sitting on the ground in all sorts of places

Life can be such a dick sometimes.

Six months ago, life decided to deliver me a hard lesson, and I've been reeling ever since. Worse than reeling, truth be told. More like lying on the ground, bruised and battered, after being thrown down a flight of stairs.

So here I am, trying to recover. Writing my way to somewhere, though I have no idea where, as of yet. Writing my way through the pain and the heartbreak and the shame and the truth and the almost there of acceptance.

Because above all, I'm a stubborn girl and I refuse to be broken.

But I find myself sitting on the ground in all sorts of places.

On the rocky shore of this tiny beach on Lake Ontario, where the water sang to me of survival. In front of the fire on more nights than I can count, crying tears that burn down cheeks and sizzle on the hearthstone. In the corner of my bedroom in the deepdark of night, when absolute aloneness taunts me with its clarity of truth.

I have become my own mirror. Fear is my reflection, hopelessness my mirage, and over in that corner, the one just out of sight, I keep seeing your ghost.

I keep telling myself I'm too old to be this cracked wide open. Vulnerable. Duped. Lost.

Yet here I am.

Fighting every day just to keep my head above this tide of tears. I guess that's what happens when you hold them back for such a long a time. When you numb yourself to reality and decide to float along in a "this isn't so bad" sort of life. When you decide to just make do, instead of digging deep. When you blind yourself to what you cannot bear to see.

When those tears finally surface, they can't be turned off. Or diverted. Or staunched. At best, they can be held at bay, for a moment, an hour, occasionally whole days. But that's as far as I've gotten.

It's winter now, and winter is always hard. I miss my garden, the sunset, the birdsong, the windows wide open to the sounds of night. Coyotes must still laugh in these cold hard months, but it all goes unnoticed as I bury my head in a nest of quilts and pretend, once again, to sleep.

Among all else, one of the things that was stolen from me is my sleep.

I've tried all the aids, the pre-bedtime rituals, the brain wave music, the mental gymnastics. I still wake up every night at exactly the time you used to get out of bed. 3:00 a.m. It's just as before: my body knows what my mind refuses to accept. Your mind may allow you to hide the truth from yourself, but your body never will.

I wish I'd listened to my heart a long time ago. It's been trying to tell me things for years. And now here I am, holding it in my hands as it screams "I told you so" again and again and again in an echo of rawness that no one can silence.

So be it, heart.

You surely spoke and I refused to listen. Here we are now in a stand-off of wills. You have transferred ownership of your pain, and I am the recipient, even as I try my hardest to deny. You will probably win, again.

Most of the time, I hope you do.

. . . . . . .

Writing my way through the pain of betrayal. Because writing has always been the thing that saves me. Finding my way back to myself through this forest of words.