an empty victory

I avoid the mirror, the bloodshot eyes stained from the tears brought by years of frustration, 
I look instead inside, searching for an answer, a reason. 
Some sort of justification. Anything. 
The energy it took, the agonizing pain I forced myself to get past or swallow or get through, the stench of my own flesh decomposing, rotting away on my legs…
So many times I could have stopped fighting, so many times I wanted to. 
It wouldn’t have taken more than a few weeks until I went away, and if the pain got too unbearable I had the pills stashed. 
An hour at most, into one last dream – 
and then nothing but a name
forgotten in time.

But I had hope. I believed that things could be better.
That they would be.

How wrong I was.

So now, I search inside
for the passion
the rage
the anger
that i have found 
and hold so dear

I search for the love,
a reason,
a purpose…

but these past months
the deeper i go
the less i find and
the less i find a reason
to go on.

Seven years since I left the hospice, seven years fighting against the current, trying desperately to make it to calm water… 
and for what? For THIS fucking life? This life, where loneliness eats away at my heart, where I seldom know where the next meal is coming from, where I can’t even pay my bills.
This is not what I fought for. Not what I lived for – and I can’t help but think, at times, that I made a mistake.

But here I am. If it was a mistake, it’s already been made, and it’s far too late to give up now.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll sell some jewelry, maybe I’ll soon finally be able to buy a car so I can not only do the things I need for my business to make it grow, but escape this city and just drive until I find a place – a beach or forest somewhere, alone, where I can find my heart again.

Maybe.

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again, me.

Right now I am imagining myself in a small forest. Living in a 10×10 tent with all that I could ever need inside and all that I love outside but not separate from me. Only a zipper and a flap between us when I or they come looking for companionship. A friend.

Right now I am creating the future by reliving the past. I know what I want. I will have it.

Right now I vividly see my dog, the Grandmother Tree, our fun, seriousness, my lovers and friends.

Right now I need this. I am doing all it takes to remember.
In my notes I find a gift to me:

“I find it hard to breathe in your arms. it has less to do with the urgency of your embrace, the strength in your slender sinewy limbs… more the relentlessness of your self. i find myself outnumbered, surrounded, because you are starving, ravenous, for life and love and laughter. 

and these things i have, like candies spilling out of my overfull hands 

i hold them behind me, not to taunt you, but unsure that i can surrender them without loosing fingers. 

you are no tame bird”

and this reminds me to again take wing.

You could have no idea what 18 months of physical captivity did to me. You have no idea how many times I thought of taking all of the morphine I had saved for the one single purpose: to die, to be free.

It would make it all so much easier.

In a few weeks or months you would forget me, save for the infrequent glimmer in your mind, or perhaps the half-taken gasp where you thought you saw me for a fraction of one scarce moment.

Right now I am fighting just as hard as you, just as hard as we need to to stay alive. I do not give up, only let go of the things that I have learned are not worth my time.

What I went through did change me, this is true. How could it not?

But I am the same me. As full of love and anger as ever – and more.

Right now I am becoming myself again – full of passion, love, rage and the pureness of wonder.

It has taken time. There was a lot to think about. There was a lot to digest… and I made mistakes.

I am stronger now. I have learned.

My wings are again unfolding.