Tears in the Forest

It's 3:47 am. It's dead silent.  Dead. I never think of death as silent. It's always violent. Excruciating. Painful. Rarely is death calm. Peaceful. Like silence. The silence tonight.

The silence resides only but outside. A concept my heart cannot grasp. Oh, I do have a good understanding of silence. I lived there. I took it all in. Locked it up. In silence. The epitome of calm, blissful, happy. That is me. I smile. I am told my smile does things. Lights up rooms, infectious. Like a virus. Been told its naughty too. Like I am hiding something. How true. I do hide. Behind my eyes. My eyes and my smile.

When I cannot sleep, which is far too often, I play rain sounds. My friends make fun of me. But it works. Today I chose Rain in Forest. I close my eyes.

I am there

I am in that forest. Its' raining. I am lost. Every tree looks like the last one. The crunch of the leaves under my feet is too loud. Like an annoying ringing in my ears that just won't quit. Every dead leaf I step on is every dream, every plan I had that is now dead. I walk on the carcasses of what I saw my life to be when I played in this same forest. 

Then, sunshine permeated through the trees, to shine just the right amount of light, to give just the right amount of warmth. And when it rained, I lifted up my face, and caught with my curious tongue, the raindrops infused with sunshine. I cried. And when my tears mixed with the rain, I saw rainbows. I chased them. I never caught any, but the chase was the fuel that my life ran on.

Now the rain mixes with my tears and it stings. I reach out. I need to reach out. I touch, fleetingly. I grab a tree. I hug it. The wind wants to tear my feet off the ground. I need an anchor.  If only for a minute. The tree snaps. Next to me it collapses. Joins my dreams, as they get swept away by the waters that have now formed beneath my feet. I want to be my dead dreams. I want to be the shell that was my hopes. I want to be swept away. I want the rainwaters to carry me away, far away towards the oceans.

I want to drown.

I want to never want to come up for air. I want to be intoxicated by the ocean. I want to gasp, fight for air, so that when I get it, I will treasure it. Savor every inhale. Then dip my head back again...into the ocean of forgetfulness. 

I want meaning.

I want every tree to stand for something. I want that majestic tree that looks like it has been in this forest forever to stand for the love I have had. Not the one I have lost. That is that other tree with the torn bark, the decaying leaves, the sagging branches. I want that majestic tree to bend its branches ever so slightly towards me. Such that a leaf will brush my cheek, and I will feel its life, its strength go through me, like a bolt of lightening.  I want to sit at its foot, caress the roots that tell me of hardships, of survival, of endurance. I want to feel the pain with it, to taste the richness of the soil that feeds it, with my fingertips. I want to hear of the pain of growth, the pain of letting go of it leaves, every season, and the joy of growing others, and how it reconciles the pain of letting go and the ecstasy of getting new. And the freedom that comes with that.

I want freedom

Like that tree that rises above all others. The tree that knows that with being above all others also means the heat is stronger, the rain is harder. And yet, defiantly, it still rises. I want to speak with it of confidence. Of faith. Of believing in things not seen. The assurance of things hoped for. The conviction beyond a doubt of things dreamt of. And their ability to come true.

I want to believe

I look up. The rain beats harder. The forest is still dark. Eyes stare at me in the darkness. And trees, well, they are just trees. Moving as the wind dictates, the weight of the rain threatening to break them.

I want to cry

Not that the tears will get me out of here. But with them, they can take away the pain. The pain will mix with the rain, fall down on my dead dreams and unfulfilled plans. And together, they can flow to the place I can only hope my new dreams will one day take me.

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