The light of January
caresses my skin
warming me –
despite the bite
of the wind…
There is a hope in my heart
I hardly know how to navigate.
A loss I feel
but do not kneel to…
I will not be cowed
by grief –
will not bow to it…
I will, instead,
hold fast to the hope
brought by January sunlight…
a newness in the day
unshackled by old regrets…
untainted by this
old grief.
Alive.
I shout into the wind
the full volume of my pain
and listen for the answer
echoing back at me in silence…
my hands fisted at my side,
my soul reaching for hope.
Even on the most hope-
less days, the night wind
comforts, loves, caresses my side
and gently lifts my pain
offering me peace, silence
and hints at the answer
I have been searching for…answers
to my desperation…this subtle hope
sings to me in this silence,
accompanied by the whispering wind…
the balm to my soul’s pain..
wind’s fingers tracing the inside
of my open collar, along the side
of my neck. What if the answer
to happiness, is embracing the pain?
Could that be our hope?
Pain danced away in the wind,
twirling in the dark silence?
Slowly the raging cacophony falls silent
and peace settles gently inside.
My mind still on the wind’s
Embrace, no longer looking for an answer
just awash in that elusive hope…
for the moment, a reprieve from pain.
I look into the eyes of pain
reflected in my mirror… silence
all around me… hope
slowly growing deep inside.
Questions forgotten, unanswered
for the moment, healed by the wind.
Despite the pain always inside
Despite the silence, years with no answer
I will forever find hope, waiting on the wind.
December has a
Sense of urgency…
Days flowing too fast
And I can’t find my footing…
Stumbling over these rocks
Of grief,
And falling down hard –
Body battered
Soul crying out for help
To an empty room
The wall’s silence
Screaming back at me…
Needles of that empty echo
Piercing my heart….
What is one more wound?
Languid, half asleep, in morning hours
I hear your voice…
Half-finished conversations
rushed conclusions
hasty goodbyes…
And I turn over …
again, searching for sleep –
wondering where dreams begin
only to end again… and why.
Thoughts blow like November winds
through my mind
prickling my skin
and bidding me dig deeper
into the covers to seek
my comfort there…
to find surcease from the black
loneliness that sometimes
threatens in the early morning hours
absent your voice…
I am treading water here..
riding the black waves of fear
and despair, trying
not to drown, but
to rise up on that current
and find my hope
my center
my self
and SWIM…
One day I will
hear a noise in the
dark and will not fear…
will not stop
*breathing*
to listen for
his footsteps…
but will, instead
pause, to hear
your voice calm me…
and listen for your lullaby..
my November wind…
whistling past the window…
lulling me to sleep…
I don’t know how to navigate this… How do I prepare myself for pain? How do I mourn what I have not yet lost? I can feel the emptiness threaten me already and I don’t know how to prepare myself for this agonizing ache… this absence of you… I keep trying to tell myself that I am ready for this, that this is inevitable and that I should stop mourning…that I should just be ok… Move on… I want to close my heart and stop feeling this way. I have been through enough. I have done enough. I have mourned enough. I am tired… so very tired… Can I just quit now? Please? I don’t want to keep putting my heart through the ringer. I don’t want to keep hoping only to feel like I could be put on a shelf at any time. What do I do when my heart refuses to listen to me and loves you despite all my warnings? What do I do when I find myself – again – alone at the end of the day? I was just getting the hang of alone… or so I thought… Now I FEEL lonely.. that is new. I wasn’t lonely before… I was just relieved… Now the weight of the silence and the absence of the voice I long to hear weighs on me and just hurts. Please show me the way out of here… I don’t know how much more I can take.
I am haunted by you.
You dog my steps in
the silence of the night
and I lie awake …
tensed for the sound
of your rage.
Drifting off, exhausted,
I startle to every sound,
every breath the house takes
makes me catch my own…
heart pounding…
waiting for pain.
How do I exorcise you
from a place
you never lived?
How do I, instead,
evict you from my heart…
to live no longer haunted?
To breathe again..
Free?
Who mourns the death of a tyrant? Do you mourn the loss of the person who caused you unimaginable pain? I recently found out that my mother died. Apparently she died back in May. I didn’t know how to feel… mostly because I kept waiting to feel all the things you are supposed to feel when your mother dies… I kept waiting for tears, for mourning, for pain, for confusion… What I mostly felt was … relief. The world felt a little safer to me… Don’t get me wrong, I felt pain… but it was largely the pain of my life…of every time I was abused, neglected, insulted, criticized, misunderstood, raped, hit… The pain of everything she could have been but wasn’t.
It feels scandalous to say out loud that I was relieved when I found out my mother died…but that is the ugly truth of it. I wonder if everyone that is abused feels the same… is this a truth that we all just don’t say out loud? We face polite society and cower in the face of judgement from others. I did. Honestly, I have been judged my entire life. I have lived in pain all my life and been judged for saying I hurt… been judged harshly for saying what you did hurt me… I have been flat out told that I had no reason to hurt. When I confronted my parents with the truth of my pain I was ignored, told that there was nothing wrong with me… when I asked for therapy I was told I don’t need it… I was told over and over that in so many ways that I was crazy…. So now…when I know she is gone – I feel relieved…. I feel like there is one less person trying to gaslight me. One less narcissist to go around pretending like we had this perfect little family.
I will not remain silent… I have been quiet for years – I backed into the shadows… This has brought me back into the light… this had made me feel a little safer in the world, a little more at home. The world with one less monster in it feels like a better world to live in… a safer place for my heart, my memories, my thoughts, my anger, fear, pain, triumph, hope…. safer for me.
I felt for the last several years like I just wanted to hide from everyone, from my past, from the world at large… learning about my mother’s death makes me feel invited back out into the sun…. I belong here. I am not going anywhere and just because the truth makes people uncomfortable doesn’t mean that I will ever stop speaking it and putting it out there. I realized that me shutting up doesn’t protect me – it just makes the monsters more comfortable and that is not the way I want to live anymore.
So…. I am accepting the invitation. I am going to walk in the sun and tell the truth and put my heart back out there… hiding it was not protecting my heart – it was only protecting their reputation… So here I am. In pain, broken, hurt, angry – but full of hope and enjoying the sunlight and not afraid of my own heart anymore.
captivatingbitter 