HAUNTED
Yesterday, while sitting in my camp chair next to my tent, I finished the book "Tell It To The Trees", by Anita Rau Badami.
When I first saw the book on a thrift store shelf several months ago, the title immediately caught my attention. One of my favourite sayings, along with 'Smile and Wave', is 'Take it to the forest, because the forest can take it'. After all, many a time over the past four years, I took myself to the forest so that deep-rooted anguish could be released to the trees. Standing in the thrift store that day, I could not ignore the possible common thread between book title and personal motto.
It took me a while to get into the book. Not because of the writing, but because of the subject matter: It struck much too close to home. It is a story of a family, isolated in a small northern BC town, who are subjected to emotional and physical turmoil.
After the first couple of chapters were read, I put the book down and had great difficulty returning to it. While camping on my own this weekend, I finally finished it. A reader's guilt, perhaps, for not wanting to let a book go unfinished.
The ghosts that have haunted me these past several days because of this book have brought me to tears and emotional meltdown. Thank goodness I was on my own. Thoughts and theories and reactions that I (thought I had) laid to rest six months ago have burst back to the surface. And it is not so much my well being that is the focus of this unrest. It is the well being of the three other individuals in my life that has me in turmoil.
I know my own experiences, my own stories and my own scars inside and out. I know from what wounds I have healed. It is the unknown and uncertainty of scars belonging to others that weakens me right now.
Every indication exists that scars, if any exist at all, have successfully healed over. Three sets of feet stand firmly upon a strong foundation of emotional balance and realistic perspective. Level heads and confident personalities give a mother the proof that everything within is AOK. Yet a mother must always be on the lookout for cracks appearing in that foundation. I do not wish for cracks, but vigilance is required to ensure if cracks appear they do not tear the foundation apart.
It is Monday morning. After two nights of sleep in a tent, and hiking on my own in the alpine, I feel refreshed and exhausted at the same time. Refreshed from the mountains; exhausted from emotions.
I think perhaps I need to write a letter to the author, explaining, without malice, that one person's fiction can be another person's life.
A walk in the forest after work this evening will do me good.
Happy Monday, Everyone.
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