THE GLASS CHILD
CHARLOTTE ERIKSSON

     The Leaving

Berlin,  2013

It’s the beating of my heart. 

  The way I lie awake, playing with shadows slowly climbing up my wall. The gentle moonlight slipping through my window and the sound of a lonely car somewhere far away, where I long to be too, I think. It’s the way I thought my restless wandering was over, that I’d found whatever I thought I had found, or wanted, or needed, and I started to collect my belongings. Build a home. Safe behind the comfort of these four walls and a closed door.

  Because as much as I tried or pretended or imagined myself as a part of all the people out there,

I was still the one locking the door every night.

Turning off the phone and blowing out the candles so no one knew I was home.

  ’cause I was never really well around the expectations of my personality

and I wanted to keep to myself.

  and because I haven’t been very impressed lately.

     By people,

        or places.

Or the way someone said he loved me and then slowly changed his mind.

I’m easily bored and it’s comfortable to let the safety of a place drag you in. In with its routines and circles, habits of being content. Of not wanting more. I might have fallen for its shelter a little while, because the winter was hard and cold and I was small and alone, but my heart never did. It had been screaming in silence every night, trying to get my attention. But I was too busy being sad, or bored, just unimpressed by it all. And some days I couldn’t tell the difference between the beating of a heart and the dying of one.

It all takes time and lessons and places, but I’m learning to listen to my restless heart, telling me to “go, go, go!”   

  because I was never meant to stay

       or settle.

I am running and singing and when it’s raining I’m the only one left on the open street, smiling with my eyes fixed on the sky because it’s cleansing me. I’m the one on the other side of the party, hearing laughter and the emptying of bottles while I peacefully make my way to the river, a lonely road, following the smell of the ocean. I’m the one waking up at 4am to witness the sunrise, where the sky touches the sea, and I hold my elbows, grasping tight to whatever I’ve made of myself. And then nights like these, sitting high on adrenaline in the dark by a tiny lake somewhere I don’t know where it is, for I was running and deliberately lost my way. The world far off and nothing but my breath and the very next step and it’s like hypnosis. The feeling of conquering my own aliveness with no task but to keep going, making every way the right away,

and that’s a metaphor for everything. 

There’s this thing they say, about living according to your nature, your natural ability to get by. When you place yourself in an environment with tasks and challenges that the universe didn’t intend for you to do or take on, everything aspires to take you away from there. You need an incredible amount of self-control to become good at something you’re not meant to do. It’s possible, but your subconscious will constantly be asking you to leave. It will consume you with a constant feeling of doubt, of negotiating with yourself because you want to do this, you tell yourself, but still you need to remind yourself of WHY every second of every day, because it doesn’t come naturally, doesn’t come easy, and you will always be working against the world, against your nature. No flow. No wind in the back. Uphill climb with stones on the road.

There are days when the loneliness eats me like cancer and I can’t find one single reason to keep running, keep searching, hustling, creating. But deep inside this mind of mine, I know. I always know. And there is no turning back. There is no alternative. This is the place I’ve been given and been made for, and someone’s got to fill it. So you need to ask yourself: will you keep resisting the place you’ve been given, ignore the signs and find excuses for everything, just to get by? Or will you surrender to fate, trust your story and take your place so proud and sure that no one will ever doubt that that place was made for you and you only, like it in fact was?

Answers are simple when you ask the right questions and I was not born to slow down. It’s me alone in front of whatever God or spirit there is and the nights I run far off track, in doubt or in fear, I must believe that it’s in the dark we learn how to feel. Because sometimes it’s not about seeing where the path will lead, but to feel it, and that’s where I will go. I can choose to ignore or avert, but there will be hurdles on my way, redirecting me back to my place, and I need to take responsibility for it. 

So I keep going. Keep doing. Keep being. This. I let it consume me, the same old feeling of wheeling alone on this road

     that turned into my life. My story.

The endless pursue of peacefulness and belonging. 

        A quest towards happiness with nothing but life itself,

and I am right back off track, where all things of meaning happen.

               As long as I am moving, I’m right on the path I made.