Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold,Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,So dawn goes down to day.
– Robert Frost “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
Nothing gold can stay
Dear Aurora, child of my dreams.
She of the broken heart, for all these many years. She who has waited for what once was.
I lived an idyllic life as her. The past can take the shape of something almost perfect. It is how we remember things being before life stripped us of our truest nature; before we became diluted with self-doubt and hatred. Before we realized that life does not function on the basis of fairness or compassion. In the time before we knew better, we believed. She was mine.
I have a room to myself and it is downstairs. My imagination is so good. I can convince myself the Headless Horseman is standing in my corner. I can make myself so scared I have to hide under the covers! I have a radio and my sister and I practice The Hustle until my dad comes down and says GO TO BED. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, my mom lets me watch Get Smart and we’re the only ones awake because I am the best and I am the oldest! I have an imaginary horse named Dawn Star and her stable is where the trash cans go. I move the trash cans to make room for her. When my dad gets home from work he can’t drive in because of the trash cans. He tries to convince me that Dawn Star isn’t real. Well if she’s not real, how did I get to school this morning?! Finally, he says, ok Kayla, and I love him for not ruining this for me because I am the best! My sister and I take roller skating lessons and I am the best skater! I am the best swimmer too! There is nothing I cant do. I get to be Princess Leia but my sisters have to be Princess Leia’s cousins. We wait in line for 3 hours to see Star Wars and it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Superman too! I want to be Lois Lane and have Superman fall in love with me.
I don’t blame Aurora for staying behind. For not wanting to give this up. What a wonderful life I‘ve had. What a wonderful life I have, but something was always missing inside me. It was her.
We moved from Denver to Kansas City on the first day of my 4th-grade. I don’t remember the actual move. I don’t know if I was excited or sad. I have no memories of seeing our house empty or the drive that carried us away. I never noticed that Aurora hadn’t come with us. Perhaps she was too busy playing and didn’t get to the car on time. Or perhaps she got tired of waiting and skipped around to the back yard. Unaware she had now become a ghost in an empty house, she sat and waited. What I do know is when we reached Kansas City she was nowhere to be found.
Things changed for me, very suddenly. It wasn’t the way it had been. I wasn’t the way I had been. Aurora was my heart, my fire, and confidence. She was the child of steel who saw the world as a kind and fair place. It was her who believed I was capable of anything.
Without her, these things drained from me. It took me too long to make friends. I was overcome with shyness, my eyes always downcast. My dresses were suddenly too short for my legs. My body became gangly and uncontrolled. Without her, I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t spell. I was bad at math. I was no longer fast or daring. My classmates had grown up together, their friendships established. It wasn’t that they were unkind to me, they just didn’t see me. I was a ghost of myself. At this young age of 10, I would begin to internalize the beliefs that would later harm me. I’m nothing special, everyone knows it. It’s no wonder nobody wants to be friends with me. You are average. Insignificant and unseen.
I do not play at recess. I climb the tallest playground equipment and squint my eyes as hard as I can, hoping to see the Denver mountains and the place where I belonged. I try to bargain with my father – if we must live in Kansas – might I interest you in Kanorado? I hear it is quite lovely this time of year. In a childs mind, being able to cross the border would restore my strength and make everything better.
My dad traveled for his new job. As an adult, I can appreciate how difficult this time must have been for my father. My dad could do everything perfectly. Fireworks displays, drive-in movies in our pajamas, playing family games in the back yard. He was the best at Hide and Seek. We could never find him. When we took vacations he made a big bed for us in the back of the station wagon. (This was before everyone in a seatbelt.) We would read, sleep and listen to Star Wars tapes as we crossed the country. He was the best storyteller. Christmas mornings were always perfection with a fire in the fireplace and soft music playing. These things were so important to him. All done out of love and wanting to be that father for us. How it must have hurt him to suddenly be away, returning only on weekends to a house that was growing ever more chaotic. “Bandwidth” is what I call it now – the sum total of your available energy. Each one of us has a finite amount of it. Most of us could be pickier about how its used. When you are the breadwinner, though, when you have a family to feed and clothe, much of this choice is taken away from you. Supporting a family takes what it takes. My dad and what he needed came in last. He got for himself whatever remained after work, church, and our family. It was far too little and yet he pushed on.
