Ink Stained Soul…

I didn’t cry, I froze. Shock washed over me like I was just slapped across the face. Was it the words, the way they were said, or the person who said them? I don’t know. That’s the crack where time stopped for me. The moment I remember thinking, ‘This is how he sees me and I was trying to be caring.’ The bruise was so deep; I still recall it took hours before I could cry. The date etched in my tortured heart. That’s when the grief started.

To the man I end up spending my life with some day, I hope you know that before I decide to take a leap of faith with you, I will have laid my past ghosts to rest. The one I wrote about for so many years, the man I struggled to move on from. I want you to know that when our story begins, he will be a memory that I’ll cherish for the lessons, growth, and hope he brought me. I hope he’s found the one who makes his heart soar, just as you make mine. I want you to know that I’ll carry him with me always, because he was worth carrying. We both grew from the experiences we shared, and though it was difficult, we became better because we broke free from each other for our future selves. The love I have for him doesn’t diminish the love we will share; instead, it’s a testament to my capacity to love and grow.

I forgot about allowing another to decide. It isn’t a small thing, and yet I forgot. How often do we do this? What if we just said the truth inside us? I want to shield you from my storms, but I also want you with me in mine. Why can’t it both be true? Is love about protecting them, or is it a lie we tell ourselves? It could be the fear of rejection if they can’t or won’t handle it. Perhaps it’s the fear that we’d just be toxic. Maybe it is love because we know we have so little to offer but our messy selves. The heart doesn’t grasp the difference, and we can punish without full understanding. The throat gets caught on the fear left in us when we say what we need and are met with indifference. Deep wounds were already ingrained before we ever met. What if you just gave yourself? Could you stay? Would they be around when you run? Can you grow? What if you dared to heal together? Shouldn’t all parties have a chance to decide what they want to do? Can you allow someone into the dialogue in your head?

I heard you that night, the night I briefly cried and you held me. When I was almost asleep, you pulled me closer. I heard you say you loved me. I knew you didn’t mean for me to hear. I told you I loved you in my head and slept. I wish we were both brave enough, but we were broken.

I feel time closing in around me. It’s in the way I don’t react. How I just go ‘huh, okay’ and let silence wash over me. I don’t feel the need to fight. The inability to breathe deep doesn’t make me scared any longer. The sadness isn’t the same. I feel a little less day by day. The laughter that surrounds me no longer feels distant, at the end of some long tunnel. I can look on others moving in their lives, and it doesn’t cut so deeply. The sting is so brief that I’m left wondering if it was real. The walls reemerged, but not out of fear this time. This time, they’re security features, built-in upgrades to keep something valuable inaccessible to carelessness.

I’m not calculated. I have spent my life trying to access danger, to read the room and gauge potential trouble. I note exits, faces, and the people who might step in, trying to control my nervous system from triggers. Will I smell those scents, see a piece of clothing like theirs somewhere, or hear a phrase used when I was not safe? If I leave abruptly, I’m not playing a game – I am fleeing from what my body feels like I may break if I don’t get home. I use humor to keep myself shielded, a mask that I swear sometimes I fool myself. My thoughts are never able to process everything being said because I’m on high alert, trying to keep everything in my sight. I have lived through so many horrific things that I can’t be normal. It is something I will never experience. So you see, I don’t have time to play a game – I’m too busy trying to survive so I never have to experience another moment like that again.

My heart aches to know love as the receiver. All the wounds that reopen at an attack recover – sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. But they do recover. It’s the words that linger: ‘unclean,’ ‘tainted,’ ‘unworthy of love.’ They’re dark shadows whispering at me. When physical pain resurfaces, I hear them – reminders of the nights I survived. Each new situation that doesn’t feel as bad, I allow to take hold, because it looks different. Avoiding the same monsters, I’ve encountered new ones I wasn’t prepared for. I retreat into safety, whether it’s with my sanctuary I build alone or with a monster that I’m so numb to, I don’t even care. Is this what a lifetime of abuse looks like? At the heart of it, I’m still broken, and all I can do is hope and love. Maybe that’s why it keeps coming to break me – because I still show up as love.

My muse, that is what he was. The words that begged to be written. I, giving in as I Always do. Unable to do anything but honor what my soul speaks. He needed solitude and I was a storm.

Why is it that when your health is failing life feels heavy with things hidden in your heart?
When your heart is slow and not pumping properly you feel the ache of a love you can’t hold.
You think about how much you just want to be held by them.
That the longer you are sick the more you grieve for time with the one you love desperately.
As you feel yourself growing weaker you dream of what matters most inside your heart.
It feels like Something greater forcing you to be honest with yourself as time slips away.

The one who created me, he must have known. When he made my heart soft, yet put me through hell, he knew I would break. The world would try to kill me, but I would be rebirthed into the ashes. Each time they were sent for me, he knew what he made – a soul that would endure. He knew I needed children to make me go on, that they would be the key, even when I couldn’t understand. My heart would be crushed under others’ words, but I would adjust and grow as I burned. He knew who he made in me – an angelic phoenix who grew as I learned. The eldest daughter forged in fire.