Timeline Review - The Notification of You

How We Are Hungry, a stunning short story collection by Dave Eggers.

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“On this Day…” Facebook shares the memory notifying me of the one-year anniversary.

The Dave Eggers’s short story on needing a new journal appears at the front of the feed, transporting me back to the day I realized your truth, and how the truth of your nature simultaneously liberated me into my light and catapulted me into my anguished, darkest night.

On that day, in a painful haze, I post the Eggers’s piece as defiance.

You shatter my world with a smirk, and the landing reveals an alternative route. The writings of the poets, the feelers, the sensitive seers are lighthouses in the storm, and I cling desperately to get on sturdy ground.

I touch down after a year. 

One year.  

I inhale.  

I survived. 

I exhale.  

I survived you.

You are the best warning I ever received.

You initiated me into the dark underbelly of the human psyche. You cleared my vision to finally perceive a complete portrait of humanity.

There are cruel people capable and pleased to inflict purposeful pain. It’s an ugly truth hiding in plain sight. Now my radar is razor-sharp, quick to detect the subtle signals that if noticed early can save a life.

I’m not bitter, depressed, discouraged by this knowledge, because this scar serves me well. This knowledge channels into a power emboldening me to be a fierce force of compassion and strength. 

In your well-played power games, you teach me about the vital significance of my own power. I reclaim it daily. And part of my reclamation is forgiving you, because you are wounded, wired to deceive, and hurt people hurt people. 

You excel in the creation of a captivating charisma expertly designed to disarm and establish a false ease in your victims, and entice empaths with your wit, your stories of pain, the underdog in a cleverly constructed mental game. 

Entranced, I step forward, much to my instinct’s chagrin, into your circle and exude the honeyed-encouragement I naturally do. My sweetness, though, you perceive as a weakness, and you suck me dry for your emotional supply. 

Now in the light of awareness, of piecing together all the oddities and intuitive hits, I see the hidden, simmering depth of your dislike, your well-concealed contempt, your resentment for me, because I am who I am, and I am everything you will never be.

I am all heart, all feeling, and am hard-wired for authenticity. You are a charade, and you charm the community with your perfected parade. 

I dance in the parade, get tipsy, but never too drunk on your brand of kool-aid. I sense a conspiracy and brew in confusion over the discrepancies noted between promised words and unfulfilled action.  

We sense everything. We just need to trust what we feel.

My higher self always knew the truth of you.

Initially, I am repelled and steer away. Then, like a moth, I float toward a blaze that takes sadistic delight in scorching my wings. In the burn, I finally feel my wings, realize I have wings, and in the threat of their destruction I gather all my strength to heal them so I can fly.

Fly I do.   

When the notification arises – the Dave Eggers quote appears in my timeline review – I am in a city of my dreams, preparing to write, breath expanding to welcome in a fresh chapter of my life. For a moment you appear, a quick vision, and when I see you I think that I’ve survived, and now I can thrive.