This change in our family, my father being away, intersected with my sudden loss of belief in my abilities. Had we stayed in Denver, it’s likely that much of this probably would have happened anyway. I would have grown older, I would have left Elementary School. I would have begun the difficult journey each child takes into the truth about life, regardless of where we lived. In my case, though, the move had snapped a piece of my life off cleanly. It happened all at once instead of gradually. Everything felt unfamiliar to me. How I fit into things, what my abilities were, what was my place was in our new family dynamic. How to manage my suddenly cumbersome body.
I reached my adult height and weight years ahead of my peers. As an adult, I am very average-sized. During this time, though, I was ridiculously proportioned. I was an uncoordinated and awkward giant, ordering women’s swimsuits from the JCPenny’s Catalog. I hated all of it. I lived in as much denial as I could. Refusing to look at myself, mostly. I would not validate the reality of my body. For many young ladies, getting your first bra is a big deal. For me, it was a hill to die on. I would not. I would not. Don’t talk to me about it. Don’t mention it to me. I have no idea what you are talking about. Never, never, never. This put my mother, particularly, in a very difficult situation. You cannot have your child, who now needs a bra, running around ignoring this entirely. It was an obvious problem that I refused to acknowledge. Shed no tears for me, I later became Her Royal Bra Highness, First of Her Name – but I didn’t grow into my body until my mid 20’s. Regardless of where I ended up, it started as a trauma for me. I was clutching the last few scraps of the quilt of my childhood and I did not want to let them go.
I made a group of friends and they all went to Quest twice a week, which was located in a special building outside. Quest is for gifted students and my teacher loved gifted students. If anyone made it into Quest she would announce it to the class with a big, happy smile on her face. I wanted to be in Quest. I wanted to be in Quest so much it kept me awake at night. I want to be gifted. I wanted it announced to the class. I petitioned my teacher for this and was granted an interview with the school counselor for an aptitude test. The test was verbal and I was subjected to his note-taking between each question. I returned to my classroom and waited. At long last the teacher walked back in, looking at nobody. We started math without an announcement. I then see my mother standing at the doorway, beckoning me outside. We walk to the car where she privately tells me that I was not been accepted to Quest. She says she knows how much this meant to me and that it is ok to cry. I do. My teacher says nothing to me about it, ever, One more scrap of the quilt is taken from me. In my academic future, I would only take interest in my English classes. Even then, I would not get high grades but was at least able to feel something from them. I would put no true effort into my education until I was 24 years old, returning to college as a non-traditional student taking night classes. School was something I had to do, nothing more. When I finally did find the desire to learn I was a straight-A student, which showed me that I’d had the power all along, and had only lacked the confidence.
Bulimia found me at age 14, by way of an article in Seventeen Magazine. The article was an informative one, tips on how to spot an eating disorder in your friends. Later this would serve as a guidebook on how to go about undetected. I’d had body issues since our move. Not only had I no love for my body, I hated it. It hadn’t just failed me – it was insidious. Out to get me. More than any person in my life, my body had betrayed me the most.
Aurora had been gone from me for so long that I rarely thought of her. My separation from her, however, was a constant ache in the middle of my chest. I longed for the time in my life when everything had felt right. For a time when my body wasn’t a threat to me. My Judas. Bulimia offered me a solution to my self-hatred. More than anything, I desired to shrink back into the oblivion of childhood. The more obsessed I became with my weight the less bandwidth I had for the rest of my life. So it worked out. Numbers on my scale became the promised land. They gave me something to work on. They gave me something to push towards and look forward to. Inevitably I would reach a number, only to find it had changed nothing at all. I would pick another number. Another and another, pushing ever forward in my quest to become a child again.
I was a mess of tangled and complex emotions. I was paralyzed by my fear of disappointing others or having someone angry with me. I tried so hard to be liked. I tried so hard to be good. No demand on me was too much. While many of us struggle with the disease to please, those who fall prey to an eating disorder possess it un abundance. Marked by obsessiveness, perfectionism, and being self-critical. Shyness, self-doubt, worry, and pessimism. Finding it unbearable to deliver bad news to others that will disappoint or harm. All of these things in me were toxically pronounced. If I had plans but someone called me to babysit, I would cancel my plans. Not because I wanted to babysit but because I couldn’t let others down. I was wholly unable to prioritize myself. If I was asked to take on extra responsibilities or have my hours changed, or was assigned some duty at church, the answer was always yes. Far more concerned with the way I appeared to others than what brought me joy, I drew deeper into my dark center. My bulimia escalated as it became my sole coping mechanism. I was a big, bold target for those who would use me. I had a friend who, very regularly, would ask me to do something then announce we were stopping by her boyfriends house where I would sit for hours alone on the couch. She needed me to be her alibi. She never intended to do anything with me. She just needed me along. I never said a word. Although I was angry I would say it was ok. Don’t worry about it. I would find a way to justify it and make it my fault.
