When my sister and I were younger, we would play this game where we pretended we were severely injured. We never imagined what injured us, only that we were bruised and broken and required the utmost care from the other.
We would take turns playing the patient--wrapping ourselves, with one another's help, in blankets. We would use all the blankets in our room, wrapping limps and torsos and heads (leaving just a small opening for our eyes, nose, and mouth). By the time we were finished, we couldn't move even if we had wanted to; even if we had needed to.
We were muffled from the world and totally, utterly dependent on the other for anything we needed while "injured"; we even needed one another to be "healed".
I remember being anxious during those games. Afraid to be in a vulnerable position if the wrong person were to enter the room. Afraid, that if I needed to run, I couldn't. I also remember, on the other hand, being almost paralyzed with trust for my sister--trust that she wouldn't tease with bringing me kool-ade, that she'd read to me, that I could lie there and be completely dependent and not be afraid of my feelings for another person, muffled from the world as I was.
I was always able to fight the fear, to forget that I had given myself over to the hands of another, that I had exposed myself, paralyzed to a world bigger and more abrasive than my six-year-old mind could, or was willing to, grasp.
I have a tendency in relationships to crawl inside people--to try to find that same muffled world where trust and warmth out-does evil; where I can trust and lie my head back in softness without the fear of whiplash.
But lately, I'm having trouble crawling outside myself. I have holed up, walled up, wrapped up an injured self that just refuses, no matter the coaxing, to unwrap itself from blankets, from the warmth of a muffled world that's too reminiscent of a little girl crying in the dark after her sister was taken away.