Catharsis under the moon

There was a time when I felt completely lost

Tonight, the moon shines truly beautiful; when it’s so full and round, it seems closer to us, the humans. She’s always been an instigator of madness, provoking our psyche in inevitable ways. Her phases, mysterious and poetic, influence our lives—stirring both understandable events and others so enigmatic they become hidden riddles. Tonight, within me, this super full moon once again lifts me into the sweetest kind of insanity.

This is one of those nights when nostalgia takes hold so deeply within me that I silently reflect on my journey through this carnal existence, and I ask myself if I am truly being all that I am meant to be—if I am being authentic with myself. Every day is a challenge, an adventure; and sometimes those adventures unfold without me even knowing where I’m heading. I drift most of the time, without a fixed course, because I need and want to tremble with joy in every instant—simply for the sacred act of being alive.

I begin my ritual:

I light a white candle. I immerse myself in a burning bath of sandalwood, myrrh, and orange blossom; I wish to paint my body with the oils of the past. The music I choose is a fusion between María Callas with her Madame Butterfly, Beethoven with his Moonlight Sonata and his Silence, and the exciting melodies of Enigma—played in that very order, so that I may feel contrasting emotions. And there I go, ready to disappear momentarily from this earthly plane.

My mind takes flight. My body fits perfectly within the bathtub, ready to journey through that nonexistent line called space-time. Tonight, I dive into my longed-for silence, yearning to lose myself in deliriums that may drive me mad for a while. I want to travel again—without fear, without limits, without asking for permission. Then I meditate on where I wish to go.

I want to fly and visit the graves where my dead rest, clear the weeds from the soil that shelters their poor, inert bodies, and feel that soul-wrenching pain that arises when you sense them beneath that same earth that once welcomed their dying flesh. I want to linger there and tell each one of them, “thank you for having loved me.”

Then I want to walk through the streets where I once ran barefoot as a child; to observe the landscape and search for fleeting moments of joy I once knew. I wish to wander beyond that shadowed town full of secrets—some dark, some turbulent—and reach that grand old house in the capital where I once tasted the first clandestine kiss of love, back when I was just a young girl, and where unknowingly, my heart became a prisoner of true love. I long to go back and breathe the unmistakable scent of the mother who brought me into this world, to wrap my arms around her waist and feel my small body lifted into the air by her loving hands. I also want to feel my grandmother’s embrace and lose myself in that delicious scent of food cooked over coal.

I want to redraw my childhood and adolescence in my own way—those stages I never lived as I deserved. I want to feel laughter, joy, emotion, and a handful of kind sentiments and beautiful memories, erasing every cursed tear and ripping out all the pain, suffering, and misfortune that once poured from me.

I want to give the kisses that sadness, absurd grudges, and damned egos once denied to my loved ones—to those who truly mattered, those who loved me, and whom I only recently learned to love as they deserved. I no longer want to feel that knot of remorse, that poison of regret for not having expressed what my heart could have once revealed. To love without resentment.

I want, too, to cradle once more that tiny body and feel, for one brief second, his little heart beating before Lady Death takes him back into her arms. I also wish to relive that tender, divine sensation that only a mother feels in that sacred instant of bringing a child into the world and beholding the wonder that once dwelled within her womb—my baby, so fragile and yet so angelic.

I want, I long, and yes, I crave it deeply! Oh, blessed God, on this night of profound catharsis—upon returning from that mysterious and heartfelt voyage through time and space—I want to travel to a special chamber where someone real, though ethereal in my physical reality, awaits my presence with longing. Someone daring enough to make me his in dreams. Someone who ignites my blood into flames each day without even touching me, who can make me tremble from afar with a single written word (or a virtual gaze). I want to reach the threshold of his dreams and whisper, “I’m here now, please, let me in. I come exhausted, hungry, and thirsty for love. I’ve just returned from a long, mysterious journey and stopped by because only you can soothe me. Lift me to heaven and to hell if you must, and do not fear to wound me—heal me instead with every kiss, anoint my pain as only you know how to do, loving my soul while you possess my body.”

Thus, while I sleep.

Originally written in November 2016.

Now re-edited and dedicated especially to that man who for twenty-five years was ethereal, and who today is my present.

My husband.

With deepest love: Yirka Gonzalez