Me, Myself, and I

I have my personal entourage

that follows me wherever I go.

I walk side by side with loneliness.

Angry follows me first; I am a freckle’s length in front of her growling, grumbling self.

Behind anger walks fear with her shaking hands and bent from worry torso.

I got sick of them one day and turned around and turned on them. Quickly I put them all together for a come to Jesus meeting.

As I spoke to them of how weak they made me, how vulnerable to attack, suddenly they all became one entity.

My younger self stood before me. The party at a kegger, have to study to be valedictorian, dad fucked me again last night, sorority president, dating losers me stood right in front of me.

Vengeance boiled up in me, and, before I knew it, I bitch slapped her.

She said, “I am so sorry.”

I broke, the walls around me crumbled and fell like Jericho’s. And, I grabbed her slit scarred wrist and flung her to me.

I hugged her as she wept violently. I began to cry, too, but I held her for dear life. I didn’t let go of her until the tirade stopped. You know the good hugs where the other person doesn’t let go first.

She wanted to know why I wept.

For the fifty years I ignored you and that it all boiled down to this sacred, sad, simple duet.

Then, my younger self said that life isn’t over at half a century, but it’s so sad that it has to start there.

And, with that, she confessed she had a gift for me.

I felt a lurch and nausea coming on. Did she just walk through me, I pondered???

No. She finally became at home in me.

And, I let her.

I walk confidently alone.

I am free.