{ the best company }

i've been backed into a corner for a week or so, letting my thoughts get overly caught up in a certain situation which upset me more than it should. i haven't felt so desperately stuck on something i knew was so thoroughly un-fixable in a long time, and i went so far as to actually ask a good friend to make time for me so i could talk it through. i told her i was going to sit down and write it all out first, see if i could move through what felt like a steel wall six feet thick on my own. i was at the end of myself though, exhausted by cyclical thought patterns and steeped in self-loathing (what is wrong with you? who gets hung up on things like this? why can't you just get over it?). anytime i resort to external human insight, you know it's bad. it's not that i don't value other peoples' insight, but most peoples' understanding of who i am at my core is so limited that their input only frustrates me further.

i haven't had to summon large amounts of understanding for my own benefit toward a specific situation for a long time. i apply my inner resources to the lives of others all the time, but self-examination is an entirely different endeavor for me. this is largely because i find most people's situations fairly easy to untangle, but even under the considerable force of my self-awareness and directness, i often find things i don't want to face or wade into when my vision turns inward. or maybe it's the opposite: i often know exactly what needs to be done, what direction i need to go, and don't want to do it or go there. being oneself requires so much work. growing beyond oneself, even more. life doesn't leave any of us with much excess energy to apply to any of that work.

so two nights ago i sat in the still darkness of my living room at 2am, blinking into the glow of this screen, and started from the beginning.

at some points i rambled on for line after line, not bothering with paragraphs or proper punctuation. at others i made numbered lists to order my more complex thoughts. i wrote and i wrote. every ugly thought, every immature feeling. and as i ran out of things to say, i began to make my last numbered point. what i was going to type flashed in my mind before i typed it, and before i knew it, the tears came. fast and unexpected, they burned trails down my face and in that moment i knew i'd finally reached the bottom of it. i stood in the bottom of the wound, on the root that this particular situation had been scraping raw. i truly stumbled upon it after days of bruising my shoulders on the dead ends of a fathomless labyrinth.

so i cried.
out of brokenness and out of relief.
out of frustration and with gratitude.
i am not on an easy road.
but i am here as myself and with myself
and i am the best company any girl could hope for.

//

i hear a voice calling

calling out for me

these shackles i've made in an attempt to be free

be it for reason, be it for love

i won't take the easy road

i try to keep on keeping on