Originally written many Saturday nights ago and posted without conscious thought after two glasses of wine on an empty tummy the following Wednesday night, I promptly removed this post the next morning. I’m going to post it again, because someone suggested tonight that I write about what I fear in an effort (I think) to help me purge it. Trust is something I fear.

When I test-published this a month ago, it was without inhibition or any obvious concern for the fact that I’ve continually made an effort to keep my “real” life far from these pages and these pixels. There are volumes of words you’ll never see that have fallen clumsily onto a keyboard by way of my heart and hands. This should be one of them, but for inexplicable reasons, it’s now yours. Who knows, it might disappear again within minutes. We’ll see how long my bravery holds.

The sun spent hours attempting to set tonight, far longer than she should have given my impatience. I don’t blame her completely for wanting the beauty of her youth to last, adolescence is precious and she showed her unwillingness to go quietly by reaching her beams out like the arms of a child being torn from its mother’s bosom.

The long shadows that extended beyond the rooftops and the brittle streets seeped silently into my psyche - taunting me. The minutes ticking pulled at my mind like a thick, long, dim hum in my ears I’d failed to notice there until it stopped and the vacancy became abundant and blaring.

Realize that my preference for the peace that comes with the cover of night is a truth I would never expect you to comprehend in the way my soul does. The muted air is tender and soft and I revel in the joy that comes with my intrusion as I cut through it like a razor to flesh. Unwanting, uncaring, unafraid and invincible.

Perched precariously on the edge of an overstuffed chair, biding time awaiting the safety that comes with lack of light, I found my jaw sore and my brow furrowed. I’m grinding my teeth during what should be my resting hours, and have awoken countless times in recent nights to find my arm asleep from having used it as a pillow. With the weight of my cranium cutting off circulation to my limbs (it’s heavy from all the brains, yo) I realize fractions of my body are battling others for power while I continue on in an unconscious world showing black and white mental films of fantasies that bleed into memories. The soul my mind claims for its own is restless and weary, the heart I attempt to deny strains under the weight of its own emptiness and threatens to collapse on itself.

In a display of ruthless irony the universe directed me to spend time winding through a familiar organizational maze in which I uncovered a picture of myself from early in this decade.

It’s been years since I was entangled in the colors that bind my image to this memory. The day this picture was taken, I knew comfort and familiarity. This is what I looked like hours before the hurt, months before I tried and failed to heal, years before I discovered the ability to comprehend or employ forgiveness.

I considered the story as my weight met buckling paving stones with resounding thuds, as I ignored a want or need for grace and focused only on holding my head up and breathing. Breathe. Breathe. Trying to push the memory out through my legs, attempting feebly to bury it deep into the cracks of the sidewalk as the tread of my shoe met it with malicious intent. As if the flex of a muscle or the scream of a joint could silence the mind and prevent it from retelling a tale it would rather forget. It’s a wound that’s healed, but as is often the case, it left numb tissue behind. In the end, the scar is the remainder of the equation we created and this photo is the sum total of what I looked like the last time I believed someone loved me.

Buried somewhere in those words is the answer to the question that was asked of me and somewhere beyond the confines of this screen are the bravery, desire and inspiration needed to face and conquer the fear.

Kissy boo, darlings. A happier post tomorrow, I promise.