Me, Myself, and I

Dance there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water's roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool's triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind?

- To a dancing child in the wind, YB Yeats

As I read the poem, I remembered the days when I was much, much younger, and more stupid, worried about nothing, fearless of what may come, and fierce to my own young flesh.

I remembered climbing high on a treetop, feeling like I was a witch queen on top of the world, watching my kingdom where I reigned from above, feeling the breeze on my cheeks and playing with my ponytail. And afterwards, I fell from a small branch, too small to hold my little limbs, on my way down. As soon as I landed chin first on a humongous rock the blood oozed from the open cut, stinging so painful it awoke all of my senses (and I still recalled the pain, somehow, when I absentmindedly feel the vague scar). I bit my lips and kept it down, trying hard to hold the scream the second it struggled to go through my larynx. I had to make it stop, both the blood and the scream, no matter what. I didn’t want my mom to rush to see me like that, resulting in a forbiddance to climb on the tree again, since it was my only sanctuary when the going got tough. So I pressed hard on the fresh wound, half bowed so it would not spoil my cotton shirt, and ran quickly to the bathroom to clean up the mess.

I remembered the splash of water on my face, in a hot, sunshiny day in July, when I was voluntarily stranded on an empty beach, purposely eliminating myself from the flocks of my own cousins and uncles and aunts and ran for my own freedom: just me and the wind. And it was dark before I realized that the wave got bigger and the wind harder. I didn't realize what was going on when one of my uncles found me sitting alone on the cold sand, looking up to the clear sky where there were so many stars above, waiting for me to pick one and carry it into my pocket. I heard him shouting, and suddenly people surrounded me. I was shook so hard I could loose some bones while the other hugged me so tight she could break me to pieces. And when I grew bigger, I ran into the word 'lost' though I thought it was them who lost me, not vice versa.

... yet, somehow, long after I grew up, I've never felt more alive than that...