This Battle for Gold

I got a new battery.
Charged up to battle,
battle through my battle of Waterloo.
This pivotal time from which there is no return.
The heel of Achilles.
I see it, breathe it, feel it.
Feel it to overwhelm,
sob and soothe and gather to fabrics of my skirt.

Find comfort through myself.
You did it to survive, you learned to make the most of it.
Insecure and anxious is the classification I've read,
maybe so, maybe yes.

Just like the election, it's less effective to exercise the demons
if you don't see them clearly.
They are now before me,
clamoring and cawing,
demanding ME me, ME.
Feed me, see me, save me.

In that stage of starving them out,
detoxing not just from you, but from all the fantasy and mayhem.
Unlearning and re-educating,
tracing new paths and seeking new maps.
What's easy for some, isn't for others.

There are such moments of strength and confidence.
Confident this is the path,
this damn rocky path
is the only one I want. I need.
Needed it since ages ago,
better at 30 than another year even later.

Getting reunified with this soul, these lungs, this brain-heart.
To spend less of it talking out and more reflecting, writing,
captivated and analyzing.
Giving myself all the time I've always deserved.
I'm right here with you, I'm not going anywhere.
I say it and repeat it and mean it.
Never again. I will never leave you.

You are strong and so beautiful and hard and soft
and gloriously messy and put together.
A painting all my own,
a story and another story told and retold.
Perhaps seeing myself in ways for the first time,
sometimes so lovely I can't look away.

Learning to love
yourself.
The path is so rife with cliche and distraction,
misdirection and false hopes.
As known from many attempts before,
even when the path isn't clear
I know the destination.
The gold at the end, I know what it might hold.
or I can sometimes pretend and aim to know.

Up these rocks I go, I go.
Challenging addictions and realities
that once and often feel so real,
so unshakable.
On my skin, in this being.
No one or thing to be angry with.

I sit next to and work through these pains carried
by generation to generation, from year to year.
Feeling it and feeling it and doing it well.
The best I can hope for,
the only path I claim and name and desire
even with the overwhelming strain on what I know,
thought I wanted, needed, craved.
I want me. Contentment, free and easy.
No fear, no concerns of who you are or what that makes me,
to have loved and lost.
It doesn't much matter now.
I'm too busy climbing and maybe some day I will go skydiving.