Regressional

Let's go back a bit. Long before the airing of grievance. Before she defined my future, and before he left this earth. Before I pressed my hand against dusty rock walls and traced the origin of my being.

There was the energy that amassed and came bursting forth. There were shining lights across the sky, trailed by pink ribbons and golden flecks of sun that rained down like Midas glitter on our heads. And he held me in his arms... her dark presence shaking the earth beneath us both as I clung to him for safety. Rockets were silent in the wake of the roar of her envy. As long as he was alive I was safe, and I traveled to the ends of the earth, holding tight to those sky-tossed ribbons and my skin glowing in the golden flames. And she chased me, haunted me, and invaded every crevice and dream I ever had. Pulling me away from the ocean, pulling me down into the pit of her feigned foreign accents, dime-store veils and finger cymbals. She swirled there, and I learned to accept that victims would often enter the pit and find a friend in me.

So I climbed out, my ribbons tattered and heavy with caked red clay... clawing at the walls and calling his name. She silenced him like she silenced the rockets. All hail the witch of the unending woe-is-me game.

It wasn't until many, many years later that I realized that while I was in the pit, she carved a hole in me. A hole where others would crawl into and hide, seeking shelter and release from their own obligations and choices. I excavated intruders and cauterized the wound. I sewed protective coverings over the cavity. I did all I could to protect myself, and I escaped.

But every now and then, I forget that the wound never heals, and that I am as fragile in your hands as I was in hers. His lessons were cut short, and he was a loving, peaceful man. He wasn't of the land, but of the sea, and the only legacy he offered me... the only peaceful, invulnerable retreat he disclosed to me... was the ocean. She cannot reach me there, and neither can you.

So make your own choices, feed your own dreams, succumb to your own fears, wallow in your failures and rejoice in your own successes.

I am out to sea.

Officially.