de l'encre au bout des doigts

The days have gone by one by one, faded dawns replacing it’s preceding sisters, each morrow so long and sad, a tern succession of blurred obligations fulfilled in a dizzy automated stance, any excuse being good enough, fears chasing time, filling every hour with noise because in stillness were thoughts, the cold harsh reality of things that are.

Because the dark had gone and light was too violent, because I needed the protections of shadows, of compromise, because I wasn’t strong enough to face today, because there is always the promise of the day after tomorrow.

And so, here we are.
What I did not know of your games, I could guess.
I know all your changing stories, all your conflicting truths, the cold calculation of your smile paired with your eyes lacking warmth, the deliberate choices that brought us where we were, where we are. I have fought the winds of flux, the unease of wanting to avoid the inevitable, I so desperately wanted to think that something redeemable lies dormant in everyone.
Isn’t everything about waking up.

There is no sadness, no pity, I do not hurt. I will not miss you.
It took a while before the curtain lifted high enough, before the light around me had so grown that I could not remain blind any longer. Even then… I was in no hurry to confront the chess game I knew existed beneath my feet, the arena at the center of which you had made me piece of.

Why doesn’t matter. I knew.

Because I didn’t want to see for so long, I enabled the slow  and inevitable erosion of my will, because I let it go once, then twice and thrice, because I didn’t take a stand, I locked myself in a pattern.

There is nothing in what you did to me that I didn’t let you do.

Until I was in tomorrow and the day after, until things could be no more. Until I let you go.
I thought the fire had gone, too, I felt so cold, I thought I would need to climb mountains to find myself again… I had lost faith in the sparkle that will always dance in my heart, in the love that my kindreds will always give to me unconditionally. In the gardians that look over my shoulder and protect me in the strangest of ways.

I am loved and I have worth, I didn’t need to manipulate or walk on anyone to get where I am: I do not have anything to prove, my path is walked on my own terms and today, I get to decide where I want to go, and who I will go there with.

Good bye you, all of you, my dark shadows, my drains, you who held power over me and missused it knowingly, you who thought you could make me into something I’m not.

I am me, I am free, and I’m definitely enjoying the ride.