Boundaries

Life is incredibly hard, sometimes. Because, there are people that you love who are in the grips of a million different tragedies that cannot love you back. Instead, their daemons tell them to lie, to steal, to fabricate beliefs that in no way represent the realities of any other person.

I've had the experience of fighting some of the same daemons. They are relentless. They are malicious. They are purposeful. Without fortitude and desire and the direction of something greater, they will win.

Its a cloudy, rainy day, today. Appropriate for pushing beloveds away. They've stopped looking like themselves. Instead, they've come to look like the daemons they fight. The daemons are winning.

And, I'm terribly broken.

My soul recognizes the struggle, but no longer recognizes the person.

So, with tears streaking and fingers tight, I say what I must.

I rationalize and justify in my mind, but really, I just must survive another day. I know where the journey the beloved is on will end. I cannot go there, again.

I cannot go there, again.

And, even here, I'm left terribly broken.

Again.

Is this MY legacy? The result of my own daemons? The remnants of my own fight? The whip comes out, once again, and I begin the lashes. But, the beating never frees me of the remorse. It never, ever numbs the feelings squirming like maggots in my flesh.

Instead, I'm only broken.

Still.