HeatMarie

3:00 a.m. I awoke . . . I missed the sunrise.

3:05 a.m. I awoke, the room was dark, but I could see the light outside . . . I missed the sunrise.

3:30 a.m. I awoke terrified. A woman was in the hotel bed, pressing me into the mattress, her hands on my chest. I could smell the rot on her breath as she said, “You will never see the sunrise.” I begged her to leave. I screamed my niece’s name as I fell to the floor between the two beds remembering the time I sat in the background like an overused trinket unworthy of attention. I sat quietly, afraid to make a sound. If someone noticed me, they would notice only my flaws; they would never see my true smile because the smile was only there to hold back the tears and keep them from falling.

3:45 a.m. I awoke in a cabin. The sun’s light filled the room. I got dressed and walked outside. An old friend sat on the porch of the neighbor’s cabin; I waved and smiled even though I had missed the sunrise.

4:00 a.m. I awoke to a song being played from the “Boom Boom” playlist my niece and I created before we left the city. My thumb moved the flashing bar to snooze. Just another ten minutes.

Did your Groundhog’s Day dreams teach you nothing?

Right, right, I’ll get up.

I kept the music playing while I crawled out of bed. I figured MaKalea would be better off waking up to the music rather than my voice. (She read that and said, “no”). 

4:50 a.m. Light was beaming through the blinds. Panic sunk in as I double-checked my phone. The sun wasn’t supposed to rise for another fifteen minutes.

“Ready? We got to go. I’ll tell you about my dream on the way.”

4:52 a.m. I told her the series of dreams and explained to her my fear; I was about to miss that magical moment once again. She calmed me; no one could have done it better.

5:00 a.m. We parked the blueberry in the same spot as the night before and walked the same dirt path through the trees down to the Black Sand Beach, which is filled with more lake stones than sand.

5:02 a.m.: The sky was a pale, fresh blue appearing as though it had just awoken from another long night. Out on the lake’s horizon, I could see a sliver of pink.

5:05 a.m. Sitting on the rocks, we cracked open our Bangs and found stillness in the chilled Minnesotan air. My anxiety dissipated as the arch of the sun peeked from behind a thin stretched cloud. There I was -perhaps, for the first time- watching the sunrise.

5:15 a.m. It brought back a memory of a small note written in 2004.

“Just because you don’t see the sunrise, doesn’t mean it isn’t there . . . Never stop smiling because you never know who is falling-in-love with your smile . . . ” The note was chicken-scratched on my back while my fingertips pressed on the keys of his piano, trying to mimic what he played.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Don’t you worry about it, just keep practicing.”

The first time I read what he wrote it brought tears of joy to my eyes, as did the second read, the third, the fourth, and every year I read it since. The note was a small light that said I was not alone. Yet, somehow, every time I shoved it back into its secret hiding place I found myself alone in the dark, making friends with shadows. They blanketed me with the belief that they concealed all my imperfections. If I just stayed out of the light and made myself unmemorable; I would just be forgotten. And once forgotten no one could use my faults against me. I would have no reason to be ashamed; yet, I was.

I was content. That was my favorite word to describe how I was, complaisantly content.

I lived my life afraid of what others would think of me, afraid to be me. I was lost in the moment’s darkness, complacent with the past, and afraid of the future. I hid from the world, subsequently limiting moments of happiness and all the potential memories. I watched the sun from a dim-lit room, and all I wanted was for once to see the sun bask on my skin rather than the facade I was playing for the enjoyment of the people I loved.

I didn’t realize that until a friend (the same who wrote the note years prior) said to me, “No, I’m holding you to higher standards.”

Thoughts hindered me to articulate my tongue, causing a soft exhalation instead of speech. I sat on the opposite side of the kitchen island. Cryptic words and confused emotions coiled into an enigma. I fought the tears and traded them for a smile that kept my thought a secret: Why would you want to change me?

It was a question brought on by embarrassment, intimidation, and the feeling that I could never live up to any set standards. At that moment I felt I didn’t belong. I wanted my comfort back. I wanted to run back to what was easy. A place where I was content. But in that place… even there I wasn’t me. I was someone hiding, in the eclipse of a still picture frame. Hoping, wanting, desiring, as I struggled to get out.

Nothing is more terrifying than walking into the unknown. The frame held me captive and as the hands of the clock continued to move; I waited for the magical moments: the right person, the right time, and the right place.

Well, it took me long enough, and I am here . . .

5:30 a.m. sitting on the beach, watching the sun rise up over the horizon. It was a moment I fantasized about a thousand times. And in all of those thousands of fantasies, I had a man sitting next to me. It was romantic. Yet, for my first sunrise, I didn’t have that. I had something better. I created a moment, and I didn’t do it alone. I did it with the only person in the world who could look at me on a public beach and say, “Take your shirt off.” I looked at her like she was bat shit crazy. But then she said, “We’re going to get your picture.”

She didn’t forget, and she didn’t let me forget. She didn’t let me back out or change my mind regardless of how I felt. I knew she wouldn’t. But she made me do exactly what I set out to do: make the sunrise powerful.

See, it is people like you I want to keep in my life. People like you willing to push me to a better place, hold me to my words, and never let a memory pass.

5:36 a.m. Another still frame was captured as I fell in love with my smile while watching someone fall in love with theirs.