Until my Last Breath

Until my Last Breath

(thoughts of a chaotic mind.)

By: Destiny Tozier

As I sit here pondering the time that has gone by, freshly turned 35 as of January 13, a mother and a college student I question what it is I truly want from this life. Knowing I spent most of it in a chaos I could have changed or walked away from at any time, fighting battles that at the end of the day never were mine to fight, spending months at a time on a healing journey that makes me wonder if I have ever healed at all. The only victory I think I won in the war of tearing myself to the core, was the actual ability to let go of things and people that no longer or have never made me feel good nor brought anything of substance to the table because they didn't care to be a part of what was important to me.

As I look around my world today, I feel more foreign with where I stand then I ever have before begging for a place to feel like I belong, questioning my purpose. I work a job that brings me zero passion and all I can question is if 4 years of college and a lifetime of debt is going to truly bring me there. I feel I'm a girl who is so full of life, love and laughter placed in the wrong world that she was never meant to be in. Everyday seems like it's on repeat and as mundane as the one before and all I can question is what kind of legacy I am leaving for my children and their children to come, have I broken enough generational bullshit for them to continue on this life with a little more success than I ever allowed myself to have.

I feel I am nearing the corner of granny hood as each day adds another wrinkle and a new grey hair and I have about as many answers to where I am going as that of the day I was actually born. I know I certainly am not where I used to be, and I have grown more as a person who hermits herself from the world because she holds to much knowledge that is the destruction of man that being a part of this society holds little excitement for me. The only reprieve I have from this world is the moments I can wonder in the woods, back road drive or sit and listen to the melodies of a body of water and write, which I have yet to be able to do for a few months now because winter isn't my favorite time of year and my days have been filled with deadlines and appointments.

Who is Destiny has been the words scrambling around in my head because I have spent so much of my life caring for the needs of others, that I feel I have lost my identity in a race I deeply don't know if I have ever wanted to be in.? I have goals and dreams that I would like to reach as basic as they may be, only to be all about stability, which may be a small dream for most but would be the hugest for me because it is something in my life that I never got to know the feeling of.

My life continues to feel like it's forever suspended in the air, trapezeing over the guilt and shame I once carried fearing that eventually I will fall back down into the pit of it, all the while wondering if I'll ever get to whisper the words "I made it at last." While letting go of the past loves that never could quite be.

Love is a whole other word that at one time I used to dream of, but as each one failed as hard as the next I wonder if the real essence of what its supposed to mean truly exists, and not the love that which you have for children and family because that is eternal, but the type of love that at the end of a hard day you know you will go home and be embraced by the one who despite it all sees through all the armor you bury yourself under, straight into the core that is you and holds your heart with such a passionate delicate intimacy that all of the forced steel melts away in an instant. The type of love that holds your hands through your worst to help pull yourself out of your own darkness of hell you placed around you because the world got to heavy for you to carry.

The existence of that love is minimal in a world like today, filled with selfish, fake laughter all the while hiding behind a mask of unhealed wounds that we project onto those we say we love when that love is only there to fill the void of loneliness, from the abandonment we felt from the ones before. But is it them who abandoned me or is it me who abandoned self by accepting less than what I now see I deserved all along from the conditioning I allowed myself to believe that I was not worth anything more.

Am I destined to be alone, even though alone is where I find the most comfort, I still sit and find myself yearning for the person who is meant for me? The one who when they look at me doesn't fear the ugly parts of who I am that still peak out from the scars I have collected from all the anguish I once endured, but instead looks into my eyes and without words to speak lets me know they found home.

Who is Destiny when all the chaos she has left to organize is that of which is in her own mind, as she sits in a constant state of silent prayer trying to find the answer to her next path out of the sea of them laid before her all the while swimming through the fear of drowning. Who is Destiny as I ask myself while staring into the unknown of my own eyes of a selfie that brandishes a smile that I am unsure has found the true peace that she has been desperately searching for, after clawing out of the hells of the negativity that once suffocated me into a state of constant worries of the worst case scenarios, that I manifested into existence at one time when self-love was something she believed was only in the existence of being everyone else's scape goat, so she could save them from having to face themselves.

Who is she when that is all now a thing of the past left to finally rot in the Graves that they belong in, not having to be left with only the emotion of anger because there is nothing left for me to defend, of the defense I played by holding on to tight to those who couldn't see the wreckage they themselves placed on my heart, that I spent numerous hours putting back together by sifting through the pain of the blame that was mine to carry while sending back out those that which wasn't mine to hold into the universe of forgotten apologies.

Who am I now that I am standing here "whole" yet only 3/4 of the way "healed" as I set out on another quest to find the last of the pieces that will fill the places that which I had to leave empty, from the remanence of the dead end hopes that I had no choice but to leave behind for they no longer fit in the anomaly of the puzzle that is me, so I can get myself to where I can say, "I have made it at last." Or, will I spend the rest of this lifetime never truly knowing, as I feel my last breath escape past my lips while my only thought left to process will be, "that its only in death I have finally found the true peace that I spent a lifetime searching for."