A Song

If you're ever looking for a really good place to cry where no one will disturb you, stand in the middle of a graveyard on a hill overlooking the city of St. John's on a windy February night. And by middle I do mean middle - smack dab, as my Southern upbringing would have me say - on that point in the path where the top of the hill (where you're headed) and the bottom of the hill (where you've come from) are equidistant, and the graves roll back into the dark on either side, still and gleaming.

It's really just the act of stopping. You've been holding it all in, forcing yourself through the day, trying not to understand why this weight has settled in the middle of your chest and why you're holding your breath in a choke at the back of your throat. You stop for a minute as you walk up the hill and turn to look at the city, and it's just that act of pausing, of breaking stride - you breathe in the wind and the night and the lights of the town all around you, and the graves are wet, cold stone and the snow has melted into long white stripes on either side of the path, and you feel it let go and fall away and you

sob.

The lights look so pretty through the glimmer of your tears that you take your phone out and snap pictures, but of course your phone's cheap and the camera is lame and you just end up with something that looks like a smattering of yellow, orange, and white dots on a black rectangle. You could show it to someone, but they wouldn't be able to feel the wind tangling its ragged fingers through your hair. They wouldn't know what it's like to keep staring up and down the path, checking that no one else is coming, and the feeling of being hidden and yet so utterly, blessedly exposed.

You don't look pretty when you cry. Like in the movies, where the person (usually a woman) is blotting at her face with a tissue, laughingly lamenting, "I'm a mess," and all the while looking tragic and beautiful and like someone should sculpt a statue of her face including that one perfect tear rolling down her cheek. You do not cry like that. Your lips get puffy and your skin gets blotchy like you've broken out into a rash. And the wind keeps grabbing your hair and flinging it in front of your eyes, then away again.

I'm a mess, you think, and you really are.

It's okay, though. It's okay. It's good to be sad. It's a fine and wonderful thing to peel away all those layers, to be a raw nerve open to the endless dark. Because the thing about crying in the middle of a graveyard on a windy February night in Newfoundland is that it makes you feel things, and you haven't felt things for a really, really long time.

Blame the computer and the phone - all these screens you shove into your face every day. Blame the stress of the routine you've chosen for yourself. Blame genetics, and the melancholy temperament your father gave you along with his nose and jawline. Blame your own damn foolish self for all the mistakes you've made.

Blame away, but remember somewhere in the middle of all the rage and the regret to forgive. Forgive this broken world, and forgive the stranger yelling at you through the computer screen, and forgive your family. Forgive all the people who have the effrontery to care about you even though you keep holding them at arm's length. Forgive the darkness, and the rain that's begun lightly falling, and your bag that rests heavy on your back.

Forgive yourself.

You don't deserve it, but claim the grace of this moment. An unearned gift that makes you feel almost whole again.

Keep crying as you climb the hill, but now the tears are quiet. Your breathing is calming. Your footsteps are steady. Before you know it, you've reached the top.

Feel, feel. Look at those lights. What a glorious thing it is to be cracked open.

There's no music, but this feeling is a song.