Dragons Be Damned

Being the person I used to be, meant that I could trust no one. And nothing. Strings were ALWAYS attached, and I always paid a price. Sometimes, that price was way too high. So I built the wall. I learned to work with bricks and mortar, with steel and padlock, and I built a space for my heart to live. I erected my fortress, I dug my moat - alone. I hung my hopes on the wall and left my soul in the dungeon, hiding behind my padlocks. Dragons be damned -  no one, and no thing - would ever singe me again.

When your life turns you inside out, it changes you. When it happens again and again, you stop noticing. You learn to live with your insides showing, walking through the world raw and bleeding, and forgetting that you were ever whole in the first place. And each elbow, each poke, each word falling on your back, feels like a razor blade. It cuts swiftly and cleanly through the softest parts of you, deep inside where the light doesn't shine. When it happens again and again, you wear the scars like a suit of armor.

You're left with a feeling of difference. And indifference. The world starts to feel like something that happens on the other side of the glass, and you walk alone in the quiet. Its safer here, where no connections are made, no risks are taken, no voices are heard but for those inside your head. And you fool yourself into thinking you can trust those. You begin to see that it will always be this way, YOU will always be this way - a disconnected spectator, listening only to the traumas inside you.

And when you get stuck up in your own head, when things are really dark and hopeless, you pull up the drawbridge and hide away. You get stuck staring at the moth-eaten hopes rotting behind the glass, counting the wounds, and listening to the screaming. It is endless. And brutal.

And then this thing happened. And I didn't see it coming, and I am STILL learning what it means. I came across another soul on my side of the glass, and I could see we are the same. You are inside out and tattered, worn through in some places, dark and tortured, and exactly like me. You get it. I see your armor. You wear it and never seem to notice its weight. You love and you hate with the same fervent passion. It is all or nothing. And suddenly WE are SOMETHING. You bring with you all the colours of the world.

Yesterday I was under siege. I was locked in the darkness with my anxieties and worries, bleeding on the outside and charred on the in. I rushed to do what I always have - pull up the bridge and hit lockdown. Switch off the sound and hide. And then your face appeared in the closing spaces. You knew what was happening and you came, even though I did not ask. You hurried. You rescued. And for the first time - I gave you MY key.

I learned what it meant to be able to count on someone yesterday. To know you can trust that. Never again will I have to be locked in my world alone. You earned the key. I promise that I will always let you in - that this drawbridge STAYS down.

Dragons be damned.