Belonging

For the longest time, I wanted to belong.

As a little kid, I wanted to be picked for the kickball team. 

I wanted my brother David to be able to speak.

I wanted friends who were allowed to come over to my house.

I wanted to understand why people weren't terrified of crowds.

How could they attend a concert and not feel crushed?

I wanted to share something deeply personal and not feel like it would be cast aside.

I wanted to belong and to be part of something.

By the time puberty took over, I was resigned to not-belonging. 

I lied and embraced being outside whatever group I wanted to belong to.

Building a wall of lies that became thick enough to offer some protection.

Too thick too soon, and I didn't hear anyone knocking on the door.

Asking to be let in. Asking to come inside... to belong... with me.

Through college, I fell from one awkward ladder to the ground, over and over.

Eventually, climbing the ladder was abandoned. The view couldn't be that good anyway.

One afternoon in Utah, I asked the mountain how much it weighed.

In hindsight, that was insensitive of me.

Part of me wanted to know. Did it feel overwhelmed by the pressure?

Did it feel like it wasn't going anywhere?

The divorce took that feeling of belonging and shoved it back down my throat.

Tears and vomiting couldn't clear it away.

With my kid on my back, walking through the zoo, talking to the birds,

I realized I belonged to this kid... my kid. 

I didnt own them. They owned me. I belonged to them as much as the air I breathed.

As a young parent, I copied my parents and ruined a great chunk of my kid's life. 

I tried all the things my dad said to do. They were wrong. Sometimes I doubled down, believing if I just added more, more something, more loudness, that it would work. It didnt.

It took nearly dying for me to understand that I belonged.

Nancy told me I belonged. She told me she wasn't willing to leave the ICU without me. 

She told me through tears that she asked me to come back from wherever I was...

for her, for Leto... because I belonged.

It's hard to understand now, but in that moment, I completely failed to understand. 

Years passed before I learned to listen to the frogs in the pond when they told me I belonged.

It was conditional at first. I had to bring the tunes, then I was welcome.

Last night, the hummingbird came and spoke soft words to me.

Something about always and forever. Come closer. Listen. There.

How can something so tiny, tear down the walls that had buttressed my life?

With rubble around my heart, it jumped from flower to flower, stopping to look at me.

Probably to make sure I was paying attention. Then it stuck its tongue out, flicked it around its beak, and darted away.

In the instant that the belonging started to fly away, the hummingbird zipped right back.

This time, alighting on the fence. Looking at me as though I was supposed to pick the conversation up where we had left it. 

Glancing at me, away, back to me. 

I laughed so hard I feared it would fly away. 

Instead it came closer, hopping onto the crocosmia. I wasn't forgotten

I wasn't to be avoided. I belonged.