{late one night, when the rabbit hole was calling and I feared I was about to go down again, into that long, dark spiral. I heard a voice and felt a presence.  and we had a conversation, she and I. and I knew without asking that this voice was my own, and that I was coming to myself then to do what only i could do – to be both savior and saved, to choose – once again – my own survival}

I’m so tired of fighting. I can’t do it anymore.

Oh baby. Lay it all down now. All of it.

You’ve been up all night shadow boxing with demons. Your poet heart is bleeding out on the kitchen floor. You are tired. So very tired. I see your weary body falter. I feel the sudden give of the ground beneath your feet.

I am here now. I will not leave you.

I am empty. I am underwater. I am drowning.

Empty is a deep, dark swimming hole, and you don’t have to stuff your pockets full of rocks to sink.  The undertow is powerful. It will take you down, if you let it. But I feel your drowning. Your struggling arms. Your gasping breath. I know well the way light and sound filter below the surface. Let that guide you to my outstretched arms. I will swim for you, love. I’ll bring you to shore. Let it go, now. I’ve got this.

Raise those weary eyes. Look at me. I can’t make this easy for you. It’s not going to dissolve. We can’t browbeat it into submission.  You will have to stay relentlessly present with all that you have left behind. You cannot outrun your own wild soul.

But I am here now, and I will not leave you.

I am fading away. Slipping into nothing.  There are days when I feel as if I do not really exist.

Yes, love. The shadowlands. That long and twisted path that is neither here nor there. You feel your own reality slipping into the ether, becoming no more solid than the shadow you cast when you once stood in the light. In the shadowlands there are howling voices and grasping arms and an endless flatlined forest of tangled and twisted dreams.

But take my hand. Let me be your eyes. I can see beyond the veil of sadness and shame that has led you here, beyond the deep dark of your own hibernation. And there you are, on the other side, moving me speechless with the beautiful way you choose to survive.   If you hold my hand and look with the deepest reaches of your heart, you’ll see it too.

And we’ll walk out of here. We’ll start over. Together.

Because I am here now. I will not leave you.

It is too much. Too much. Too much.

It is. It’s too much. It’s too much for your bruised body and your slaughtered heart.  Too much for eyes that have seen more than they should and boundaries trampled by those too callous to care.  Too much for your tender kneecaps and your clenched fists. Too much for hoarse voice and salt-stained cheeks.

But you? You are exactly enough. In fact, you are more. More than all of it.  You are more than the grief that brings you to your knees. More than the loss that shatters you. More than the love that left. More than the weight of what remains. More than the saving grace of your painfully beautiful past. You are more than you know.

Come outside with me now, under this curtain of stars. Lift your daydream face to the moon, love. See it mirror your own dark craters back to you, brilliant and beautiful. Feel the truth of it on your translucent skin. Breathe that moonlight into every aching cell of your goddess body. Let the moon wash you new.

And look behind you – because even in the darkest night, you still cast the shadow that proves you are here, and solid and real and made of more than you think.

Your shadow, right next to mine. I am here now. I will not leave you, love.

I will not leave you.