WHAT THIS JOURNEY HAS BROUGHT

Sunday, July 8, 2007
What do you do when you fall on the ground at your feet? When you stare up into your own eyes, weeping bitter tears of blood? I thought the day I would beg to my own self that I would be ready. That I would be wiling to take on the battle and quash my faded immorality. But it seems that perhaps I need my burnt and dying days as much as I need the futuristic smiles. I have fought with the inner Nikki for years, demeaning her, slicing apart her heart and stomping on her deepest felt emotions. I learnt at a young age to close the heart to the world and never whisper its desires to a living soul. I eloped with paper and pen for a thousand eternities, bleeding the poison there among those rotten pages. I kept the filthy books, secretly longing to set free the girl who lurked therein. Fleeting interludes along the dusty path she peeked out, scared and vulnerable. She poked a brittle hand into the fading day and was knocked cold with the hate that licked its tongue along her mind. Quickly the book was slammed shut and she receded even further within that binding, even further within the ancient dungeon……


There she stayed a prisoner of time, a prisoner of her own hands. There she wept and longed to be taken from the hostile world. There she clipped her wings and sold her soul to the goat-legged man who loitered in the waiting shadows. The stench of all those years was matched by the fowl, rancid breaths that blew from his mouth. She watched in horror as he scooped her withering form into talon-crusted hands and sunk into the fiery pits of hell. There lining the walls of his depraved bedroom were the scribbled words of her heart, scratched into the maggot infested paint. She stared in horror as her voice echoed the hurt, the despair; as those words came to life….. “Welcome home.” Satan whispered into her ears, stroking her hair with acidic hunger “This is where you belong my pretty one.” Her eyelids fell shut, tears trickled her cheeks and she begged to be returned.


Once back in her dungeon, locked in the dirty remnants of her heart, the child pleaded to be released. I peered inside. There at the bottom of a sewer lay the ravaged remains of an innocent child, flooded with words, covered in blood; a child robbed of love and compassion. With pure fear I helped her to scale the stairs, to leap into the light of day. Immediately I knew the child was no longer, that she had morphed into a woman. There before me was my own reflection, bearing scars and open wounds. I sat with those words, opened the books wide for the world to see. I opened my heart and allowed the sunshine to creep inside. I tore down the crumbling walls and burnt the padlocks to ashes.


I have never claimed to be riddled with perfection. I have never sat and told tales of pure bliss, or written the story of a life without hurt. I know the path I have wandered, I know the journey that has delivered me upon your doorstep. All I can do now is promise to utter words of honesty. Promise to be the purest form of myself that I can. That I will inhale sunshine on the days that you offer it to me, that I will embrace the looming storm on the days it wishes to rain. That my heart is always open and that compassion will never leave my side. And if perchance that is never enough, than I beg you bid this blossoming friendship good-bye.