When you feel for the first time

When we're in our early 20s, most people naturally try to find their place in the world. I, however, was trying to make sense of emotions. I was used to keeping people out, keeping people far and never. feeling. a. thing. This is just how it was growing up. Everyone had their own place in the house. We'd come home from church (which is where we were 6 days a week) and go to our mutual corners. There were never any real fights because we didn't talk out loud to one another unless absolutely necessary. I was used to living in emotional solitary confinement, that is, until I went off to college. 

For a lot of reasons I won't go into, emotion broke through the surface of my robotic existence around age 19, and it sent me into a tailspin. I remember walking across Baylor's campus, feeling the breeze against my bare shoulders, taking a deep breath and realizing, "This is what happiness feels like."

My 20s were rough, y'all. I wrote a lot of cryptic poetry that didn't even make sense to me. It just sort of barfed onto the page, and on occasion, I'd publish it. Thanks to Facebook, one of my poems from 2009 popped up on my news feed this week. I read it and was reacquainted with the very scared 24-year-old who was trying to bravely let love and feelings in. I'll share it with you here. I called it, "Beneath the canopied line."

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I met a man with dusty boots
Along a road of canopied trees
With honest eyes and a wrinkled grin
He made an offer to me

Now look here pretty girl, he said
This life has lots of tears
Take one step across this line
And they just might disappear

Forfeit the impending heartache and loss
Walking boldly can only bring more
Avoid the nervousness of chance
Live a life that is truly carefree

No more tears sounded too good to be true
And in fact the dark-sided catch
Was that along with hours of agony
My heart was now out of reach

Still I crossed the line defiantly
His scraggly teeth sure smiled
As I unthinkingly traded my soul
But in the absence of pain, I thought I needed to cry

The tear is weakness, he said with an angry kick
Stand tall and proud—you will weep no more!
One glance over my shoulder, and then I saw
Miles of tears that were saving me now

Let me go and make my peace, I said
In a sorrowful messiness
At least I know when love is lost
And I’ve encountered tenderness

With a drop upon my cheek
I sense immeasurable love for my child
The power of forgiveness, redemption
And strength to fight without my brave face on

Suddenly his boots were gone and I looked up in his eyes
He said, I cried once too after crossing that line
But no one ever said love would reach the dark
No one stood to touch my dry face

They couldn’t see that all along
I had wondered if it were true
If love would ever dwell near ugly things
And not just in that which was found

With a slow step backwards I left the barefoot man
On the other side of that dreaded line
One, two, three, and four
They began to dot my eyes

Love is worth what I feel right now
And what tomorrow might let you see
But if we feel nothing at all
Then how will we know when we’re free?

Don’t be afraid, kind sir
I think it’s worth it possibly
To know that tears are but one measure
Of how we lived and breathed our years.