Ink Stained Soul…

Somewhere in the pain and tears you find pieces of yourself.
The nights don’t feel as lonely. You are not scared like you once were.
The songs don’t pull you into a trance or spiral.
Days are not filled with thoughts of them.
You just become more and more yourself.
It’s slow.
So slow you can’t exactly pin point it’s beginning.
You grow into who you were always meant to be.
And you realize that’s me.
I am her.

There are nights when I grow so weary of this brokenness inside.
I don’t want to fill my time hiding it and yet too tired of carrying it alone. Waiting for him.
This phantom I believe exist to hold me. To give me the protection of my heart I alone don’t have to bare. Can I allow my entire self to soften into him? Will he allow us both the gift of vulnerability? Will I get my partner to lead our dance of life? Hollow in my waiting some nights. The ache in my very bones to have love in words and actions. Choosing it day after day without seeking to poison us with outsider validation. Can I experience not having to be betrayed to see what should have been seen from the beginning? I yearn for him. The faceless man I know is coming. Hurry.

I need a place for my pain to go tonight. Something to make the physical pain stop so I don’t have to know the source of it. It’s still there and even decades later nights like tonight I feel disgust in my skin. Wanting to be held and protected but never fully trusting it will be real. All the ways I have truly healed and this never goes away completely. Stained by pain. Stained by others. Stained by tears. Stained by fractures in my soul. Stained in ink that gives it some place to go.

It would be so easy to let him come hold me tonight.
He wouldn’t try and have my body.
He would hold me so I wasn’t alone.
He wouldn’t hold my pain though.
He can’t.
Anything hard to hear, talk about how I’m hurting, my past.
He needs to talk about happy things.
There is no place for my scars.
If he held me, it would be a shell not me.

It’s never as simple as what’s your favorite color.
They all mean something to me.
Pink and white have become so soft and healing to me. The feminine side that has emerged from my growth. Green is earth and blooming back to life. Fresh cut grass that reminds me of the man that grounds me.
Blue, the water and sky release me from a cage to freedom. Also his eyes that open me to unbound amazement of depths.
Purple soft mixing with the sky welcoming in the night to illuminate the beauty of the moon that I love so much. The colors red and black mixing together as coals burning in the fire igniting my passion and desires in it’s beauty and darkness.
Colors are simple, the way they provoke feeling is where you allow your complexity to live?

There is this collection of things we realized along our paths of love.
Not all blue eyes feel the same when you look at them.
Being held isn’t all you need, if it isn’t the arms you want to be in.
You don’t become soft in the presence of just any man. You don’t feel yourself awe stricken but everyone. You reach for who your heart is teethered to even if you don’t understand or even realize you are doing it. None of these things matters to society and titles. This is instincts in our nature to be drawn to raw truths that our minds won’t allow. Something greater in the soul to call in someone that truly matches the fabric of who you are and to whom you belong.

You see a woman getting sexy and more fit.
To me I am reclaiming my body from survival mode from unwanted trauma.
You see a woman looking for attention or validation.
All I see is the girl I was before I lost my choice.
I celebrate the life I almost lost that night and the nights that followed.
I pour into healing for the part of me that I thought had died.
You see someone to conquer and get in bed.
I see a woman that values who touches her, selective in her choice.
My glow is about me and how in the darkest parts this life has shown me I can find my way back to the light.

After a short conversation my nervous system was calm. I don’t know how you do it. I don’t understand why my storms feel clearer after we speak. All I know is I feel grounded in my body because of you. Beyond logic, reason, or even my whimsy you single handedly are the one person to make it all melt away. A protection you cast around me making it okay for me to be vulnerable and safe. It has angered me along the path because I don’t want to need you. To need you is to risk losing you. Truthfully I do need you. I am whole even if I am broken with you. You make me see, feel, think. You guide me without force. You allow me to be me. In many ways I am yours and you are mine. Always an ear and backup for life’s curveballs. We believe in one another when we both don’t have any care for most people of the world. Somehow we found something greater. We found friendship, appreciation, respect, admiration, and loyalty.

You didn’t love me and suddenly I no longer wanted you to.
Because I realized you were right you can’t give me what I want and deserve.
Nights where you stay the whole night.
Good morning texts on days I don’t wake up in your arms or with you inside of me.
Calls where you just want to hear my voice.
Hands that can’t stay off of my soft skin.
Protective and possessive over what belongs to you.
A man unafraid of passion and emotional depths that make the ocean seem small.
The kind of consideration that feels effortless but thoughtful.
One who wants me to feel loved and chosen in his actions and words.
Romance, flowers, and sunsets.
Kissing under the moon while we dance.
Intertwined, breathless, and raw emotion.
I see that your love would have never been what my soul craves. Someone that loves me without restraint.
One that loves freely, entirely.
Building.
One that allows me to love him the same.

One of the hardest things to witness is someone leaving. Unable to hold space for you or unwilling to do so. It’s a quiet pain. Sadness that makes the smile not reach your eyes. Reasons you know nothing about but you see it all too well. An ache of what once held you. Caught between nights you felt so much and tears of it will never be the same again. You are torn between what was, what is, and what it could have been. Love with no place to go.