The Way This Feels

Part 1: Trust

Walking in the dark is a peculiar experience. Stepping repeatedly into a void with no idea where your foot is going. I take each step gingerly, as if any of them may send me hurtling off a cliff, it forces me to be in the moment. The adrenaline is somehow appealing after the evening I've had.

The power must be out, because usually when I make this trip in the dark it isn't so pitch black. I pause for a moment to make sure I can still hear. Maybe I've gone blind and deaf and it's really the middle of the afternoon. After Echo's rejection, time slowed down and sped up, everything shattered into a million pieces. Events from my life sprung up inside me, and simultaneously fell apart. Anything could be possible, and I wouldn't notice either way.

He likes to pick me up, Echo does...did. I don't know why I'm thinking about that now. He used to wrap his arms around me from behind and lift so my feet rose up off the ground in front of us where they would kick out and flail, and I would scream. Later, when he was stronger, he would attempt to throw me over his shoulder. But every time, no matter how he tried to lift me, it always sent me into a state of pure blind panic.

"No no no no!!" I'd scream with serious urgency. "Do not! I swear to God."

Because he's not exactly huge, and I'm not exactly small, I didn't trust physics and gravity to keep me safely aloft, I didn't think he could manage it. I was sure we would both fall painfully to the ground, and it would be embarrassing and all my fault for not being as small as I look. I didn't want to relinquish my control, not to him, not to anybody.

But more time passed, and I came to trust Echo a little more. But more importantly, I came to trust myself and the way I felt about him. The way he made me feel. So, one day, I just plain decided that I knew he wouldn't hurt me. That he had control over the situation, and if I just let go, we would be ok. I remember it being a very conscious decision.

And so, I let him hoist me into the air, and I let him carry me flung over his shoulder as he happily strode around. Every time he did it, I would have to squeeze my eyes shut, hold my breath, and tell myself forcefully, "It'll be fine. I trust him." And then before I knew it, I'd find myself back on the ground, looking back at him.

But I'm here now. Walking alone in the dark.

I feel shame, anger, humiliation, and grief.

I feel betrayed, and tricked, and as if my entire reality has just been crushed. I feel like screaming, but I walk as if it's any other night. I pretend it's my walk home from school, a path I've carved a hundred times, not the unsettling walk through absolute nothingness that it is.

Relinquishing my control over to Echo, is like relinquishing my control over to the darkness, or to my fear of it. There is nothing I can do about Echo lifting me into the air, and there is nothing I can do about the void, pressing in on my body, my arms, my back, my very skull. I just surrender, endure, and wait. Trust.

"You're lighter than you look." He'd tell me smartly when he'd deposited me safely on the ground again, and I would playfully hit him on the shoulder.

I let him, because I knew he'd never hurt me.