The Witch's Carousel

When I was 6 or 7, there was a park off a winding road themed for Hansel and Gretel. It had a "gingerbread" play house and a pile of stones in the style of an oven. I loved that park. It was always deserted and I thrived alone.

We found it by accident, Mother and me, on a long drive. She had pulled off a split highway so I could squat near the tall grasses. She followed the road around a little ways, and there was the swingset with posts that were painted to looked like pretzels and seats that resembled chocolate rectangles.

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We returned the next week with a picnic. Mother took me after school. Each visit I would unclick my seatbelt and fly from the car to the swings to "kick the clouds."

From the vantage point of now, maybe 30 years since the last visit, the park memories are surreal. They appear more like a memory mirage than reality. The feeling, though--that sense of safety and complete satisfaction with life. I can't shake it.

I want it back.

I want to feel the freedom of kicking of my shoes and my toes kissing the sky.

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I want to pack a lunch and sit in the sun not worrying what is next or whether I should be there.

I want to feel the strength of my body--enjoy the magnificent rush of my stomach dropping away as I fall voluntarily through the air.

There was a lightness to life once. I want to relocate it. I want to slip the weight of negative memories from my shoulders and rise.

Like the time I went around and around on the rusty carousel at the park. I called it the witch's carousel. It was wobbly and groaned when it got going. I spun so fast I lost my footing and flew off the edge, landing near where the sand box once lay. It hurt. I felt betrayed. I was caught in my own imagination. The slight was not true. No witch had cast a curse my way. Yet I cried furious tears until Mother packed me home.

My mother asked about the game I was playing. In other words, she tried to ferret out the story I had created about the fall.

I have been looking for the stories I created about the person who hurt me. They are the opposite of the witch. I created, with his help, a fantasy that his actions and words came from a place of love. There was no witch on the carousel. There was no love in my ex's heart. Not for me.

I do not like seeing the way I slid into mistreatment, but lifting the veil offers me clarity. It is progress.

I am swinging closer to the sun every day.

xoxo,

Dani