Slaying Dragons

I sat there in my sister’s kitchen with her and her new boyfriend, giggling and catching up on lost time. As it goes growing up in a small-town, he wasn’t new to me at all. I had somewhat of an intimate encounter with this now grown man standing before me in high school. A silly drunk night of back seat neckin’ at a bonfire party. This encounter was not special in its physicality, or that we had dated and felt love for one another, but I was viscerally re-living inside of the aftermath of our encounter and the imprint it left on my fragile teenage ego.

I felt myself get swept away into a vortex, liminal space of retrieval maybe(?) as I sat listening to him detail a story about another physical encounter, not with me, as a “Slaying The Dragon”. A term, I realized, he was using to detail his sexual exploits. The room shrank, a cool calm set upon me as I recalled that Monday morning at the school commons, as my friends shared that he had “Slayed the Dragon” referring to myself, just that past weekend in the backseat of his truck.

“SLAYED THE DRAGON”

At the time, I was aghast. Embarrassed. Betrayed. Used. I was an insecure, pimply, red headed freak. I clung to the fringes of my cool sporty girl circle but never felt enveloped by its embrace. Why would these girls even share that he had carelessly said that about our experience? This moment was a pivotal crystallization of every self deprecating thing I thought about myself. I was right. He was right. I WAS a dragon. I felt like a hideous monster as I numbingly tucked the shame down deep, and spouted some flagrant retort.

The room swirled, but this time was different. The loving parent inside me, recognized the reality of being face to face with this dragon once again. And it wasn’t mine. The dragon was the ignorance of female objectification. NOT ME. In fact, it wasn’t even about me as I realized it was simply a dehumanizing term for his disembodied exploits.

I felt a tether snap somewhere inside of me, but there was a gentle confidence that replaced my insidious lack of self-esteem. I was free. I was released. I was and still am awakening to the glory of all that I am. I am writing the myth of my bigness and smallness and goodness and darkness. I am the author, no one else.

In this tale of dragons, I am the knight, the prince, the Queen. I might even be a dragon that was always too big for that small town. A dragon with a heart of fire and wings of freedom.

A dragon that cannot be slayed.