just for a little while

i have to go away from here. just for awhile. i will find somewhere close-by and take my dog and maybe look at the ocean and write and sing and cry. there is no peace for me here, not right now...i cannot breathe. i have a journey to take but i cannot take it while i'm pulled so many directions. i need quiet. i need air. i need room. i've got to take it all out and look at it...these ghosts. i don't want to do it at all but it is time. it is here. i cannot run from this anymore. i will find a quiet place away from all the things that 'need' me, that pull at my attention and my heart. My heart is raw and my mind is distracted. i cannot think or feel in any way that makes sense. Memories and images and terrors and realizations are shrieking and diving and clawing at me and all at one time i see that everything i thought was real, all the things i had built my reality and my security on, none of it is true. There is a different reality that i can hardly bring myself to believe...it cannot be true. It has always been true.

i see now that i had given a face to that terror...but it was the wrong face, the wrong name. it was my own mind that had turned on me, i know now the instant it happened...had the physical description laid out for me. and in that instant everything i had ever believed about the world, about love, about my own mind shifted...from that moment on i began creating a new reality, one in which i had not lost my grip on sanity. one in which nothing could possibly be wrong with me. i gave IT the wrong name. i sacrificed everything in that instant for the sake of the illusion of control, sacrificed decency, sacrificed character, sacrificed future, sacrificed heritage, sacrificed love.

these ghosts haunt me now...i cannot quiet them. i beg them to forgive me. i know they cannot. i want desperately to try to explain, to rewrite it, to make it make sense. i know i never will. i wonder if those ghosts will visit me in my quiet place. come to scream, to condemn, to listen, to crucify, to forgive. But maybe they will allow me to make it right, to give back what i stole; and, with me, to condemn the Thing that lives in my mind and destroyed everything i had ever wanted. that Thing that i sacrificed blood for. maybe that Thing will show up and i can rage and scream and curse and condemn and crucify IT. IT is the thief. IT is the liar. IT is the abuser. but then again, wasn't i?

but, no, i am not!

IT was not me. i will show them if they let me. i was wrong, IT was wrong. i've got to finish the story. This part was left unresolved. I must make peace with the Thing and the ghosts and the woman i am now. I am leaving with two hearts...i can only come back with one. I'm coming. i will write it again and it will be the truth. i will leave nothing out. i will bleed and i will cry and i will be terrified and i will be brave and i will scream and i will plead and i will take and i will give back and i will demand and i will ask for and i will hate and i will love. but perhaps when i am done, these ghosts and i can live in peace. for we will have been healed.