I ran twelve months and four time zones. Trying to out-run the turning of the Earth, the passing of time, the number of heart beats against the shield of my breastbone. I wanted to cheat time, cheat destiny, cheat myself of everything I was owed, raised for, deserved, feared. I wanted to escape from being me, wanted to feel me falling away like clothes, like jeans and jacket slipping to the cold wood floor, until I could stand bare and alive and just be… oh.
Right.
All the roles we play for others, for ourselves. As time passes and we grow (more complicated or) older, we tend to create more and more of these personas, these suits of armor, these veneers. Finally we have a wardrobe full of shades and variants of ourselves. None of them wholly us. None of them wholly not. A button from one shirt, a zipper from a boot, a pocket from favorite jeans -- little bits and pieces from each disguise is real, selected off that creature that is true. The real you, the real me.
The only us we really are.
An old friend said to me, “I realized I was agnostic when I was play-acting for God.” Meaning: When he prayed, he put on a persona.
I looked over at him, summer grass between us doing nothing to fill the hollow in his eyes, and said, “If He doesn’t exist than why would you hide from Him?”
Who am I?
I step into my closet and slide the slender straight-edge from my left boot. I work without speaking. Just the sound of thread and cloth slicing and coming free. A button from here. A sleeve there. A leather wristlet. A skirt. A pair of gloves, a silk scarf. I am taking the real pieces off all the costumes. I am taking back the real pieces and weaving them -- with spider webs, with moonlight, with the thin breads of your golden hair -- back into me.
When I wore a disguise, there was no chance anyone could hurt all of me. Only that one tiny part that I wore that day.
No more. Enough.
I want to wear myself when you look at me.
I want you to know me.
I don’t play-act for God.
