Finding My High, Part I

I met her today. She's been screaming in silence. She was in a state of panic. Of shame. A state of fear. She's been showing up, tucked into an oversized barrel chair in the living room in Long Beach where I used to live.

I met her today. I took her hand. The hand that had been clenched with hurt, with rage, with pain. I went to her, stood beside her, and extended my hand. She took my hand. She stood up. My back straightened and my shoulders rolled back. My gaze steadied. My nostrils widened as I filled my lungs with space, expanding what had collapsed until I understood it was her silent roar I had been hearing.

There once was a door, and a room, and that too big chair. Then it was just us. Side by side, yet one in the same. She can rest now. All the work she had done, the struggling, the suffering, the crying, it was necessary. It was the sacrifice she made for me. She built me up. She kept reminding me to go forward. She demands that I never be silent.

She will always be with me; she is me.