You must allow yourself to weep about even the things you won’t allow yourself think about. you create rooms that allow you return to the parts of you that you once buried so deep, stored almost far enough that you sometimes forget they are there. you must gather the courage to admit those at least to yourself.
And there, as you weep on your altar, you must allow yourself howl out from even those parts. It will feel like an exorcism, and I suppose that is what it means to rid yourself of demons, even ones that were never your own. you must allow yourself finally to weep for all that was, and all that was not. for what you carried, and how far you carried it. for that which stayed, and that which did not.
You must allow it all to go through your body, feeling it as it passes through, all which you had stayed buried. And then, as the tears are drying, and your breathing has steadied, you must gather yourself, and decide to leave it all there.
Then, you must give thanks. you have survived. you have been made. changed, but made still. We are all but recovering, and in need of a little saving, and that too is a cause for celebration. we have felt it, faced it.
This is why we celebrate. why we sing songs of praise and recite hymns with our names. this is why we commune, sharing in each other’s joys the way we have carried each other’s sorrows. we have felt it, faced it, and that too is a reason to celebrate.
I remember now as a child that we always made time for celebration. I understand why so much more now, as an adult who has and is living through things. I have so many pictures as a child; birthdays, graduations and school events, baptisms. Different events were marked by different forms of celebration, and I have grown even more in my awareness of why that is a necessity. I understand why, and the great beauty that comes from pausing even if for a few minutes in the middle of your school day, classroom filled with others who have shared in some sort of way with you, to celebrate. It is why even when it sometimes makes us a little fluttery to sit through the entire birthday song, we ought to stay to hear it.
We celebrate perhaps because we have survived, or maybe we survive because we celebrate. As we acknowledge all that is, and was, and the ways in which that is layered and marked, perhaps the way to make it all more bearable, pleasurable even, is to always find the room and reason to celebrate.