Giant and Dwarf

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I sat on the ground. Small.

The large man beside me loomed upward. Like a giant Paul Bunyon. Yet unlike Paul, he wasn't kind, nor warm, nor approachable.

He was mean-spirited as he derided me rehearsing my worthlessness to my inner ear. I sat listening. The lesser.

He stood to my right. As I sat cross-legged. On the ground.

But I didn't fear him.

I looked up at his towering physique and his small head in the distance.

My eyes then gazed downward, at his feet. Giant feet.

"You. You are the boot."

For at least a decade, if not longer, when I would sink into what I referred to as "the hole," in my mind's eye which is more my heart's eye, the giant, laced army boot always awaited me. Awaited me at the top of "the hole."

"The hole." That deep, dark, damp, mold-ridden, all-encompassing vortex of hopelessness. A void. Yet not quite a void or a vortex. It seems I would fall in rather than be sucked in. And the hole had a bottom to it. I don't think of voids and vortexes as having a closed end.

At the bottom was a large rock where I'd lay, exhausted. I'd look up, feeling trapped, yet seeing light. I'd rest to gain strength for my ascent.

"The hole." A dry well. Red dirt walls with scattered protruding roots. I'd try to climb out; I always tried. I had to try. I could not give into suicide or utter despair. I had to pull myself up.

And when I'd get to the top, my fingernails caked with red earth, my hands sometimes scraped and bloodied, I'd feel "the boot" on my head.

"The boot." The giant, laced army boot. Stomping my head and pushing me down, back down into the hole.

I'd feel the words more than hear them. Words that came somewhere from that army boot. "You fucking moron. You good-for-nothing jerk. Asshole. Sorry excuse for a person." Then I'd feel the mocking laughter, laughing at me for trying to escape. "You'll never make it out."

I'd often hang on a root that grew out of the dirt wall that bounded the cylindrical 6-foot diameter, 30-foot deep dry well. Sometimes I'd end up at the bottom again. To rest. To gain strength for another climb.

During that decade or so, I'd sometimes make it out of the hole. And that only after the boot was no where to be seen. I never saw the body to which that boot belonged.

Until a few days ago in May, 2010. When I sat, in my mind's eye which is more my heart's eye, cross-legged on the ground.

And this time, for the first time, I saw the looming, gigantic, male body that went with that god-forsaken boot and his deriding words of shame.

And I wasn't afraid.

"You. You are the boot."

I wonder what I'll name him. I wonder if I can tame him.

I feel empowered that I never allowed him to tame me.

Perhaps I'll burn his boot(s) and throw him in the hole.

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A poem I wrote in 2008 about that boot: Despair
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