Split

_{Call to the girl within} 

It’s been a while as the path is branched with diversions. Nevertheless, I always return within – to you. Sometimes weary, tired; on other days I come hurried and distracted; today, I’m here to ask for the way forward. You’ve always known although you embrace silence, wanting to let me figure it all out myself. 

My body is depleted, stretching like a road that never ends – pulled between two worlds that I struggle to make whole. I adjust myself accordingly to each of the world’s own decorum. And yet I search for wholeness, I crave for it like the mystics’ craving to find their god. I bend from one way to the other, a tree in high winds. My roots are strong and keep me grounded. I want to expand my branches upwards in perpetual growth; so I wish for this storm to pass. My feet are restless as they search for new grounds, for a deep rich soil to plant themselves in like seeds. 

This is a call to the girl within, she knows when it’s time to let go, to dance with the uncertainty that precedes purpose. When it’s time, she’ll whisper to me on a quiet evening that it’s time to pack, that I’m ready to reach the next harbour. Letting go is always the hardest part and I hold on to this solidness for as long as I can.

For now, I must stay longer here – this resting place nourishes; each scar is healing with precision, my hair is growing, thickening, replenishing with strength. I have come a long way from darkness. 

Whatever the particulars of your first estrangement, you will have felt the rift being torn between who you really are, and who you had to be to survive. And so begins the work of moulding our qualities into this more acceptable version of ourselves. Over time, these efforts at ‘passing’ as normal become all-too-successful, until even we begin to forget our true nature.

Excerpt from “Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home” by Toko-pa Turner