As a child, I always believed in an amazing life for myself. Laying on the floor of our open-roofed treehouse and staring up at the clouds, I imagined the exotic places to which I’d travel and the interesting people I would meet. The expectations were grand and the imagination blossomed further with every book I read or movie I saw. I just knew that by the time I grew up, there would be manned space flights to anywhere in the solar system I wanted to go, and possibly beyond, but only after I had witnessed the fury of Jupiter’s Red Storm. I could see myself as an adult diving into the Mariana Trench and discovering new species that could only exist in the deepest dark and intense pressure of the ocean. I would naturally spend a good bit of time in the jungle, but would also traverse the poles to crack the secret of why polar bears and penguins would never naturally meet. Yes, it was to be a truly amazing life.
I suppose the problem is that I grew up. In some ways, I grew up too fast, learning things I should not have known until much later in life. Even so, I never imagined that I would be where I am. Of course, where I am was never a guarantee. That I’m here at all is a miracle several times over. Just how many times are for other posts. One miracle in particular came about because of a dream and a man.
When I grew up, I thought of myself as unworthy and broken. Almost all of my boyfriends had been abusive in one way or another and I believed that was the way men treated women as a matter of course. After all, the man I trusted most in my life had betrayed me in the most complete manner a father could. Right after that, he betrayed my mother. I didn’t trust men any further than I could throw them. Really, how many times can a person get burned before they learn that the stove is hot? I was burned and burnt myself, each on a regular basis, to the point that I hated myself. I didn’t express this to anyone because it seemed that no one really knew what to make of me. Until him.
I was at a miserable low. My boyfriend of several years was the most abusive yet and I had a baby son at home who had some sort of special needs. I lived with my mother and my life situation was tense at best; only because it felt endlessly wrong. I had a part time job teaching at an adult education center in a nearby town and was otherwise utterly lost. Depressed and lonely, hating life, believing that I was worth more dead than alive, suicide was rolling around in the back of my head. As it happened, I found solace in talking with my boss at the learning center. I could tell him anything and just be honest. AL was not judging, just listening.
I had seen a therapist for some time a few years earlier and she left my question unanswered when I asked her outright if I was crazy. For me, that answered the question. She didn’t understand me. In retrospect, I understand that I wanted her to say that not only was I not crazy, but that I could still have a good life full of adventures. There were only a small handful of people who I felt had not let me down or betrayed me, and the list was shrinking steadily. AL understood me. He came from a background of working with people who were stuck in trauma. That could mean brain injury or PTSD or any number of related issues that lock a person into a moment of their life that defines them, either consciously or not. I was locked. Unfortunately, I was locked in more ways than one.
AL and I talked about anything and everything. Reincarnation… Aliens… The Pyramids… Auras and energy… Wild theories that made me begin to think that maybe I wasn’t the only crazy one. When I really started to trust AL, I would tell him about some of my dreams, which were always strange and frequently scary. He would point out aspects of them and I could start to see how they were connected to my life and the emotions that were so tied up in knots inside of me.
One night I had a dream. I remember only a piece of it. I was standing in a place, but I couldn’t tell where it was. Darkness was all around me and there were voices in the smoky dim. Suddenly, I was aware of incredible pain in the palms of my hands. When I raised them to look, I had the Stigmata. Yes, I had been marked somehow with the nail wounds of Christ. They were not bleeding, though, they were burned. They were complete holes that were burned through my palms straight through between the bones of my hands. As I watched, wisps of smoke curled away from the wounds and began turning greenish with faces like ghosts. They were crying at me in silent sobs as if I was the one who ended their lives. Terrified and heartbroken, I shook awake with hot tears still on my face.
It was morning and I was still shaken and on the verge of tears. I went to work because there were no sick days. I worked or I didn’t get paid. I’ve always been the kind of person who radiates emotion. Controlling that radiation has never been a strong suit. AL could tell immediately that something had happened. In the quiet of the morning, he called me to his office and asked what was going on. When I told him, he thought about it for several moments and then asked me the question that I had not dared ask of myself.
