Marquette University Intimations Project

Natalie

A life of chaos builds resilience, they say, but it doesn’t mean she has become accustomed to her  pain. Chaos is her family, but family doesn’t end in blood, right? She could trade it for peace.  For comfort. A storm for a sunrise. She could make the sky a friend, a far better one than the  chaos could ever create. A storm would trap her inside of herself, force her to live clouded, never  to acknowledge the light she was missing out on. Placing her pain in a box, locking it away,  would bury her alive. But would that be easier than feeling it fully?  

Quarantine felt a bit like that box. Isolation placed her within it, and her own mind tried to keep  her there permanently. 

This past year has held on to more pain than she has ever felt in her life. For a while, that scared  her. It kept building, and building, and breaking away at her soul until she was worried she had  lost herself completely.  

She had thought of a girl, one who felt unseen. Had anyone looked at her long enough to see the  cracks on her skin from where she tore herself apart and had to put the pieces back together? She  had shattered like glass so many times that the points where those fragments once touched don’t  quite fit the same anymore. Her beauty, once akin to stained glass, is now simply a broken mesh  of colors and cracks over her face. Pieces of her smile no longer reflect a vibrant soul beneath it.  

She wanted nothing more than to hide that girl. She thought about that box often. Yet, it was  within one of her loneliest nights that she thought to have a different approach. 

Instead of placing her pain in a box, she wrote it a letter. 

Nearly one year after the start of a total life shift, she threw more thoughts down on paper that claimed another part of her soul within it. A piece of her soul that could live on longer than her. 

January eleventh, twenty twenty-one. Eleven thirty-five p.m. 

a letter to my pain:  

my most reliable counterpart, my unwavering companion. i fear i have  become too comfortable with calling you my friend. do i try too hard  to find you? ignore the freedom that comes with finding peace, instead  settling with you? i worry i would lose a part of myself upon losing  you. who would i be without my pain? better off, they say. but you  consume my daylight until it fades away, you alter my routines and  shift my perspectives; i rely on you to decide how each day will go. i  worry i can’t function without you now. how could i, when you’re all i  can see?  

you chip away at my soul, you know.  

slowly. gradually. i never noticed until i began to look back at my  life. relationships, goals, expectations…all muddled by one thing.  you.  

i’m losing time, losing life, by choosing you. 

but that’s what you want, isn’t it? the more alive i’d feel, the less  you’d continue to exist. you don’t allow me to know myself. to love  myself. because you know that if i did, you would lose. i keep myself  invisible to feed you. you make me dream of the days i can no longer  have, dwelling on what could be, what could have been, all to keep me  still. you see, pain, you made me believe that if i froze myself, you  would keep me warm within your arms and your arms only. what i failed  to recognize was that your embrace did not carry the warmth we  believed it would. you maintained the cold until she was my friend,  too. and now any warmth is gone. what is there to do now? is this  where we depart?  

… 

This letter. This letter was the turning point. Writing is an outlet for her, but it had never felt  more profound than in this moment.  

She thought about her mom, her sisters, who have always stayed close to her. The two young  neighbor girls who begged to draw with sidewalk chalk with her last April, six feet apart, just so  that they could see her. “We promise we’ll stay six feet apart,” they told their mom. “Can we  please give you a hug Natty?” they asked her the second they had her in their sights. They’ve  known her their whole life, she was a constant for them. She thought of her friends, who she  would do anything for, who she hopes know how much she adores watching them grow. Her mentors, who have shown her more love and support than she ever thought possible, sometimes  more than she thinks she deserves, who she now bakes cookies for, just because. 

She thinks of every person, and every moment. All proof that her family does not end within the  walls of her house. All of the pictures of the places she has seen, and all of the pictures she has yet to take. The sunrises she wants to wake up early just to see. The rain she longs to lay beneath,  the flowers she has yet to plant, the people she has yet to love. 

Her people. 

That girl, who once saw herself as nothing but a remnant of what once was a beautiful mosaic of  stained glass, now realized that the mosaic was still there. It always was. Cold that it took a  pandemic for her to have such a breakthrough, but deeper appreciation for what you do have can  go a very long way, regardless of when it reaches you. What she now knows and appreciates  endlessly is this: each piece of her soul represented a moment, a person, a lesson, a love. Each  color and shape found a way to fit with those surrounding it.  

She was a living collage of all people she had met and all of the moments she fell in love with. She would not trap that in a box. Not now, not ever.

A note from the author: 

The love I have for the people in my life feels like it could burst at the seams that my heart tries  to keep it contained within.  

This is a thank you to them, for adding to the mosaic of my soul. To my mom, Janelle, the  greatest woman I have ever known, for teaching me that bravery and empathy are endless. To my  dad, for being the reason I know exactly what is worth fighting for. To my sisters, Julia and  Dena, for being a reflection of the better parts of myself. To Sydney and Sarah, and your family,  for being my second family, my safe haven since I was ten. My dear pair of Olivia’s, Kennedy,  Anne, Morgan, Cristal, for knowing me in and out, for trusting me and letting me see you  conquer life in every way. To Kelly and Lyka, for every picture you both have drawn me, for  letting me go from babysitter to big sister. To Jeff, and your family, for every ounce of support  you have shown me, and for taking every box of baked goods I throw your way. To my English  teachers, Tanya, Wally, Leah, Jenn, for encouraging me to hold my writing close to my heart. I  owe my passion to you. To every person I have seen on the street who has made me smile for  some odd reason. For the love I see flow through the people I have known my whole life, or  known for a fleeting second. Thank you for making me who I am. 

With all the love in the world, 

Natalie