touch the soft, silted bottom. You panic, claw at the water but no matter. You don’t move, can’t move: sunk.

You know what you have to do. If you are honest, it is only because you will drown that you do so, but to your credit, you do it (many would rather drown). You cast away all of who you have been, these last most special and hurtful flecks, remembering, at the last moment to say thank you.

Thank you for it all.”

You find — you have no idea how — you can breathe underwater now. (Maybe it was the thank you?) You can’t see very far in front of you, only a few feet, so you move slowly, as if in a dream. Come to think of it, maybe this is a dream and, any moment, you will wake up. You will be who you are, or were, or always thought you should be. You fantasize about how good that will feel, the known!, and then, shit!

You are smack, stuck, back on the bottom, in the gloom. Unable to move, although thankfully, still, able to breathe.

You sigh and watch the bubbles streak upwards. It seems that holding on to anything here does not serve.

You concentrate on the feeling of the water passing over your skin, on the cerulean blue patch right in front of you, on the rise and fall of your chest.

You take a tentative breaststroke forward. And then another.