“Are you going to kill yourself?”
The shock of his question broke whatever control I had left. The garbage that had been bubbling around in my psyche for years crashed into my skull and I broke down completely. I wanted the fairy tale. I wanted desperately to love and to be loved. I knew that where I was could not be all there was. There had to be more; there just had to be. I didn’t want think that the spirits that were escaping from the burning wounds in my hands were the dying dreams of my childhood, but that’s what they felt like. My composure was gone. Hope was gone. Even though I had not voiced it, AL seemed to understand that I wanted everything to be gone. I simply had nothing left.
When I broke, something broke free. I couldn’t deny what he asked me, though I had not been able to articulate it either. He would not let me leave before he heard the words “I am not going to harm myself.” In fact, he went further than that. He told me that I have an incredible potential for greatness. At 24 and with my history, I was hard pressed to understand that. I had been so low for so long that I didn’t really believe him. What I did believe, however, was that he had wisdom well beyond my years. Deep down, I still wanted to believe that I could be more. That spark was deeper than the depression had been able to seep. I just needed some help to find it.
AL took my hands in his, one at a time. He laid each hand, palm up in his and traced his fingers over the center of my palm, saying “heal…” At that moment, things inside me changed. AL went from being my boss to being my mentor and dear friend. There was someone in the world who wanted me to understand that I could still be everything I always dreamed about and more. I had to see that it wouldn’t be easy but it would be worth it. I had to learn to put one foot in front of the other even when I wasn’t sure that there was a foothold there. I had to know that a leap of faith is not foolishness. With a single word, AL had helped me take the first step on a path that was winding and scary and strange and beautiful. At the risk of sounding cliché, my life was never the same.
I returned to college that summer. The following year, my son and I went to Costa Rica for six weeks; a trip that freed my mind and soul far greater than any other experience I’d had in my life. The summer after that, I moved into my own apartment with my son, which was my first time living on my own. I finished my Bachelors degree. I put my foot down and insisted that I would not be abused any more, breaking off my relationship with my boyfriend of nine years. I slowly learned that a close friend was actually my future husband. I moved again, this time away from the town that had been my home since I was seven. Yes, those few years were incredibly eventful. They were sprinkled with the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of moving forward. They were, however, essential to the process that AL began when he tenderly told me to ‘heal’ from a wound that could not be seen but was felt through the core of my being.
The pain is still there, but so is the spark. The fear is still there, but the spark is brighter. I don’t even know if AL knows what that day meant to me. I’ve not mentioned it to him since. He does know, though, as does anyone who has known me for any length of time, that my life is far different than I expected it to be. I haven’t travelled like I’d hoped… Yet. There has not been an opportunity to take a flight in space, though I am able to see the results of unmanned telescopes and satellites that take my breath away and further still my imagination. I’ve not plunged the depths of the ocean and explored the deepest places of the Earth, but I’ve climbed a volcano and rafted down dangerous rivers. I’ve been to the jungle and fell in love with another land. I’ve not made it to the poles, but I’ve traversed a glacier and seen the magnificent forms of breaching whales and flying eagles.
My life has not been as I dreamed exactly, but that’s not a bad thing. I can think about the events that took me to where I was then and where I am now and see the path my life has taken to put me exactly where I was supposed to be. I have an amazing life. It’s not perfect and it’s not without pain or fear, but those things only amplify the beauty and love. In many ways, I have healed. I have forgiven. I have evolved. There are still places I dream of going and adventures I want to experience, but the opportunity to do those things is not gone. I am still moving forward. Was this the path AL saw for me? Who knows? Maybe I’ll ask him. After more than seventeen years, we are still friends. Whether he knows or even remembers that day doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he helped me find the spark instead of losing myself in the stigmata.