If I close my eyes and look within, I can see a tree where my heart should be. It’s seen better days – it’s had a rough time, over the last year. There are bold, black scorch marks running down the ashy grey trunk – more than one, because lightning really can (and did) strike the same place twice. The tree is split from the force of the lightning strikes. The vaporization of the water that happened when the lightning struck was violent and harmful.
The last year could’ve been fatal – sometimes trauma like this tree has experienced can’t be overcome. It’s winter time, so there aren’t leaves anyways, but if it were summer time you would see that not all of the branches that remain are alive. There is some cleanup to do – some dead wood to be trimmed and some wounds to tend to. Thankfully, this particular tree can survive this, as long as it is carefully protected and tended to.
It will take a long time and a lot of patience to restore full health to the tree. It will remain extra vulnerable to other dangers for a while. There is a fence up around the tree, to keep people from hurting it further, unintentionally. The Tree’s roots still dig down far into the earth, but the ground around the tree was disturbed by the lightning strikes, too. The chemical composition, the moisture level, the stability – it has been altered by the lightning.
Hopefully we’ll see some leaves on some of the surviving limbs this summer. It’ll be really obvious what has happened, though – the lightning scars will stick out, still so fresh and large. Over time, years, the tree will continue growing – sprouting more limbs, filling itself back out. The scars will remain, but will become less visible with every passing growing season. But those who know the tree well, who get up close, maybe climb up and sit in its branches – they will always be able to put their hand in the split caused by the lightning, will know that the leaves in one part of the tree are just slightly off – even if the passing casual eye doesn’t notice.
It feels pretty overwhelming to truly sit and look at my heart-tree. I worry that it’s never going to heal or that another lightning strike will finish the job. I worry that in its susceptible state, it will become infested with insects or fungus that will lead to a miserable future. There is so much resilience in nature and in us – but everything, everyone has a breaking point.
I want to believe with all that I am that my heart-tree is going to get stronger and that I will be okay, eventually. But I DID believe with all that I was that lightning wouldn’t strike twice… When I felt my hair stand on end right before that second lightning strike, smelled the charge in the air, and knew a split second before it happened that it was coming – I wanted to curse the universe with all that I had.
Life still feels so unfair and so scary and so uncertain. I feel so, SO vulnerable. I worry that people are getting tired of me, of my scars and my trauma and my awkwardness. I feel like I can’t give enough right now – I’m taking too much from everyone around me, asking for too much. I look at my heart-tree and I worry that more losses of one kind or another are coming and that I’ll end up desperately trying to keep my heart-tree alive all by myself.
Note: this was written based on a writing prompt provided to me through a paid course I am taking. I am not including the prompt, because the daily prompts are a critical component of that course.