Carefully Crafted

For months now I have been advised to censor, and carefully craft, my writings.

Tonight, however, thoughts spilling from my mind shall be written and, with luck, cathartic.

Fifty two years of audio is trampling through my throbbing temples, and tears flow in the attempt to reform negative, and controlling, rhetoric into positive affirmations.

I feel divided, my inner most core tells me one thing, my mind and heart another.

How can I explain to others in a way they can understand, when I, myself, didn't know what was happening for what seemed a lifetime, was a lifetime?

Over the last few years of soul searching I thought I knew what I was running from, running to.

People through those years witnessed, and were very aware, of the situation I was facing, and why I ran. I thought I knew and repeatedly refused to listen to their words of knowledge.

They all tried to coax me to see the reality of the place, so dark, in which I had lived. I rebutted their wisdom, and ran with what I thought to be the truth.

Finally, this summer, the words they had spoken, time after time, were illuminated, and my eyes, my heart, were opened, and to myself I admitted the unthinkable.

I was surprised each, and every, time person after person approached me with the same words that others before had desperately tried to get me to embrace.

It was then I realized, I wasn't running from me, but from something entirely different. It was then my spirit lightened, and felt it could fly free. Everything made sense.

It was then I felt as though I could breathe, and be myself.

Unfortunately decades of indoctrination are difficult to throw away, even though I now admit what others had seen is true, the effects of a lifetime come in waves.

A rock had been thrown into the pond, everyone wanted to see as still, causing the water to ripple, it will take time for those effects to slow, and for the water to once again calm.

Most days I'm able to cope, to see the brightness that lies ahead, other days, like now, the shades are once again drawn, as words of unworthiness, and flashes of bruises, replay in my mind, and make me doubt the reasons for my existence.

One thing I have learned, that I've always known, is that I have a spirit that is tenacious, and a will that can overcome the darkness of the past.