Walking an invisible bridge

TW: uses magic as an analogy.

In the recent Disney Pixar movie Onward, brothers Ian and Barley embark on a magical quest to recover a crystal. It’s a great film, full of fun and meaning, but the reason I mention it here is because there is a scene in which Ian has to cast a ‘trust bridge spell’ in order to create a magical bridge he can use to cross a bottomless pit enabling him to let down a drawbridge so his brother can cross. Doing so requires total faith in himself and his abilities, an absolute belief with every step that the bridge is there and he will make it safely to the other side.

We feel we are having to cast a ‘trust bridge spell’ a lot of the time. Dissociation and amnesic barriers between parts mean that very often I am having to trust what I am told by and intuit from other parts rather than being able to directly rely on my own memories. With every step that we take towards a safer life or getting help I have to trust that when our foot goes down it will meet something solid.

Not wanting to get it wrong or to lie sends us flailing into the abyss of doubt. It is especially difficult when the perpetrator(s), as is so often the case, are in positions of power or authority, judged by the majority to be ‘good’ people, upstanding citizens. To trust in your system, to believe what together you know is true, in a world that is telling you a different story takes every fibre of your being.

There is another sort of magic at work here, a spell, a trick. But it is cast by the perpetrator(s) upon the hapless people that surround them. It is their cover, their disguise, for who would believe the person walking their invisible bridge when all anyone can see is the public face of ‘good’ people doing ‘good’ things?

This is what we have to remind ourselves, as we find our way back to trusting ourselves, back onto our invisible bridge. We go through this cycle over and over, falling and finding our way back to ourselves and our truth. Its exhausting, it provokes intense anxiety and questioning, but we’ve noticed recently that each time we fall we don’t fall quite as far and it’s easier to find our way back.

We are starting to trust in our system and our truth over what the world might tell us, despite what spell our perpetrators have cast over the people surrounding them. Because it can be both, and. People can have committed heinous crimes against us and they can be loving, giving, just, pillars of their community. The latter does not excuse the former, neither does it prove it untrue.