From the Writing Prompt - I Hid

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 

I have hidden my whole life.  Am the Mistress of Dark and Small Spaces, even tho' they frighten me.  Have lived inside my closet with the Panda, taller than I was.  My first opportunity to live with someone and he was perfect.  Enjoyed cuddling.  Spoke little.  Listened well and never gave up my position.   From that closet I graduated to the recesses of the deep coat closet, where I found no Narnia.  Instead hiding among the galoshes and mismatched mittens.  Praying for salvation.   When I eclosed from my coccoon of the closet, I had been transformed.  Was now invisible to all.  Could walk thru a crowded room and not stir a single glance.  This was my prayed for salvation at last, but it was also my curse.  My invisible butterfly wings broken, mutilated in the metamorphosis.   When I became adept at that, I began to hide from myself.  The next instar.  Drowned self-knowledge in gallons of JD.  Buried myself in the tangled sheets of nameless faceless lovers.  Then grew angry when they did not know me.  I can laugh at the Seussian absurdity of expecting anyone to know about something so well hidden.   It has taken many years to find that woman again.  To recover pieces of her from the tangled sheets, the vats of whiskey.  To search among the mittens for the ones that match.  And to reunite her with that small girl happily telling stories to the Panda in her closet.