I had dozens of eyes on me. Adults who seemed to delight in running to my parents for my most minor of my infractions. I’d made light of a question in Sunday School. I’d been found outside talking with my friend when we should have been in class. Someone saw me roll the waistband of my skirt, bringing it a few inches above my knees. Someone heard me use a swear word. Someone approached my mother, asking for forgiveness for the bad thoughts she had towards our family when I pulled out too close in front of her, driving our family van to church. Yeah, I see what you did there. Make your tattling sound like a pious request for forgiveness. It seemed that no action of mine went unnoticed. My bedroom became the only place I felt safe. It was impossible. It was wholly impossible to do everything right for everyone. All I did was disappoint those around me. I was full of rocks and sand inside. The words I couldn’t say, the anger I couldn’t show, the constant feeling of failure. The burden only became heavier. I succumbed to depression from internalizing all of this. I was the oldest child, the preacher’s daughter, the good influence, the example. It was laughable. I yearned for the freedom to be myself but had no skills to do this. I wanted more than anything to be real but I was not. I hid inside my compliant, candy shell for as long as I could. The purging relieved me of feeling it. It pushed everything out of me, for a moment. A storm surge, full of debris, then there was peace. It was the only power I had. And the cycle would begin again.
Once a day. Twice a day. After every meal. It escalates because my body is starving. Because I read articles about people who are worse than I am, I can justify it all. My arms and legs fall asleep. I blackout at work. Four times a day. Five times a day. I am scared that I have AIDS. I have a bleeding disorder and it is the 1980’s. I’ve already had more blood transfusions than I can count in my life. I fear being the next Ryan White. I take every other Friday off school and all I do is sleep. I drink a bottle of Ipecac and it does nothing to me. Six times a day, my life is slipping away from me but I am unable to stop. My fingers no longer induce a gag reflex. My throat has become desensitized and I resort to using Q-tips. My throat grabs a Q-tip and swallows it. And this is the end. It has to be – because I am sure that I am dying. In the span of four years, I have completely lost myself. The purging serves no purpose at this point. There is no relief. It controls consumes me. I have reached every magic number on my scale and yet nothing had changed at all.
Many of us live around an empty space in the middle of us. We find things that help us ignore it, distract from it, numb it, keep us too busy to think about it – and yet steadfast it remains. In the stillness, I could feel it. I imagined it as deep spring inside of me, weeping a slow sadness. The source of which has evaded me until just recently. It was her. It was always her. Aurora.
I’ve experienced three periods of rebirth in my life. I’ve always been drawn to Renaissance art. (The word renaissance literally means rebirth in French.) In Renaissance art, we see a sudden shock of color after being muted for so long. We see a tremendous jump in knowledge and ingenuity. There are major advances in science. We see suffering depicted in shockingly beautiful ways. These depictions would not be possible without artists being able to draw on their own pain. The suffering we encounter is not meaningless in the world. It is the great connection we have to other human beings.
Being hospitalized for my bulimia began the period of my first rebirth. Hope felt like a sunbeam, traveling through the murkiest of waters to reach me. In the hospital, I was one of the few teenagers there by choice. I had not been found out, I’d had to ask to be there. I knew that I had reached the end. I could not continue this way. After setting it into motion by meeting with the school counselor, I was unable to even return to class. I felt that if I were to start screaming I would never be able to stop. I had become lost inside the dark place I found myself in.
In the hospital, my only job was figuring myself out and listening to the life experiences of others. It was the real thing. I bonded with others through our shared experiences. In a few weeks’ time, I started to feel myself glow. Healing came to me. I was able to grasp the beauty of my imperfections. The day I was discharged, I retrieved the scale from my bathroom and put it out with the trash. It would be 10 years before I weighed myself again, trusting my body to guide me. I remember seeing the scale, sitting there with its peeling adhesive, no longer able to measuring my worth as a person.
A few months later I graduated from High School and went away to college. There I began a degree in Psychology and hoped to become a therapist that specialized in eating disorders. I wanted to be the light for others that had reached me in my darkness. This period of rebirth was filled with the confidence, freedom, and excitement of young love. I had a wonderful time my first year there. It was not meant to last – and it didn’t- for there was still so much for me to learn. For a brief and shining moment, though, I touched Aurora. She filled my heart and I believed.
