gwensarah and johanny
If a body catch a body coming through the rye
08:58 & 13 May 2002

....Part I- Winter...

"In your dreams..
Am I happy?
Do I end up belonging?
Do I end up belonging?
Is my heart,
finally still?
Do I find my place,
my place in the world?
If what you see
is my destiny
Is there someone with me
do two paths cross?
Am I no longer lost?
Is there someone with me?
I've seen myself
just like you say..
So you think it's not a lie
so you see me home and dry?--Trembling Blue Stars

I know that I used the above quote in the Last Letter entry, perhaps it was because I was listening to it that day or perhaps it was simply because D. loved Trembling Blue Stars so.

I think now that it had naught to do with either the sound streaming through my speakers or the love for a dear friend loved and lost but instead because those words more than any other struck that part of me who has lain awake countless times, longing and scarcely daring to hope that I would find my place in the world.

Hoping that I would someday feel that sense of belonging, hoping to have my path someday cross with that one person who would not run from my shadows any more than I would wish to flee with his. Instead, both of us endeavoring to find some shining light in the midst of all this world's darkness.
That person with whom we can be one another's sun during those times when winter grips the sun.

I am not afraid of being alone, I do not wish to run from solitude in the form of connecting with someone to fill a need for warmth when I am without hope or when the sun is absent from my days.
Solitude is not the same as being alone, and I am whole enough to recognise this.
At times I reconcile myself with never finding that person who has so far only appeared to me in dreams, always half in shadow. Of finding the one who causes me to feel as if I have finally come home after a long journey. Days where I question if perhaps I should consign my longing for that depth of emotion to that place that forsaken dreams call their own.

The span between autumns's last leaf and spring's first sign of life stretches out each year like a yawning chasm of ice cold darkness lying in wait for me to plunge into it's depths, it is during those times more than any other that I am almost afraid to dream.
Even here there are those days where the sun is kept at bay by winter's death like touch and even the nights can provide little solace with the light of a sundrenched moon for it too is entrenched in shadow.
There are those for whom this does not have an effect and they walk their paths oblivious to the threat of this soul destroying lack of light and warmth. Wishing for longer, brighter day light but not desparate for it.
Others of us each grey day and early nightfall causes the soul to ache with yearning for even the smallest fraction of brightness..
Hurts are felt more deeply, loss has the power to destroy, solitude ceases to be a source of peace but instead becomes the despair of isolation..
Some don't make it through, falling into the depths, burdened by the crushing weight of their sun starved spirit.
They become lost to us forever, leaving those left behind to never understand how a few dark months could lead to such a final desparate act...

I understand.
I have felt that same chill descend upon me as the sky turns grey and days are cut short by an even emptier nightfall.
Scents of morning crispness or burning leaves sending a ripple of panic, stripping away the beauty and love I hold for autumn.
Each year I hope that I will make it through with my spirit intact.
Even as a child I felt the loss of the sun keenly, my happiness that the sweltering heat of summer was at long last over dampened by the knowledge that autumn is a brief flicker in the face of days which soon become not nearly long enough to fill the shadows of my soul with enough light..
I search for a different light..for even the faintest glimmer of brightness.
Light in the eyes of my little boy, as blue as the sun drenched ocean.
Light in the laughter of a friend or the voices of family gathered for winter holidays.
No human being is an island to themselves, from our first breath we need the presense of love and warmth as surely as we need food and shelter to survive, in some ways both are the same.
As I grow older I do not need these things any less than a small child does.
This is forgotten, I think. In this day and age too little emphathis is placed on the comfort that simply being in the presence of another can give.

For those that the lack of sunlight weighs heavily, perhaps this becomes even more vital.

Sometimes even the lightest of touches can be as brilliant as the light of a thousand suns.
As a species we once used fire to keep darkness at bay and the warmth of each other's bodies to sustain through the coldest of winters. Drawing comfort from one another and silently offering the reassurance that even the darkest night or most frigid winter cannot last forever.

The sun does keep it's promise, it's warmth chasing away even the blackest of clouds, it's light banishing shadows.

Even those shadows invisible to the eye.

Those times where it feels as if nothing standing between myself and that desolate chasm I cling to the hope that I am wrong. That there is something even if intangible. A promise yet to be fulfilled, a dream waiting to come true.
That if I fall I will be caught, as I would catch another..or tumble together trying.
I tell those who feel grey more intensely that if they can just reach out that there are those who would gladly share a litle bit of their light to sustain through the dark times.
A touch, an embrace, a word of comfort..something in which there is light.
I say the words knowing all along that I am wrong. That sometimes there is no one. Afraid that I will hear of a person reaching out to another only to be made to feel inconvenient or rejected. Knowing full well how that can destroy.
I say the words because I live them. I am the Catcher in the Rye, the only thing at times standing between someone I care for and empty space.
I say the words but can find no comfort in them for myself.
Who catches the catcher were she to stumble, were she to fall?
I want to believe that those times I share my waning light that it has some meaning. That even the faintest of light can be enough to help one find their way. That maybe, just maybe losing that little bit of light for someone else will help become something within them which guides them home to a place and time where that person's heart is safe within the love of another.

I hope for the ones I catch all those things which I have always longed for myself.

And hope that I never fall myself, because I have stepped close enough to the edge to see that there is no one ready to catch me.

************

Listening: "Country Rain"-Slowdive

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