It’s amazing how resilient we can be.
How quickly the worst can become normal.
And even though there’s a part of you that blinks furiously at the sudden change of light, still tries to adjust and see into the darkness while at the same time hating it all, eventually, you do.
You start to see.
And I am not sure this is true, since you know, I was a dance major and not a scientist and certainly not a geneticist, but it was on Jurassic Park, and I’m pretty sure those dinosaurs were real. So everything else must have been too.
But there’s these groups of frogs and if the last of the opposite sex dies out, one of the same sex frogs will spontaneously change sexes and voila! you have yourself the next generation of little frogs jumping around on the next generation of little lilly pads.
The reason I mention this is because I think there’s something in us that, like those frogs that are either definitely real or definitely not (but the dinosaurs definitely were), rises up and makes something happen. Something good. Even in the midst of what you’d always categorized as The Absolute Worst, or maybe more appropriately, The Unthinkable.
It’s the ability to stand in smothering darkness, but look up and see the stars; to recognize Orion as some kind of reassurance that there’s light. Familiarity. Heck, there’s a belt. And in those low moments, you’ll take a belt up in the sky. One made of stars, albeit, so that’s something that’s amazing, right? And even if your stupid pants keep falling down cause you lost weight when you sure didn’t need to and you’d really rather just have a nice normal belt to keep those pants up comfortably, at least there’s a belt somewhere.
A belt made of stars.
Sounds kind of like magic.
And you’ll take magic.
And I remember the night when my parents took me back to their house. It was tragic. I keep searching for a better word–and I’m sure there are contenders, certain words which I’ve now been granted a special dispensation to utilize, given my particular circumstances–but I just keep arriving at tragic.
My own tragedy.
I remember being so humiliated. Hugging my sister, both of us crying, at a time that should have been joyful since I had just completed my first Broadway tour and was finally home.
Home.
That thought that had kept me going through the long weeks of Detroit when it was covered in the kind of winter that must have been Narnia’s plight under the White Witch: always winter but never Christmas. And home was the thought that had continued to waken me up with something like hope while I was so far away in Japan.
But now home was all kinds of wrong.
And dear God, I am grateful for my parents. But it didn’t seem right to move back into my childhood bedroom. It felt like I had been playing Chutes and Ladders with all the best of them; that I had been climbing steadily right along with my friends, when suddenly I got put on the longest chute on the board and landed right back at the beginning again. And I could wave to my friends standing tall on their ladders, but no amount of waving and shouting across the distance could bridge that gap.
But resilience. It’s a powerful thing. I’m finding myself alive these days. Doing things that living people do. Creating memories to combat the ones that have taken my innocence and then pretended it was no big deal at all.
I’m taking pictures with the people I love.
Wanting to document this. So it must not all be hell, then. Because who wants to document hell? I doubt the devil and his minions have many photo albums laying around, but I could be wrong; I really don’t know them well at all.
And for a long time, I couldn’t bring myself to dance. At all. And just ask anybody who’s been around me for about five minutes because they will tell you that I generally do at least something to give away the fact that I dance. A stray tendu. A pirrouette if I find myself on a floor that is good for turning. But when I was staying with beloved Latshaw-West, I couldn’t bring myself to dance a bit. That left, along with everything else good, it seemed.
But I remember standing in my parents’ kitchen and suddenly doing a pirrouette and then marveling afterwards because wow, that had to mean something. It was like someone who had existed in a fog for a very long time now had a sudden moment of clairvoyance and finally recognized their daughter and called her by name.
It was really good.
It still is really good to feel that freedom.
To dance once again just because.
And it’s like that, you know.
Sometimes you do the right things because you know you have to. Because you’ve been raised better than to go lay yourself down in the stream and never get up again. But sometimes you feel it inside and suddenly the desire to do these things that give you life, combined with actually doing them, gives you a high and you wonder how it was that you were ever so far down in that valley at all. Because here you are now and look at those cars and those people, they look so small and goodness, I think I could just about touch the sun if I reached.
But no matter what, you keep walking and plodding and it becomes the rhythm of one foot in front of the other.
