Facing the Past: Part 2

The Nothingness

Deep inside
There is a pain
A pain of unhallowed grief,
Of crimson loss,
And black betrayal.
There is no light in this place,
Nor darkness either.
It is there.
But not.
You cannot see it.
But sometimes you can feel its
Nothingness.
A blankness that eats at my soul,
Sucking, grasping, licking
At my spirit,
Trying to erase me,
My light,
And my soul.
It blackens my heart,
And claws at my mind.
Only my defenses keep it
At bay.
And stop it from consuming
Me whole.

Poem number two in a series that gets increasingly morbid

I read this, and the words just leave me.

I have started to write this 4 times now. I never knew how hard it would be for me to talk about this part of my life. I thought that I was over it, but obviously, I’m not.

I’ve actually had to walk away from this and go meditate and do some yoga before coming back here to try again. This is like hacking your own leg off with a spoon – slow, painful and just not fun.

Yet I’m drawn to talking about it anyways.

I feel like, for cathartic reasons, that I need to talk out what’s on my mind and face some of the things that I just keep avoiding.

A part of me died back then.

I never realized that until today, during one of my several attempts to put words to my feelings. A part of me died and I have never mourned that. I have never grieved for the person that got lost in all the pain.

It was a releasing of my old self. I had reached a point where I knew I wasn’t getting better, and that devastated me.  Up until that point, I’d been clinging to a desperate hope that I was going to go back to being the girl I once was. That I’d wake up one day, and feel fantastic, and there I’d be, that girl I once knew, before all the pain and the illness started.

When it was finally clear that I wasn’t getting better, I had to let go of that girl and all of her dreams and aspirations. She died.

That’s what happened the night I nearly killed myself. I couldn’t fathom my life not being that girl. She was dying and I wanted to go with her. I didn’t want to be alive if I couldn’t be her. She died that night. She fell away, turned to dust. In reality, she’d been dead for years. I just kept propping her up with more and more pillows and sticks and supports in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, she’d come back to life. She didn’t.

I had this image in my head for a long time of me propping a dead body up in a rocking chair, next to a fireplace. I kept bringing it tea and cookies and tucking it in under a blanket to make sure it was warm and toasty next to the fire. It never changed the fact that it was still a dead body.

Being reborn

While one girl may have died that night, another girl was born. That girl is me now. In fact, I wouldn’t even say girl – I would say woman.

You can’t face that much darkness in your soul without coming out a lot older than you were before. I felt like I’d aged 10 years in half an hour. And yet I was older and younger at the same time. I still feel like that some days – a newborn, a young child, negotiating this life as someone utterly different than who I spent 18 years being.

My life changed that day. It changed for the better.

I’m still getting to know this person that I am now. We weren’t friends for a long time. I was ashamed of her, and where she’d come from. She was stronger than I knew how to deal with. She saw and spoke the truth with blistering honesty. She wasn’t okay with a lot of things in my life – she wanted more. She believed. She had faith and she was full of intuition.

But because I never mourned the girl I lost, I’ve never been able to welcome the woman I’ve become.

I’m finally starting to make peace with her. We’re getting to know each other and as it turns out, I rather like her.