There are times in life when one's arrival is not a triumph, but an act of endurance.
From the outset, the arrival looks ordinary. A door opens. Boxes appear. Someone new occupies a space that once belonged to someone else.
The surface story is simple – so others think.
But beneath the surface, someone's arrival can be the final step in a long sequence of pain, of unravelling. People may assume those who arrive have chosen their moment carefully. They have weighed every factor up, honoured every expectation, followed every rule.
It's comforting to believe that life unfolds according to orderly decisions. But sometimes arrival isn't about order. It's about necessity. A person arrives carrying absence so heavy – it alters the gravity around them.
In the early days, there is an awareness of being seen. Observed even – but never understood. Even if they speak, you can never really understand or know what they've been through, what's been endured, unless you have endured it too.
Then there is silence, silence others may interpret as indifference, or stillness as certainty. They cannot see or know about the private workings-out taking place – the quiet calculations of how to continue, how to remain, or how to exist in a landscape that has been permanently altered.
There are things that go unexplained, and even if they're explained, they may still not be understood, not because they don't matter, but because explaining would require opening doors that cannot be easily closed again.
Yes, time passes and seasons bloom again – and what was once unfamiliar becomes routine again. Presence replaces arrival. Most things do not need to be resolved to be lived with. Eventually, a person understands that survival itself was explanation enough – even if no words were ever spoken.
Written from the other side of Arrival – one does not need to 'correct the record' to anyone to know what is true.
