Being Held

I wrote the following this week for an online friend who is struggling with many adversities in her life. Scary uncertainty keeps cropping up for me.


Wanting to escape is so human.
I've been in almost all those scenarios
you are now in.
I desperately wanted an escape.
A fix.
Something to numb how scared I felt
about accepting life on life's terms.
I had my methods.
They never really fixed anything
for more than a moment.
But I wanted them and
went after them
all the same.

Food.
Pornography.
To name a few.

Without the
numbing
there is
now
a gaping hole
that I humbly acknowledge
and beg for the grace
not to fill it
with those things
that will not satisfy in the end.

Even though some days
the gaping hole feels
like a bottomless pit
and my desire to escape
a screaming
that never ends.

But I am held
and so are you
by something
much bigger than
a gaping
empty hole.

If that wasn't true
I'd return to
every one of
my addictions.
Today.

It's easy for me to
write this
now
that I'm no longer
in that place
of scary uncertainty.

I pray
that you will
let yourself
be held.

For strength
to do
the next right thing.

To know that the
feelings
are temporary
even if
they last
a lifetime.

And that
being held
is
eternal.

Embraced

I feel like I am slogging my way down a very murky path
doing the fake it til you make it dance.
I feel kinship with the cold, bare trees outside my window.
Except I have a layer of fat - humour still intact, that's gotta be a hopeful thing.
I feel like embracing waiting, being present and grounded are things I am faking.
Embraced is the last thing I want.
So I run the other way and get pissed that I do not run alone.
I want to yell "leave me the fuck alone."
Yet know that will never happen.
Not only does One run by my side but
I am surrounded by a cloud of witnesses,
seen and unseen, cheering me on.
I try to drown out their voices
only to find A voice inside me.
Even so, I try to hide what cannot be hidden.
And I cry because I am embraced
on the murky path,
while fighting to go it alone.