My second renaissance period came seven years after the first. It started after a period of great loss, as these things often do. I have learned a great deal about trauma these past few years. How trauma forces us to behave in certain ways and shapes the way we see things. We do the best we can to manage our reactions to them. It is a terrible thing when they are re-opened on us. We react with much more intensity than the situation warrants and this is what had happened here. I’d had an uncontrollable trauma response followed by a depressive episode that crushed me entirely. It was such that I had to leave college and return home. I am amazed, now, that I endured to the end of that semester. I barely passed. I wish I had left months earlier. I wish I had packed my things and walked away without a goodbye. I didn’t want to give up, though. On him, the man I had planned to marry. On us. Leaving was the last thing I wanted yet I had no choice. I cared nothing for my life, at the end. My decisions were not made out of self-preservation. They were made in a far more feral way. A wounded animal trying to escape pain.
I have never moved with any grace at all. I kick and scream. Each time I swear I will never be happy again. Each place I’ve lived has contained a unique spirit to which I become beguiled. It causes me unbearable pain to see a home emptied. The remnants of all that we were while we were there packed in so many boxes and stacked into and trucks. I have sobbed uncontrollably on the floors of these empty rooms. I have relied on the kindness of others to do final cleanings and walk-throughs for me, sparing me the sharpest point of my heartache.
Although you would never know it, I have a wanderer’s heart. I have never imagined myself staying in one place for my entire life. In fact, I feel sorry for those who do. It’s never been a desire of mine. I have never moved into any place thinking it was my forever home. These two sides of myself remained locked in battle. And, perhaps, the move I made at 10 has caused my pain in first place. A deep fear that everything will change, that everything good within me will be erased, that crucial parts of me will be lost along the way, paralyzing me and making it far more than I can handle. Perhaps every move has been just this, a trauma response.
My family moved back to Denver shortly after I came home from college to escape the situation that had caused me so much pain. I felt certain the heartbreak would kill me and had just barely gotten my feet under me when the move took place. I could not go. I would not. It was as if I had survived a shipwreck, and been stranded at sea, having just reached the place where I saw sand under my toes. Then being told to turn around and swim back. I knew I would not make it a second time.
This is how I came to find myself in an unfurnished one-bedroom apartment of my own for a year. The past shapes my memory. I take great pride in having done this. Not only was I on my own, but I started with very little. In fact, when I moved in I had a handed-down water bed and my clothing. Nothing more. I picture myself, sitting in the empty living room with a big smile on my face. Look what I’ve done! I am in charge of me! It wasn’t the truth, though. The truth is that I hated that year. I was so lonely. I’d grown up in a family of 10. I’d had 5 roommates at college. And now I was alone.
I made many mistakes that first year, most of them financial. Knowing no better, a 22-year-old flying solo is easy to take advantage of making large purchases. Apartment management doesn’t find it cute or funny when you can’t be bothered to pay your rent on time. Leases are real, not the fluid comings and goings of college life. I misjudged the people around me, believing they had my best interests at heart. I lost an entire friend group in the space of one weekend. I fell in love with the wrong guy. Again. I still cried, moving out of that stupid apartment. It had been a rough and raw year. I learned I could count on myself, though. It helped to build my confidence at a crucial time in my life. And, I was never truly alone. I felt alone, but I wasn’t. I had the love of my family, and a large net to catch me. It was only within the physical distance I learned self-reliance.
After that first year, I began to glow, again. I was able to get much farther than I had the first time. I had a roommate that I got along very well with. I came and went on my own schedule. I had returned to college as a night student. I made new and better friends. I was 25 and happy being single. I had all I needed and believed in myself. I loved Kansas City. On the weekends I would go to the art museum (this would later be the place my husband proposed to me.) I would walk downtown. I would purchase tickets to plays and musicals and comedy shows and went alone. The joy I felt inside was Aurora, again. Although I did not fully have her back with me, during these times the veil between us was thin and it was exactly what my soul had cried out for in the dark times. It was the closest I’d come to retrieving her.
