At the Gates

I have arrived again at a familiar gateway. Iron gates with their inevitable tall pickets, slick black, sharp tips piercing low clouds. It looks like the fabled entrance to heaven, or hell, or a mystical realm of whimsical gods. Behind the bars, diffuse light hovers like distant sunlight teasing clammy skin.

I have lived my life terrified of being discarded.

I have walked past this gateway many times, whistling in the dark. I pass by, compelled and distracted, getting on with doing what I will or must or want to. The road leads away, upward and onward.

Or so it seemed. But the road just led me around and around again, like Jules Verne circumnavigating life. Life, it turns out, is not a mountain, or a road trip, but one big sphere that leads us back to where we began.

I have seen bodies along the road, metaphorical and physical, strewn about the vagaries. As if we are hiking Everest and freeze forever wherever we land.

• Some are frozen as a bride and groom dancing down the aisle toward the pretense of happily ever after.
• Some are frozen beside an empty crib, a black hole into which they've collapsed, consumed by endless yearning.
• Some are frozen on the "career track" after veering to avoid uncertainty, stretched on the job rack until their shapes held still.
• Some congealed slowly into a middle-aged person full of queer, divergent adventure, wrapped in a thick layer of icy shame they hoped would keep them warm.
• Some are frozen like a deer in headlights, staring into startling blame, headlights powered by the fear, shame, and rage others project onto them. Eyes wide, they blink less and less, waiting for a passing acceptance that never comes.

I've formed my own molds. The angry young queer with hair under her arms, wearing comfortable shoes for the first time ever. The actor more afraid of talent than failure. The bookseller; the computer nerd. The profoundly curious female pretending to be dumb to get by. The systems thinker. The strong, independent female stomping over other people's tender feelings on her way ... somewhere.

I've not given a fuck; I've given too many fucks.

My worst enemy has always been: meaninglessness. Faced with this enemy, I wield my sword, move boldly into the tangled mess of ideas, dig deep, looking for answers, patterns, connections -- sense. Following Ariadne's thread into the next moment, and the next next.

Meanwhile, suns rise and moons set. Shame pushes from behind ... go faster, do more, get there, figure it out. Become sure, become safe, change and change and change (but never really change) until everything makes sense. Find a place to call home.

And yet, here I am. At the gates I have avoided. And wonder if, perhaps, that which I've been seeking has caused me to seek.

If you survive long enough to ask this question, you are lucky, because it will feel like a revelation. The gate was always there. It has been long since "discovered" by many other people, and familiar to you. Placing your hands on the cold metal, pausing, will feel like a blessing. And a terror, but you will have discovered that there is a good kind of fear. It takes a long time to discern the difference.

Nobody can tell you what life is, you must discover it for yourself.

I pause at the gates like Maria at the Abbey, and peer at what I believe is behind them. Doom, harm, unique tortures designed by a sadistic Taskmaster, impoverishment. My mother's voice floating in chronic whispers, like acid clouds. My father's delusions, his justifications, circling like hungry coyotes. The chants of kids at school repeating a nickname, the one that hangs around my neck like a stone albatross, long forgotten by every one of them.

If I linger too long, inner dark places inside me squeak open, the heavy door of a stone cell—with a single blanket and a tiny wooden desk, splintering on the surface. The weight of nowhere to go, nothing to do comes with it.

Then a voice suggesting a word, then a sentence, then an orchestra of paragraphs playing in my head. Soon, I have no choice, like nausea at midnight ... to move, to obey. My hands will express the rhythm, the forms, and meaning will emerge.

If I am discarded, I will die.

This is the moment when I hear a death knell, a deep, sonorous clock rumbling over the landscape like fallout, reminding me that time is fleeting, it's too late. It's always been too late. My throat sticks with lumpy tears, remembering feeling paralyzed in my childhood bed, unable to breathe or move my eyes, praying I don't have to get up to pee. "I know what time it is. I know what time it is," I say out loud.

And I move on.

Today, the sound is different. Not the beginning of a Tim Burton film, the theme from The Exorcist, or the sound of demons forging metal rods for torturing children.

More like a calling.

Today, the gate looks like a threshold. One that may require closing my eyes, holding my nose, and leaping across. I imagine others striding through these gates, all Brave Knight or Wicked Cool Sorcerer, unafraid of tripwires that evaporate you into a gray diffusion of light. Perhaps that wire doesn't exist if you know that this is your place. If you are sure.

Those people have been assholes to work with. Uncertainty is my Queen; I adore her. I don't know if I belong here.

I only know this: If you don't know that you don't know, don't go.

I put down my sword. I lay my hands on the cool metal and push open the gate, slowly. The fear of being discarded is exhausting. Constant avoidance surely requires more endurance than whatever lies beyond these gates. I choose to enter.

Because here I am. And do I really want to go all the way around again?