I am on a precipice.

Hanging on to a small tree by its very roots as I am near falling off a cliff that God has placed me on.

My grip is so tight, my hand has gone numb.  My gaze drops once again to the unknown.

Above me, the life I have been trying to live.

My breathing is ragged.. tears have run dry.

My heart has once again been broken in all the right places.  Where the Light will come in whether I want it to or not.  It has to.  Darkness has ruled for far too long.

The mask I have worn for years is starting to fall apart.  I cannot mend it anymore.  The materials I used are shredded as my own trueness starts to show.

I throw my left hand up to hang on even tighter as dusty small roots start to tear away from the cliffside. Fear grips my throat.  Breathing is almost non-existent.  It is coming in short and fast and I am involuntary suffocating.

I cannot go through another walk in the shadows of the valley.  No one knows me there.  I cannot become who I am meant to be.  I am safer as this broken being.  My heart echoes these phrases to my mind to keep me in pain and larger in my body so I can survive.

The tense efforts of controlling others and the world around me have left me weary.

I am scared.  I am not worth this journey.  I am tired of trying to share my mental sufferings so others can understand and even harder…to try and get them to accept.

My struggle is invisible to the world.

I am my own prisoner of my own war.

The caged bird in my mind thrives on the hateful words I feed it.

The daily dance I do in my mind to the sounds of the chaos fills the dance floor.  There is no room for anything else.

I pull the Trigger of what is nearby and let it takeover my entire being for a moment until words of aggression and anxiety calm me.

“Why are you so angry?” my daughter asks. “I didn’t do anything.”

“I’m not mad,” I snap back as my inner self cries in shame.

I was supposed to be better when I took time to focus on myself almost 4 years ago.  That was my first walk into the dark world of trauma recovery.

I was for a time.  Then something else started to creep in like a thief in the night.

I was taken by surprise and allowed it to kidnap who I had become for another two years.

What I now know as Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has me hanging off this sharp outcrop of myself.

God tells me my work is not done.  That this is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

I am afraid to fall.  Who will catch me?  I may land in a thousand pieces and once again try to mend the parts of my shattered self with duct tape and wire.

My loss of breath in late 2020 told me that I needed to save myself. Those surrounding me were waiting for me to crack.

Blessings are out of embers of yesterday’s fire.

A voice takes over my Spirit.

“I will walk with you in the valleys and the mountain tops.  But you have to walk with me.”

Trauma is the wall I must lean upon to find the the new horizons of my life.

The wind rushes past me as I freefall into the healing journey ahead.

I will be caught by God’s greatness or I will fly.