BEAUTY STEMS FROM STRUGGLE

I lay on the dirty blond grains of a warped wood floor in the corner of my bedroom underneath the sunlight. It’s long past the times where I’ve been concerned with humiliating myself by screaming out to an empty audience for a life vest. Having awakened buried alive by my own destruction, I stutter an S.O.S. of “unacceptable” needs into the phone. “Come get them! I can’t do it! I can’t do it any more without harming them! I can’t take care of the children!” All internal conflict over my unthinkable request had been clipped in the resignation that this earnest plea was the only option before spontaneous eruption, defiling my three young boy’s innocent eyes and minds.

Today, for what seemed like the first time, like a rescue boat in the final hours of a perfect storm, their father detours from the consumption of his busy life and comes willingly and quickly. He brings his girlfriend. The image of two happy, fit adults in yoga clothes no longer mocks me in my incompetence but suggests that he’s finally heard my harrowing screams.

Fearful and concerned children lead him to my room where I lay in tear drenched bed sheets. He looked at me like he always seemed to look at me since I had his children…from a safe distance and with the bewilderment of not knowing what to do. It’s as if I am an injured animal that will bite or lurch at any given moment.

I need him to come closer, to sit by my side, and give me some of his precious time; to say “I’m sorry for running away.”

“Stop being afraid of me.” I wish I had the courage to say, “I’ve felt tossed aside and now I’ve lost my mind, and fear I’ll kill instead of play.

The words remain unspoken, trapped in my throat. So he stands, paralyzed, unable to make me feel safe, understood, or valued…but alas, he has finally come to get the kids.

Its hours past the time of the children’s rescue and the quiet of an empty house impregnates me with the sound of my deepened breath. Abandoned kid items trail through the maze of rooms. They have been left behind in an early morning evacuation; superheroes' and kings’ costumes, and wet paint brushes sit still soaking into the sofa.
I don’t know how or where to start. Crystallizing a career, scrubbing the strawberry stains off the carpet, or confronting why I am unable to deal with anything at all...especially my children.

I sloth by a pile of magazines in the corner. Pages of airbrushed, half starved models and actresses in beautiful designer dresses and tiny swimsuits taunt me. Headings and bold print gleefully inform me as to how happy, how successful, and how special they are…how unhappy, unsuccessful and not special, I am.

I am confused. The same magazines’ that hold our “modern day heroines” demanding that I should strive to be something different, better, and more productive are also smeared with condemnations of “ Look who’s gotten too thin! Cellulite Celebrities! Caught cheating! Caught eating! Caught breathing and drinking gasoline again!” One week American’s “It girl” is gleaming and the next she’s in drug rehab

I need a more realistic blueprint, a role model, or a strong minded woman who is willing to pass down the recipe as to how I can be everything that is being demanded of me…from my family, TV, the internet, but mostly…myself.

“That’s it!” I declare. The magazines have to go. I spastically sling sacks of old dismembered dragons, dinosaurs, dart guns, miss-matched mini superheroes and hundreds of dollars of magazines into the trash cans out front of the house.

A Newfound intent and focus in my footsteps, I skip over the sidewalk cracks. At the expense of stepping in muck and stubbing my right toe, my eyes become diverted from the potholes to my neighbor’s dirt strip of land separating her house from mine. The long patch of rock infested, abandoned, dirt is mysteriously exploding with blossoming wild daisies. Dismissing my throbbing toe, I am drawn to these fearless adventurers who are valiantly exposing their optimistic faces. “How is it possible,” I ask myself, “that something so beautiful can blossom in such a barren and unprotected place?”

I b-line towards them, bend down, and pick a handful to arrange in a jam jar vase. Inside, I place the daisies in my bedroom. They unite in the streamline of the late afternoon sunbeams and give off the aroma of summer and my youth

The desk and the daisies seem to conspire, whispering my name. I pick up the awaiting black ballpoint pen and sit on the chair, taking a moment to glance at the petals before cracking open my childhood Pandora’s box with a writer’s pen. I scribble the first line, “beauty stems from struggle.”

-Shelli Lether