You had no idea the power of your words.
A visit to my hometown can sometimes, without warning, surprise me with an emotional gut punch. I have so many good memories, places, people, and moments to remember with gratitude and fondness, but there are times when something as benign as a landmark can lay bare the darker side of my history.
Yesterday, as I was standing on the patio of Outstate Brewery, a place I’ve been to many times in recent years, I saw this train trestle over the Ottertail River. As if compelled by some force outside myself, I scrambled up the steep embankment without saying a word; Brian followed behind me, confused. I walked out over the middle of the river and just folded into myself, tears streaming down my cheeks.
Thirty years ago, nearly to the day, I sat on that bridge, seventeen, pregnant, terrified, and listened as my boyfriend, a fool of a teenage boy, listed my failings as a human being. Instead of just walking away from me and my baby, a cruel choice in itself, he felt the need to leave me in ruins; my heart and my sense of self shattered. Somehow, perhaps due to my utter vulnerability at that tender moment in my life, those vile messages slashed wounds in my young heart that can still violate my interior world when I least expect it.
We stood there for a long while, both crying for that young girl we could almost see standing there all those years ago, looking small and alone. Finally, Brian spoke into the still, hot air around us, “You were nothing more than a dumb teenage boy. You had no idea of the power of your words. She is not going to listen anymore.” I quietly prayed that those words might take root in my soul. After a long, heavy silence, I dropped the branch he had pressed into my hands over the swirling water below. I watched as it bobbed and danced and was carried away by the current. I slipped my hand into his, this man who has loved me well for the last twenty-five years, and together we crossed to the safety of the riverbank. We walked, hand in hand, until that bridge faded into the distance of time and perspective, exactly where it belongs.
