diary entries....

1 15 09

Her downfall will be her reflection. She will trip when she realizes what has become of her. She steps out of her tattered tent, the colors of her life ripping in the wind.

There is no monster coming.

She watches the tree line. Every morning she has risen, strapped on her armor, wincing as the metal covers the blood. She has sat outside that tent, before or after battle, watching birds or visitors, entertaining guests. They fall into a drunken sleep and she lays awake. They leave by morning. The peaceful breeze becomes her company. The silent trees become her conversation piece. She loses her thoughts to a past she will out live. She feels lost in her own scenery. She accepted this fate long ago.

This is her mistake.

There are no more battles. She wakes. Silence. She waits. The ground does not tremble. She stomps. Nothing awakes. She screams and yells and swears. Her echo comes back to her. Nothing more. She walks to the tree line. All woods begin to look the same.

There is nothing outside herself left to fight.

There are no monsters.

She walks back. The ground is muddy. Rain has plagued this place for weeks. She has fought without much sight, soaked in a grey haze.

She stops, sees movement by her feet. The reflection of a soaring shadow from over head. She glances up, but the figure is gone. She looks down. Finds her reflection. Finds what she has allowed this to become. Finds what she is missing.

She feels no pain. She has never really been afraid. She has never really missed her heart. Maybe, just maybe, she feels a sadness. A quiet, gentle regret. A discerning dissatisfaction. Her inability to be what she sees.

She has played pretend. Because when she over came all she has ever known, she didn’t know how to move on. She may not have left this place, but this place has left her.

She stares at her reflection. Nothing has changed. She remains exactly who she has always been.

She just hasn’t let go of all that’s ever been.

How does she stop from lying awake?

She has to stop fighting.

She has completed what she set out to do.

She’s taken by force the answers she sought.

Something is calling her home. Begging her to leave this mortality of being, to accept her way of understanding. To be free from all that threatens to tie her down.

She sees. In the sky, a reflection of meaning. A certain state of living.

The complications fall away. the reasons, the meanings, the sadness….goes away.

Its simply her, standing in a field, sword fighting with a playful imagination.

She believes.

That life is and people are. That she can be exactly what she sees. That she is strong enough to accept all things, instead of making them into monsters.

She rises. From a death she didn’t believe shed outlived. She walks, tainted. She remains, with experience coursing through her veins. Afflicted, affected, beaten down, lifted up. She has survived to feel a realm of human emotions. She has been, she has become, she has been undone. She has lived a life that she is fortunate to have known. Knowledge. Insight like armor. Made heavy and strong. Beautiful and resilient. She understand what she means. She understands the immortality of what she has gained. There was never a wasted moment. Never a lost sight. She has already lived a full life.

She has needed a vessel. Her perspective makes a beautiful boat. She will sail, to the corners of her world, to places she wishes to know.

She has needed to understand so that she could see. She needed to survive this first hand, to know what she is looking at. To understand the differences between this or that. To understand what being human means. What love is. What loss does to a soul. What happiness can change. She needed to be affected by it all to be any good to them.

She needed wind in her sails. She needed a dream. She needed a reason to live. Like every human who has ever felt pain. Like any person who has ever been consumed by the monsters they create. Like any wind up toy who has found themselves stuck in one corner.

She has learned. One thing. Life is and people are.

She cannot expect. She cannot want. She cannot fight.

She can dream. She can speak. She can love. She can be alive.

She can believe in beauty. Laugh at reason. Find peace in every second of every day.

She can accept reality for what it is.

She does not have to break beneath the fear of everyone else.

She does not have to agree.

She is free.

She will not forget,

how delicately the world is connected.