Synkroniciti is overjoyed to welcome back English writer, poet and photographer Sara Collie with “Soliloquy from the Bridge,” one of the five finalists in our essay contest. This is a highly metaphorical piece about recovering from childhood trauma stemming from extremely critical parenting, told in Sara’s inimitable and magical voice.
“It is not quite dawn as I approach the bridge today. I haven’t come alone. A child is walking by my side, clutching my outstretched hand. You will probably recognise her. She looks a lot like me: the same wistful, brown eyes; the same sweep of golden hair, though hers is cut shorter than my unruly mane so that it hangs like a curtain half-drawn around her face. Her long limbs move with a peculiar kind of grace that belies the all-too-frequent bouts of terror she has lived through. She bears it well, though it isn’t hers to carry and never was. I am here to help her set it down—to put to an end a chain of events unwittingly set in motion a long time ago.”
The bridge is a liminal space lying between her father’s strict and ordered world and the more compassionate, flexible world she has chosen to inhabit. She holds out hope that he will one day meet her there, a hope tempered by her boundaries and her refusal to recant the life she has chosen.
“But I am done playing nice. I am not interested in laughing in all the so-called “right” places, never once breaking a frown or shedding a tear. I am not interested in repentance or being the bad one who bears all the blame. I am not interested in any of my old familial duties or holding up the façade that you have been building for most of your life. I can’t.”
Part of growing up is recognizing your parents as human beings who made choices: some right, some wrong and many ambiguous. For some people, that process deepens into an endearing friendship with our elders. For others, it draws a curtain between us and a painful past, which must be left behind lest it poison our lives. The metaphorical nature of this essay makes it easier to approach and talk about abuse–psychological or physical–creating a liminal safe space, a bridge, where painful memories can be unpacked and hopes for reconciliation can be watered. Sara reinvents the fairy-tale trope with a woman who saves herself. There is no vague “happy ever after,” no necessity for closure. There is instead the potential for a complex and unique individuation, a more fulfilling life.
Read “Soliloquy from the Bridge” in Synkroniciti’s “Recovery” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Sara Collie (she/her) is a writer, language tutor and psychotherapist-in-training based in the east of England. She has a PhD in French Literature and a lifelong fascination with the way that words and stories shape and define us. Her writing explores the wild, uncertain spaces of nature, the complexities of mental health, and the mysteries of the creative process. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Neon Door, The Selkie, Confluence, Synkroniciti, Stonecrop Review, Full Mood Magazine and elsewhere.