Kind of like tonight.
When a friend offered to pick up me and my sister from the end of our snowed in and totally unaccessible lane. Oh, and don’t forget long. It’s a pretty long lane, as far as lanes go.
And yes, I was thrilled to have the added comfort of a guitar on my back to keep me warm.
And yes, the road felt too long, the snow too deep, and the cold too biting, but that didn’t matter so much. Those things were inconsequential compared to the goal of where we were going. And I kept telling myself to just do my job for the moment, which was put one foot in front of the other. And when I got very tired and very cold, I looked up.
Because there is always that belt in the sky.
The one made of stars.
What did they say in Jurassic Park about those frogs? Something like “Life always finds a way.” Looks like you’re making Crichton a prophet, because your life is finding away – even when it was punched and squished and shot through and cut up and generally left for dead, it’s definitely finding a way. Now if you spontaneously switch sexes, that will be taking it too far.
And while you didn’t dance here (or even at Mom and Pop’s house, which greatly concerned Pop if you’ll remember – that you were losing your dancing ability from taking too long a break), you did do your fair share of ice skating, and the way you mixed it up with the fellas on the rink, you could even call it ice dancing, I do believe.
ha! yeah–I believe that pop mentioned his concern for me at a point when it had been exactly five days since I had last danced. Five. Days. hahahahahahaha. I told him that sometimes a break was good for a body. At which point he replied, “well then my body must be doing great, since I’ve been giving it a pretty long break now…!”
And oh yeah, did I ever ice skate with you guys. I was downright getting jiggy with it with that guy. What a moment, what a heck of a moment.
Only you could give a beautiful passe’ on a mound of snow!!!!!
and you are one of the few commenters here who actually know what a passe IS!!!
I am very impressed by your ability to embrace life, after even after all that you’ve been through. I know, though, that you were made to have abundant life, to sing and to dance.
haha when I first read this, it sounded like I was MADE to do those things–like someone was forcing me and it wasn’t of my own volition…which isn’t your point, upon further inspection…But yes, I was totally made for life:)
Ha ha, yeah, that’s kind of different. I meant made as in authored, begotten, brought into being, brought into existence, built, coined, composed, conceived, concocted, constituted, constructed, contrived, created, designed, devised, dreamt up, erected, established, fabricated, fashioned, forged, formed, formulated, generated, hatched, initiated, instituted, invented, originated, planned, produced, set up, shaped, or spawned. I probably should have used one of those words.
Yep. I really wish you had said that I was SPAWNED to sing and dance, lol!
I remember hearing in a lecture at college that “people are the most adaptable” of all living things.” The thought has stuck with me as over the years I’ve seen many people go through horrendous experiences. But, honestly, I know no one who has gone through what you’ve gone through–and your ability to still see the best in people, to still be grateful for the good, to reach for the stars even when you’re in a pit is absolutely no less than miraculous and very inspiring. When we were playing scattegories last night, if, when we had gotten the category “heroes,” the letter “J” had come up, I would have written you down as a hero. There’s no self-pity in you and the way you are still grateful for what God is doing in your life allows you to see the things He is doing.
mom, you are too kind. I think that a lot of you guys would do just as well, if not better…at least play less solitaire, I think…
Mom, every Christian worth her salt would have written “Jesus,” or at the very least “Jesus Living Through Jessica”
or how about Jesus DESPITE Jessica???
Or Jesus To Spite Jessica.
oh maybe Jesus cause he LIKES Jessica.
Are you saying that Jesus is only a hero because he likes you??
Great post, Jess (and you would literally have laughed out loud if I wasn’t so good at self-editing, because initially, I wrote, “Great pot, Jess.”)!
I am glad you are dancing again.
The frog thing is true, by the way.
Good to know it’s true about the frogs! And ha! great pot, indeed
Well, I know there are a couple translations floating around out there, but that’s my read of the gospel, Jase.
That is a beautiful, beautiful picture, Jess. I love it for so many reasons.
I too have been admiring Orion lately, and living with my parents in the country, a great vantage point for stargazing.