Idyllic times aren’t meant to last and none of us knows what lies ahead. The rebirths I can handle – believe me. Rebirths are better than any drug. My issue all along has been my disbelief that rebirth is coming. That, instead, I will follow this slope down to my death. The magic of losing what you hold dear can only be appreciated in retrospect. It is impossible to recognize for what it is at the time. We lose our way. We lose people we love. Our trust can be betrayed. Our health or financial situations can turns on a dime. Our children find themselves in crisis. Decisions that felt so right when we made them end up not being right at all. We give too much, leaving ourselves chronically running on fumes, and desperately unhappy. No life can be free of these things. Although we do our best to avoid them, we are helpless in their timing.
What I tell you three times is true.
There are moments in life where you meet yourself and one of these happens when your children leave home. Only then will you know what remains. What is between you and this person you married, so long ago? Did you mistake your children’s accomplishments for your own? Your worth, did it come from a false place? Your clean and organized house? Your contributions to the community? How about that number on the scale, how much you exercised, how little you ate? Did you spend the precious years of your life worrying about what others thought of you? Did you push and push to please an unpleasable God, one who delighted in your suffering? Were you the picture of a woman who has her shit together while you knew you were anything but? Just how much did you ignore yourself and your marriage in your false quest for worth? I have done all these things and more.
I can make you a long list of the things that don’t work to fill the emptiness inside of you. I can make you a list of what does. It is you. Your Aurora. The young part of you that believed. Before you were watered down. Before you began your litany of negative mantras. The little girl who believed she could do anything, who slipped out of the car unnoticed and went to play.
My third rebirth came like the others, on the heels of a period of great loss. I’ve become accustomed to my strange therapy practices. EMDR. Hypnosis. Guided Visualization. Trauma reprocessing. I can appreciate how they sound to others. I can only attempt to explain them. My therapy has taken an almost literal life of it’s own and the parts of me continue to grow. Aurora, Monarch, Rebel, Annabelle Lee, Scarlet Carlisle, Lilith, Alice, Evangeline, Scarlet Darker, Willow. I write their stories. My memories alter to include them without skewing what actually happened. Parts of me can go back to help me, even rescue me, at various points. I have held me, I have comforted me, I have whispered the truth in my ear. It is healing to do so. It’s become an exercise in of my imagination. I can call on them to help me now. Although it is strange, it has healed me. In the end, it’s all that matters.
I saw Aurora in a vision, quite early on. She was one of the first parts I saw in this journey of a thousand miles to find myself again. Standing on the empty playground, of my Elementary School holding hands with Scarlet Darker (the protector.) The two of them together, silently, with the Colorado mountains behind them.
I went back for her. I found her sitting in our empty living room. We sat together and I showed her a movie of my life, all that had happened since we were separated. And you know what, Aurora? There is heartache, pain, and sorrow in this movie. It has a happy ending, though. From the beginning, you had all the strength you needed, dear girl. We are loved by so many. Your comeback has always been bigger than your setback. Every time. You will have the Florida sun and pink flamingos. You will wish your children into being. Your greatest desire for them, that they are strong and unbowed, will come true. Your heart will be broken, too many times, but you will find the love you seek. Being loved by him will be worth it all. You will overcome, my Aurora. You will overcome because you were born strong. Now that you are back with me, absolutely everything is possible.
I can paint! I’m so brave about painting and so good at it! I’ve painted every color of the rainbow in the places I’ve lived. Every room is as vivid as I am. I can dance. I love to dance! I dance every day. I dance by myself, I dance in crowds, I dance online. I’m learning to play the saxophone because I can do anything! I’ve had 86 butterflies this year and it’s only April! I have two bins of dress-up clothes and a whole box of crowns. My husband says – what did you do now – when the Amazon man comes and I love him for not ruining this for me because I am the best! I have a tiki hut he built for me and I love to sit in it. It’s my magic place! I take a lot of pictures. Under the water pictures, silly pictures, serious pictures. I love to plant things too! Sometimes I can’t stop myself and plant all the things! I grow pineapples and bananas. Ugh, I hate bananas but they are so adorable. I make friends everywhere I go. I have a husband that loves me and I want him to be the most loved person on the planet because I am the best at loving! I can act AND roller skate. I know I can learn to do anything if I try hard enough. I like making people laugh and I tell funny stories. I read scary books too! I love those. I have my own library card and the library is one of my favorite places to be. When I can’t sleep I can watch anything I want or do anything I want except play the saxophone because that would be rude in the middle of the night. Tomorrow I get to see my mom and dad on the computer. They live far away but I get to see them every week. I have two children and they can be whoever they want because being whoever you want is the best thing ever. I love myself and don’t wish I was anyone else because I am the best and I CAN DO ANYTHING!
