of drunken campfire confessions

I went camping with the Mr. and two of our best friends a couple weekends ago. One night around the campfire, as the whiskey and wine flowed, our conversation steered towards the serious, the heartfelt. 

I drank half a bottle of cheap red wine by myself, and then suddenly my lips said this:

"I'm sorry I act so mysterious about my mom. I don't mean to. It's just...I've had no idea how to bring something like this up..."

I remember stopping there. Taking a shaky breath. Did you really just say that? Where are you going with this? The fire crackled. Everyone was quiet. Then the words just poured out.

I told them everything. Well, almost everything. Most things. 

I cannot talk about my mother without talking about her eating disorder. It is as firmly a part of her as her skin, her fingernails, her vertebrae. 

I just left out the part where I have had, do have, will have one too.

The words did not come easy. They tumbled out of my mouth in mumbled fragments. My voice sounded dead, numb, void of emotion. But they came out. 

I felt free.

More than I'd expected. 

Then I felt panicky.

That I had expected.

What were you thinking? Do you see how they look at you now? Do you hear the pity in their voices? They can't un-hear what you've said. They'll always see you like this, pathetic and small and weak. A victim. Someone they have to tip toe around. Someone they have to be careful with. You've fucking fixed a FRAGILE label to your forehead. HANDLE WITH CARE.

That night, laying in our tiny two person tent, I thought I might suffocate in paranoid anxiety. I don't know how long I laid there, wide awake and miserable. But I must have fallen asleep eventually, because in the darkest part of the early morning, we were awoken by the most intense lightning storm I've ever seen. Above us, the sky flashed, blinding white to piercing darkness for almost an hour. When the rain came, it crashed against our tent with furiously angry intent. The thunder cracked, deafening, overhead. It was as though the forest saw us as a virus, invading and foreign. Something that needed to be destroyed.

I curled into him, listening to his heartbeat pounding in his chest, thankful for his arms around me. I kept waiting for the storm to somehow get inside, to find us. But it never did. We stayed safe and dry and warm, with nothing but a thin membrane separating us from the roaring tempest outside.

In the morning, the sun shone. The birds sang. We laughed about the storm then, about how we were glad it happened. It gave us a fantastic story. It was something we'd weathered together.

And maybe we didn't talk about the other storm, the one that came from my lips, but we didn't have to. It was obvious that we'd weathered that one together too, that we were closer for it.

It's strange how from a slightly different perspective, one tiny step can seem so huge.