The Walking Miracle

(A letter to the Beloved)

There are days when I do not feel particularly mopey or sad, and out of the blue my mind will say:

“Today is the day. Let’s figure out how we go gently into the night and put an exclamation point on my writing.”

Sometimes I think I want to do it out of spite and hurt — to show the people in my life who leave me so lonely that I was real.

This sorrow. These feelings. They were all real.

It makes no sense to me, as I could be genuinely joyful or even happy, and then death intrudes — attempting to sully my peace with the weight of self-erasure. My mind is so sadistic that it even supplies me with visceral ideations and images.

I have been, and am still, actively battling the narrative in my mind with medication, therapy, and prayer as worship.

Spoiler alert: still a hot mess.

The odd thing is, Beloved, that no one knows. No one asks.

I smile when I weep. I weep when I smile.

I blaze from a source unseen, and the emanations shock and astound in equal measure both writer and reader.

Perhaps when this writer becomes my own—or Your own—reader, that is how and when You speak to me.

Maybe this is Your way of talking to me in a language I can understand.

Perhaps this is why I write these little letters and let them pour out — another form of our ongoing conversation.

It might seem to others that You are my penpal.

But perhaps it would be more apt to say that I am Yours.

Today I was up early — 4:45 a.m.

I prayed, took my meds, and went to work by six.

I felt physically tired from the moment I woke, and I did not want to get up. I did anyway.

The weather was nice. The car has heated seats (thank You) and a heated steering wheel. I got in, turned it on, and was stoked. I got warm quick.

Then, after a few rides, the intrusion began:

“You don’t want to be around anyone. Go hide in your house and smoke.”

“You don’t want to call anyone. They never get it. Why waste your breath? Just go gently, quietly.”

“This is the time.”

These thoughts intrude when love fails in front of my face, Beloved — not for lack of trying on my part. I am always invested, or at least I try to be.

But the truth is that no one can be completely invested in another unless it is through You. It is so hard to escape the gravity of our own personal needs and desires long enough to truly see another.

The question then morphs:

Why keep fighting?

Why stand up when laying down is easier?

Why bother getting out of bed at all?

I have only ever found One answer: You.

My end has always been beside me, Beloved.

And it is only by holding Your hand — without accidentally letting go — that I still draw breath.

I am a flower fully faded in bloom.

I write of beauty in You and of You, from the most devastating void of despair and emotional heartache I have ever experienced.

The shining of the work is in the miracle of sustained living in me.

So I enter the dialogue with that insidious voice.

I tell it to pound sand.

I cannot take what was never mine to give.

Then I flip it the bird, continue to pray, and think about You.

My words are Your victory — linked and suspended by Your hands,

as is my life,

and my love.

Dust, The Walking Miracle

When despair cries its siren song, ensure you rope yourself to the Rock.

The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.