grief is a tornado. ravaging all in its path.

A part of me doesn’t want to drop in. It’s committed to staying alone and disconnected. It frantically grabs my face in one forceful swoop, looking at me dead in the eyes “you know the ones that you love will inevitably hurt you”.

I shudder as I recall the frozen feeling of staring forward at a contemptuously disapproving face “Take only what is yours. Don’t you dare take anything that doesn’t belong to you” … or else? Although forever unsaid, there seemed to always be a consequence.

False freedom granted on the premise that I always make the right choice. So I obliged. I left. Not knowing that my world would be forever changed from that day forward. 10 decibels louder, sun a little less bright, the fire in my eyes slowly extinguishing like embers in the night.

Holding these truths of paranoid pain harms every fibre of my being. Paranoia of my deepest desires like a weed running rampant without a farmer tending to its needs.

Yearning for love to flow freely pulsates like the blood bumping through my heart and veins. It speeds up because “if I slow down, maybe it’ll grow”

That gaping hole of nothingness.

A need so dyer it could never be refilled. Destined for mourning eternal?

"When does it end? Why am I frozen in time on a continuous loop trudging a nightmare?”

It’s not the shadows that I am afraid of, it’s where the warmth is meant to emanate from. So I spiral into the great unknown. Hope slowly breeching the horizon. In any sudden moment, I will breathe again.

The beauty of the cosmic dance is that destiny is in my own hands. The law of cause and effect, Karma, facilitates this passageway for all of us. New choices. New paths. New destinies.

So the hurdle becomes not the choices. But the shards of glass that are slowly coming out of me, inflamed and infected as they froze so perfectly in denial.

A decades past.

I catch a glimpse of my reflection in each one that messily comes out. Each time, a new revelation, a part returning with secrets and mournings, each as profound as the next.

The part of me from earlier whimpers in the silence of what remains of it, so battered and bruised it is from spending so long alone in its own hell. Overstimulated by the echos of pressured forces, masked as “well meaning” teaching a sickening reality of conditional love. breath to be earned. space to be minimized. needs to be avoided. presence to be ignored. truth to be silenced.

Like an abused dog found in an alleyway, I’ve worked tremendously to earn its trust. “I have to walk through this black hole to get back to you” it terrifyingly shares with me.

Smiling gracefully in its direction, extending my hand with softness, I gently say “I know. I’d travel to hell with you for infinity. This is a small ask for someone so precious to me”.

Between you and me… I know that one day it’ll grip hard onto me and never let go again. This is a day that I already cherish forever.