take my silence to mean whatever you wish. wether or not what you take it to mean; is truth, is a totally different issue.

we will always have battles to fight. demons that are ours and ours alone to spar with. some of us will always have areas in our lives that hurt.

areas where, in the heat of battle, we were wounded and we never found the healing we needed. areas that were cut, damaged, broken. and because of the hastes of life, and the possible need to find safety… these areas became scars.

medals of battles long since forgotten.

for some of us, dealing with those areas will always hurt. pain will aways be a reminder of what was lost. some of us may forever walk with a limp. but we will keep walking. some of us may never leave the confines of scar tissue behind fully. but we will still dream.

so, if your asking me if i am ok, if there are no after effects, no damaged areas, no shrapnel? if you’re asking that, then no. im not there yet. there is still pain. but i am still walking. i am still dreaming.

and i will not stop.

i wrote the above a few nights ago. and to be honest, i am not sure where it came from. or for that matter, on all evenings, why i should be feeling this way on Christmas.

i wanted to tell someone that i dont feel happy. that as hard as i tried, as much as i loved seeing the expressions on my moms face, my sisters faces as they opened the gifts… something was missing.

and i dont know what it is. or maybe i do. and maybe im simply chosing to ignore it.

or maybe, i simply dont know how to deal with it.

when you’ve lived so long with pain. with a wound. you begin to identify with it. you begin to believe that it is a part of you. and for some of us, the chaos and intensity of the situaiton(s) that inflicted that wound on us are so vivid in our memories, these wounds become more real to us than the vision of healing.

we identify with our wounds more than we identify with our friends, family, or beliefs. our wounds begin to define us. and we lose the definition of ourselves that we were writing.

part of me wants to simply believe the first part of what i wrote. part of me sees valor in it. sees a simple determination to keep walking. to not care what life throws at you. to look at life like a battle. something to be fought through, and not lived in. part of me sees that, connects with that, almost yearns for that.

because even in the midst of pain, it is safe. if only because it is familiar.

i could continue to walk down that road. and live life alone. i could. but to be honest, i dont want to.

sometimes finding the courage to dream means simply finding the faith, within ourselves, to pray for stronger arms to hold you.