He’s sprawled on the couch, watching his latest favourite
show while I am sprawled upside down, head on his lap and feet up on the back
of the couch. Ostensibly reading, but really at this moment I am watching him
from under my eyelashes, watching him upside down. It is a favourite place to
be for me: not just there beside him or head on his lap but upside down, too.
There is a infinite realism to experiencing the world this way, head over
heels, or heels over head (...).
Life, I find, is sometimes too often experienced the way physics
and biology, allegedly, designated us to do. But then if we didn’t let
ourselves break rules, break hearts, break and fall over, trip, tumble, somersault
or even get stuck when turned inside out and upside down, maybe we couldn’t
really appreciate all there is to experience.
I can hear his heartbeat, the slow, steady and solid rhythm
that’s often put me to sleep, has calmed me on nights when I’m wide awake and
blinking in the dark. Same rhythm that has lulled me into a slow, lazy and
content slumber. His face is a mask of ferocious grimace as he stares at the
screen, inscrutable.
And yet, I watch and read so much. Not watchful as maybe an
older, albeit younger, me would have done. There’s a peace in this place.
Sometimes it is quiet, and not a word needs to pass. Sometimes, it is full of
chatter, of giggles, hiccups, murmurs and sighs. A lot of times the peace of
pure friendship, companionship, is cut through with a lightning bolt of
electrical frisson as hairs spark on fire and emotions rage. This, to me, is
the calmest place. This rocking ball of fire, topically rearranged as
sensitivity, despair, uneasiness and anger, is sanctuary.
There once was a time and place when I wouldn’t have thought
so. But edges of things broken have smoothed away. Sometimes it was time that
did that smoothing, and sometimes I had to sequester myself in a dark closet
armed with a nail file to metaphorically chisel away at those sharp broken
edges to make them easier to live with. There once was a time when this left me
bleeding and in puddles, ponds, oceans of tears. But a broken shard of glass
lost in the sea returns to the shore as a smooth gemstone reflecting a million
colours.
Now when we rage, I feel at home. Because that is the
security of unconditional love. No matter how much you lambast the other, no
matter how much you throw plates, books or grenades, you know that this is a
safety net, an ever-expanding sanctuary that can contain all of that, can
withstand all the flames and blasts. Boundaries of a certain brand of companionship that is far more elastic and accommodating than that of any other. That is home.
Even when we go quiet for days. Me in my place, he in his.
Even when time just keeps going on its journey, the sanctuary of home exists.
It is this peace, this quintessence of love, that permeates
the space of infinity. A place I continue to poke and prod, questioning its
existence. Sometimes it whispers back an
inscrutable answer: I don’t need to understand it for it to happen.
