Penny Post #4: Hide & Seek
Ready or not, here I come!
20… Immediately your heart would spike.
19… Run through several options: kitchen, basement, bedroom.
18…Hid in the basement last time, not there. Parents are in the kitchen, not there.
17… Mom and Dad’s bedroom: that’s it.
16… Change your direction and sprint to the other side of the house.
15…Arrive to find your younger brother has claimed the spot under their bed.
14…Frantically run through locations again: attic, laundry room, dining room.
13…You’ve run far enough that you can’t hear the counting of the seeker anymore. You wonder how much time is left.
12…The attic is closest to you. It’s got to be there.
11…You take the stairs two at a time.
10…You spin 360 degrees, probing the space.
9…A pile of mattresses, that’s your best bet.
8…You struggle to move the top mattress, it’s heavy.
7…Huffing and puffing, you try to squeeze yourself in between two mattresses.
6…Not strong enough. Need new place, fast.
5…You watch your steps as you spin. Nails, wood, unidentified objects.
4…Under the abandoned couch. You think you can fit.
3…"Ready or not, here I come!”
2… You hurriedly squeeze your body between the wooden ground and the deflated couch.
1…Hold your breath. No sound will give you away. Safely hidden.
My favorite game as a child was Hide & Seek. I would find the best hiding spots: tucked behind the laundry detergent in the back of a storage closet, mysteriously contorted amidst the forgotten toys in our unfinished basement, suffocating between abandoned mattresses in our attic. I was so good at hiding that I sometimes couldn’t be found. The seekers would give up and quit the game, leaving me behind.
Hide & Seek turned into Lost & Never Found.
The hiding that I practiced as a child is the hiding that I have curiously continued as an adult. I religiously keep track of the shadowed spots that I might be able to disappear within, in the metaphorical house of my lived experience. I don’t know if I’m as good at it as I was as a child, but it’s harder to hide with a craft that demands visibility.
I was able to hide an eating disorder for several years. I was able to hide the truth of my suffering from many of my inner circles for a long time. I was also able to hide the truth of its seriousness from myself. If I can hide things from myself, no one will know that there is something that’s desperate to be found.
Willing myself to be found is difficult.
I still like to hide behind metaphors and figurative language. Like the one you read above. I’m hiding behind the metaphor of a children’s game because I’m scared to say that writing is how I’m found.
Writing is how I will myself from behind the laundry detergent in the back of the storage closet, untangle myself amidst the forgotten toys of the basement, and unfold myself from the mattress sandwich. As a diarist, my work is personal. There is no hiding behind fiction here. The wisdom I share through words is the wisdom I’ve received from my lived experience.
Sharing is not a part of my contract as a writer. I could just write in my journal and hide those pages away in a drawer somewhere and come back to them every once in a while, yet mostly forget they are there. Maybe I show one or two entrusted eyes. But I keep the rest of it to myself. For myself.
I could do these things. But to do these things would be to deny the very real, unignorable truths of myself. I’m afraid of this denial, knowing how much it took from me during the years of my eating disorder. I can’t get those years back. I can’t get that Kiera back. She is lost in a black hole of laundry detergent, toys, and mattresses. I’ve come to terms with losing her, knowing that I can memorialize her through my writing. Writing is the way in which I resurrect what was once lost.
At the end of my first podcast episode (where I talk very candidly about my eating disorder), I wrote:
I’m creating art out of the very thing that has threatened to destroy me.
I was suffocating between those mattresses. Instead of giving up my breath, I choose to give up the game. My breath since has come in the form of words, one after another, dismantling the invisibility cloak that I’ve forced myself to wear. Sorry, Harry, but I’m not the chosen one.
From the Gospel of Thomas:
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
In order to be saved, I must be found.
Ready or not, here I come…
Questions I leave you with:
What are your favorite hiding spots?
Who are you in those spaces?
Who are you outside of them, as found?
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