8-28

It’s odd to look back at my history, the violence and the fear and the incredible strange things I have gone through--human shit on the floor, rides from strangers, handing back a key and closing a door, striking out with my fists, sirens and red and blue lights piercing the thick night over and over.

Yet I look back and that was my life. People adapt. That was my life and I lived it. What else was there to do?

Maybe enough time has passed now that the memories are just dull. The depression and throwing up my meals in secret, the overall fear fear fear, knives under the pillow, sleeping with the lights on so I could protect myself--the memories are in my head but they’re not a part of who I am anymore. 

They happened to another woman, a girl who outgrew her fierce existence and settled into expectations. A feral child from the woods who was given language and societal restrictions. Pocahontas, carried from her open land to waste slowly away in smog and cobbled streets and restrictive clothing that shifts the organs.

I am adapting to my new life. The mundane things become enormous when they are the only sparks on the horizon. I have to stop myself from making specks of dust into supernovas. I am past the rapids and I coast, catching my breath. In my heart I am still alert and defensive, an animal in the zoo. A fed creature in a cage, you must keep your fingers from the bars.

I was past the rapids but I let myself be carried away in the current.

New life. New love. New home. Overwhelming. Frightening. I fought the peace. Peace comes before the war, so I trained for battle.

I wish I had lain down my sword earlier. I am trying now. I keep it close, my armor on, but I must give myself time to rest. I must not continue to make my own enemies of shadows.

I would start over, if I could. It’s a pretty image, letting go of the things behind us, but in truth my fingers are always twitching toward the hilt.

I wish I could have broken open and let you see within, see how much I loved and wanted you. Perhaps then you would have lay down your sword and we could have rested together.

But perhaps not.

Life is life and we adapt.