Strange Armour
A sandwich board of mattresses
she felt she had to wear;
each day so full of battle stress
emotions were laid bare.
Was there a sign upon her back
inviting kicks and blows;
inciting others to attack
and multiply her woes?
Thus every day she'd bear the weight
of strange armour she chose,
and though attacks did not abate
she felt numb to the blows.
But at the end of every day,
with arms and shoulders sore,
her tortured muscles had to pay
for all the weight she bore.
Until at length she came to see
the armour she preferred
restricted all her movements free
and pain simply deferred.
At last she stood with armour shed -
and yes, the world was rough -
she would get hurt, and sometimes bled,
but would, at last, grow tough.
Unpadded she was light and quick,
her range of movement free;
at times she could avoid a kick
with some agility.
Still other times she seemed to sense
attacks before they came,
and fled before blows could commence -
and for this felt no shame.
Her padding she no longer missed,
in fact, it seemed to be
that many conflicts did desist
once she was armour-free.
Strange armour many of us choose
in effort to protect
from battles we fear we might lose
and dangers we detect.
But strangely, sometimes armour acts
as something to incite
those who desire to grind an axe
or prove themselves "more right."
Be brave, my friend, and fight without
the padding that you choose -
You will get hurt, without a doubt,
but burden you will lose.
Sharon Flood Kasenberg, May 2018
I was upset by an online exchange I had with a complete stranger.
"What do you have to do to survive these days? Sometimes I feel like I need to go through life wearing a sandwich board made of mattresses!" I said to my husband.
"Good imagery!" he replied. "I sense a poem in the making!"
That brief exchange got me thinking about the weight of many of the types of armour that we choose to put on. The ways we attempt to self-protect are often only a temporary fix - a way to numb the immediate, but lesser pain that we initially experience. But like the sandwich board made of mattresses in the poem, a lot of our protective armour does us more harm than the attacks it's trying to protect us from.
I spent a lot of years of my life trying desperately to protect myself with all kinds of ineffective armour. I tried on anger and sarcasm. In my insecure youth there were times I wished fervently for the protection of an invisibility cloak. As an adult I hid behind beliefs that often didn't sit right with me, tenaciously hanging on for years, even after I realized that the afterlife promised to me (a woman with an "unbeliever" for a husband) really sucked. But, doggone it - I'd been taught that this was the only way to live, and that leaving would make me a sinner, so I hung on - for decades.
I hung on by my fingernails even when people told me I should leave my husband and find someone "more righteous." I hung on when I was made to feel small; made to feel like I had to live small - all scrunched up inside myself among people who were ready to condemn on a whim. I hung on when I began to see that I'd been fed a false narrative. I hung on while every hymn began to sound like a funeral dirge that was sucking the life out of me. Yup - I excelled as a hanger-on.
Through it all, I donned one kind of strange armour after another. I put on a helmet of denial. I tried on protective eyewear that kept me (for a time) from seeing that I wasn't happy - but it also prevented me from seeing most of the good in life. I suited up every day in the kind of full-on body armour that kept me safe from "outside influences" and from the slings and arrows tossed by what I thought of as "my tribe". I continued to think of them as mine even when it became painfully apparent that I was't really one of them.
And when I took off that armour at night I ached. I hurt everywhere - misery to the bone and the soul. I tossed and turned at night and then suited up again in the morning.
One day I looked around and realized that "my tribe" didn't seem that happy either. I couldn't do anything about what I perceived as their misery and apathy, but I could do something about mine. It was difficult for me to trade false certainty for certain vulnerability, but that's what I did.
Eventually I began to remove the protective layers - one at a time. My anger arrived first, and I'm pretty sure it'll be the last piece I'll divest myself of. But let me tell you, I feel less burdened - in spite of the twenty pounds of stress weight I gained as I learned that I could still be me - and maybe even a better and kinder me - without padding. I don't need to "belong" in any particular group to be accepted. I can accept myself - warts and all - as a contributing member in the larger and more diverse group called humanity. I'm allowed to love the flawed, because I am the flawed. I'm allowed to be ignorant, but happy.
I can doubt all I want, and stop bailing when the boat takes on water. I can take a nosedive into the depths of uncertainty and explore. I'm no longer being dragged under by the weight of all my armour.
Every day might not be a fairy tale filled with unicorns, but at least I can see rainbows after rain and dance without worrying about falling off my pedestal.
I am free - and light. Someday I'll fly.
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