Day 27: Perhaps all the dragons are just princesses

I came, I saw, I did the damn thing. After a decade away, and not thinking I'd ever return, I revisited my childhood hometown yestereday.

One of my favorite childhood books is There’s a Nightmare in my Closet by Mercer Mayer. SPOILER ALERT! This may not come as too much of a surprise to those who haven’t read it, but in the book, there’s a nightmare, or rather a monster, in a kid’s closet. And with that little tease, may I direct you to take 90 seconds out of your day to listen to it below and avoid the following spoilers.

Our monster, or rather nightmare, starts crying after the child shoots it with a toy gun. When the monster won’t stop crying, the child befriends it, brings it to bed, and tucks it in. The story ends with the child and monster seeming to drift off to sleep together in bed.

This story feels very reminiscent of my childhood. I had these louvered wood bi-fold closet doors in my bedroom, and occasionally, once I’d crawled into bed, the doors would all of a sudden crack open, startling me. At that time, we didn’t have any pets, and my sisters were already out of the house, so my imagination went wild at what could have caused it.

Fittingly, Where the Wild Things Are is another favorite of mine. These books, and many others, tell these imaginative stories about children befriending their fears. We often find our child protagonist showing courage, acting bravely, befriending the monsters, and conquering their greatest fears. If confronting and conquering our fears and insecurities only happened this smoothly in real life.

Fear, insecurities, anxieties, stress, trauma, and pain I definitely didn’t befriend as a child and adolescent. Heck, I didn’t even confront it. My way of dealing with it was not dealing with it at all, as if it didn’t even exist. Out of sight, out of mind. I buried that shit deep. But what our mind may try to forget, our body remembers.

I visited my hometown of Graham, North Carolina yesterday for the first time in a decade. I really didn’t know what to expect, and didn’t necessary plan on going with any particular outcome in mind. It’s something that I felt like I needed to do, especially considering this 12 months of deep soul work I’ve been doing. It felt like this might bring some epiphanies and closure, especially since experiences and recalled memories from my childhood have served as such catalysts for my growth and healing this last year.

If I’m really being honest, I thought that this trip would trigger some traumatic memories that I hadn’t recalled in years, or that I’d have this huge emotional release when seeing my mom’s headstone, or driving by my childhood home. For that reason, I was in part nervous and anxious for the trip. Things like therapy, writing, and breathwork have been game changers in how they’ve helped recall memories and release unprocessed trauma. So I expected this to have a similar effect.

NOPE. There was none of that. I didn’t even cry. AND THAT IS SAYING SOMETHING. But here’s what did happen.

I was flooded with joyful memories, many of which I haven’t recalled in years. Walking into the gym, where I spent hours playing basketball, brought back vivid memories, and even vivid memories of conversations in that gym with teammates and coaches. An employee, who was around the same age as me, shared stories of growing up playing basketball there like I did, though it doesn’t seem like we crossed paths when I was young.

Later in the day, I recalled the chocolate-dipped ice cream cone I’d get from Jim’s, and the lollipop the bankers would pass through the vacuum tube system at Wachovia when my mom deposited checks. As I drove through my neighborhood, I recalled the huge crush I had in high school on a girl in my neighborhood (not the one who my first kiss was with), but which I’d forgotten about.

While taking photos of Graham Cinema, I recalled the times as a kid when I'd call the theater so that I could listen to Tim Bob's jokeline, remembering how much joy that brought me. At my elementary school, I drove through the old car pick-up line and I thought about those afternoons I’d stand on the curb, eagerly looking for my mom’s baby blue Mercury Cougar to pull up and pick me up. I ended at South Graham Park, where I swung on the swings for a few minutes, and recollected memories of playing on the playground and shooting hoops there while my mom walked laps around the gravel track. It’s where I cut my basketball teeth.

While I didn’t need anymore evidence that when we numb the dark, we numb the light, yesterday was like a bright neon Las Vegas sign reading, “Here’s your sign.” By burying, avoiding, and suppressing so much of the bad memories of my childhood and teenage years, I hadn’t honored as much of the joy, beauty, and connection of it.

If I were to distill all of my work this last year down to one quote, it’s this quote from one of my favorite writers and poets, Rilke:

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” ―Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

That is my work. That’s why I’ve written hundreds of pages in my notebooks, it’s why I’ve been going to an Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist, it’s in part why I do breathwork, and it’s why I went back to Graham. All of those parts of myself that I denied, suppressed, shut out, and buried, they belong. What a year of reclamation. What a gift.