Prerequisite to a Raven’s Dream

Lauren L. Zavrel

I felt a combination of things all at once: the discomfort of the doctor’s office when we relinquish control to an MD in a white coat, unsure of what will happen to us, the fear of needles, the fear of commitment…but the reality was that I was actually in control because this was my idea, my body, my design.  I also felt a sense of obligation; a sense of closure that I owed myself.  I felt like I was taking a leap of faith, and while my two best friends were there in the room with me, they were only there as means to help me do it and not as a means to do it with or for me.  I felt as I did when, years prior, I would cut into my own flesh to make sure I could still feel pain, to find something still living inside mo somewhere out of sight when my whole sense of identity and boundaries had been crushed into the earth—

I felt the adrenaline of all these things, and the doubt of self that maybe, despite all of my effort in the past five years, despite all of the reassuring things I had been told, despite the self-reflection and writing I had done on the subject, and the significance I had found in the symbol of a bird, that in going through with this, I would be shocked into a new level of this reality.  Maybe it is a lie, maybe I have not truly healed from it, maybe I am not worthy of this, that the pain I have already gone through is disproportionate to the significance of what this ink will do to me forever.  In trying to manifest an internal pain on the outside, would I only be making an intangible wound a real, visible one? 

My heart pounded and I became a little short of breath.  Daisy said I would need to take off my shirt and bra but that I could drape a towel over myself to feel more comfortable.  I insisted that Mikee take my hand and asked him to talk to me in his cynical, insensitive way to distract me from my own thoughts.  I sat on the chair and held its back, as well as Mikee’s hand who crouched beside the chair.  Daisy sat behind me and I could not see what she was doing—it instantly reminded me of the day on the hill, where I had been exposed another time, and had imagined myself growing wings as my eyes met the grass and the dust and the ants.  I felt just as vulnerable, though this time, not endangered.  Not violated.  Only open, as if my heart were exposed and bleeding out tears it had held in for five long and confusing years. 

Daisy explained everything she was doing as I anticipated the sting of the gun on my skin, wishing she would stop talking and just get to it.  Mikee asked her casually about her instruments and the ink and the sterilization of everything, and made fun of me for the staph infections I was bound to get as a result of this whole procedure.  Without knowing it perhaps, Mikee’s nonchalant attitude about the whole procedure eased my nerves and helped me breathe a near-regular pace.  He glanced back and forth over his shoulder from Fox’s broadcast of a special Family Guy episode back to Daisy over my shoulder, and then to me, with a half-serious expression on his face, asking “are you ok?” and never letting go of my hand.  This is why I loved Mikee; he took very few things seriously, especially on the surface, and his presence in the room was therefore refreshing.  However, as much as he may have wanted to, he never let go of my hand, and told me without words that he respected the gravity of the procedure in my mind.  The impact it would have on my life.  The healing power and significance it would have.  He understood the importance of his role in seeing me through it.

Finally the tiny razors cut into my shoulder and the vibrations etched a line across my back—the line made itself a feather and finally a wing—it was coming to life!  My pain, my memories, my recovery there surfacing finally from somewhere inside me, someplace I could never quite identify.  And it hurt, like a child making its way into the world.  When it pushed me to want to squirm or complain, I took myself back to the inner pain I had held for so long to remind myself that this was only a release of everything I had hidden all that time.  I wallowed in it, embraced it, and made myself savor every slice—every little drop of ink that sunk under my skin.  It was a secret little revenge for the cowardly tears that welled in my eyes on the hill the day; tears he could not see from behind me.

When she was finished, I was exhausted.  She covered the wound with saran wrap and explained to me how I had to care for it—this new pet of mine, this responsibility that I had adopted.  How proud I was after all the anxiety and fear and doubt!  There she was, a beautiful, healthy newborn creature, its wings waxing across my shoulder from where it would guide me, reassure me, and protect me.  She had finally made her way from the quiet and broken undefined place to the surface where I could see her, touch her, listen to her, and know finally that she was real.  There with my two best and most reliable friends to help deliver her, and it was beautiful.  She is my womanhood, my strength, my passage, my health and my story.  She is the vehicle to my future.  And she is forever a part of me, the product of something wretched and brutal and unforgivable, transformed into the flight and freedom of a reborn heart.