Some days are better than others, this is true for all of us. I’m thankful that I now have so many more good days than bad but every once in awhile something happens, a trigger, not the intense immediate impact gun shot kind of trigger, but a crack, a leak, something that slowly lets the darkness seep. I’ve worked so hard to come so far but suddenly I become aware of the nagging, oozing presence of all too familiar darkness. I start fumbling with my hands, pulling and digging into the skin around my nails, staring at the pulsing blue trails beneath the thin skin of my wrist…

Try to remember sometimes

That you’re skin and bone

Make it harder on ourselves

Than it needs to be

You’re only human, be gentle with yourself, the sweetness inside me softly pleads. Remember, remember, you’re only human. We have bumps and trips and scrapes along the way. Stop adding another punching fist to the mix, you don’t deserve this self-brutality. Breathe.

It’s overwhelming sometimes

When you’re all alone

And you can’t tell if you’re floating or falling out of place

It is overwhelming, even for someone like me, someone who doesn’t mind being alone. I enjoy it. I relish in it. I need it. But when you’re alone sometimes it can feel like floating in space, that lone island with nothing but vast stretches of blue all around you. What’s to say that I’m centered and not about to go tumbling off the side of happiness into the deep, dank sea of darkness hungrily awaiting my fall.

Mentally, physically, I wrestle with myself. Am I not the captain of my own life, destiny, misery or happiness? I am. So I must have some directional sense, even if it lays, temporarily, deep under tissue, muscle and bone. I can feel it, it’s there. That compass that keeps me steady, and centered – you are not about to tumble into a dark oblivion, I repeat, YOU ARE NOT! That fire that moves me forward, it’s there casting a warm amber glow, things look softer when they’re full of light.

And as you go, you see it differenly than you used to see

(It starts by being someone’s lover)

The source of that light is many things. Just as I am not one thing, neatly fitting into one checked box – no, I am many things. Finding out “who you are” can be so damned overwhelming at times. There’s nothing wrong with working backwards -backwards is forwards. So figure out what, and who, you are not. Start with all the things people tell you you’re supposed to be. I don’t need you to find me or fix me; that’s my job, and I’m doing just fine.

And all you can do is try to reconcile the ways you help me feel

(No longer astronauts, philosophers, or movie stars)

With all the things you know you need

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