August 16, 2018

When I gave you up for good, I bled for ten straight days. Had I told you, you would’ve said this was impossible, but believe it or not, I know my body better than you do. I know how it responds when I let go: how muscle knots untighten, how dislocated bones slide back into their sockets. How griefs and wants and yearnings I’ve piled up in organs find ways of getting out. Think of the blood like a cough that lingers for weeks after the flu—the body knows when something’s still not right. When I gave you up for good, my body dug into the recesses of my memories, pulled out iron-coated, dripping blocks of “no,” and flung them out the window, the way a lesser woman might’ve hurled your underwear onto the lawn, had you left any in the house. My body is a house. In fact, my body is a temple, and if my God says there is no room for you inside of it, then well, there is no room. Out you go with the blood. How long had I held onto you? Years and years and years. How long had you clung to the walls of me? Why did it take me so long to understand, to make you let go, I had to let go myself? “Yield, and God yields,” Charles Spurgeon writes. It is a truth I’ve known for years, yet I’ve only begun to apply it to myself. My body, my temple, my house. When I gave you up for good, I heard God sigh and say, “Well done.” I bled for ten straight days, and I swear, you don’t echo as loudly as you used to. There’s so much more room between the walls.