Enagua

Written Thursday. September 30th

I periodically print these off and give them to my therapist. Not completely sure why. It's not a requirement nor an expectation. Everything though, that happens with therapy is a choice. We all have to make choices everyday about everything. Most of these choices are automatic and decided without much contemplation. Perhaps my handing these in is my choice of full disclosure. No, that is not quite right. Security, safety is what I am choosing. For my mind, my children. While writing these are a risk, an opening into a world I want to bar off from everyone. It is also a glimpse of my stability or lack of. A glimpse of my ability to function, reason, and live. I must hold onto my ability to reason.

After handing over one of my blogs, he asked me what enagua meant. It is a word I have kept close to me since my freshman year of high school. I felt foolish when I realized I did not remember. This word came from a book I read, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. The title of the book was all I really had to hand over. The book had something to do with a young girl and a mental illness. Beyond that, no memories, no recollection. 

This feeling of being foolish, silly, dumb has been sitting in the outer portions of my mind. A heavy weight upon my chest, an unsettling pit in my stomach. I know the question being poised was never meant to make me feel this way. Finally yielding to the unknown of the question laid before me, I logged on to Amazon. Yesterday I was delighted to open my mailbox and find it sitting there waiting for me. My lost friend, the book that would hopefully contain the word I have held onto for so long, and the meaning behind it.

Today, I have held onto my new prized possession eagerly reading. Desperately seeking and devouring each word on each page. A treasure hunt that I appear to he obsessed with. One hundred pages into my search I began to feel lost. A search for a word that perhaps did not exist at all. A figment of my adolescent imagination. That very thought brought desperation and even fear to my surface. Strange how I have attached myself to a single word. A word that has no meaning that I can recite or explain. Being a close part of me despite that. But if it never existed......

Finally, page 149. "In the evening, at night wash-up, she limped into the big bathroom and looked at herself in the steel plate that served as a mirror. The self-hate of hundreds upon hundreds of patients had been vented on it and tempered steel cannot endure such an onslaught. Even the weaponless had found weapons to scratch it and dent it and no inch of its surface was clear. "E nagua," Deborah said to it; the formal Yri for: "I love you."

Something has clicked inside me. Excited and more whole, I am beaming. This singular word does exist. I almost want to keep its meaning to myself, close, protected. The truth of this connection, this enlightenment of a piece of myself, I desire to share. If at all through an obligation to those who read my blog and can connect with what I think at times. To share this connection is only right, harmonious.

After visiting with friends a while back in Denver I wrote something to this effect.

A Wise Buddha and a Hippie princess saw a fairy walking along the path. The wise Buddha looked at the fairy and asked, "why are you not flying?" The fairy looked at the pair and replied, "I have no wings." The princess looked at the fairy and said "They are there on your back!"

But the fairy did not believe what she heard so the Buddha and the princess took ahold of the fairy's hands and led her to the river to view her reflection. The fairy still did not see her wings, however the pair was able to have the fairy see something else. The possibility that the wings may exist, because she did look into the river at her reflection. That possibility, that hope is all that is needed before the fairy will learn she has her wings and can fly.

I have always had my wings. The meaning of them was lost and therefore so was the realization of the fact they existed at all. Deep down I do love myself and always have. Perhaps I have held onto this word to remind myself of that. Now I need to begin to accept the fact I am worth loving. I have something good and true inside me, an internal beauty.

My true mental healing, my use of my wings can now hopefully, and honestly begin one more time.

Who says therapy doesn't work?