“I feel the safest when I am in the lap of vulnerability, tenderly tucked in the hands of truth. Here I am my self. Here I am true. However once released, a radical dichotomy manifests. For though I am safest whilst vulnerable, the aftermath of such actions brings imminent danger. Oftentimes after being exposed in the open, the lap of safety evaporates, and I am left swimming in a mist: the fog of regret, refusal, denial, and question. Having voluntarily been stripped and gutted, torn down and replaced, and surrendered in refuge to my own self, I become infant escaped into a new blinding darkness. Here I face a rushing fear of my own making. Another layer upon layer of self-doubt breeched and set painfully still within. Until I rebalance and reassemble and understand that in the risk I am reborn again.” ~ Samantha Craft, Everyday Aspergers

I am afraid. Each and every time I share with you I am frightened. This won’t ever pass. It is essentially who I am. A vulnerable wounded warrior. I accept this. I allow this. I find strength in this. Each day, like you, I reface the demons and hauntings. Each day, like you, I don’t give up. Each day one more shadow of untruth is conquered. I recognize that I face only that which is a mere shadow of doubt and fear. There is nothing out there in the forest black that threatens me. And still I tremble, some child lost in the universe of self, desperately reaching out for companions in the company of ghosts.

I am understanding today that this is okay. That I am entirely okay to be frightened. Of course, I am frightened, I feel the weight of the world. I feel inside of you. I feel inside of pain. I feel the all of all. And it is overwhelming. Until now I was fighting some invisible battle, the fight between strength and weakness. I was teaching myself subconsciously the ways of the world, some offset rules of behavior and insidious goals that equate strength to the absence of fear. I am beginning to see myself in a new light. Something that resembles the final breaking of the iceberg. In that I am set out, divided in myself and left to melt into the waters of union.

I am sensing that this interior battle is coming to an end. Or at least one end.

I am the meek one. I am the weak one. This isn’t going to change. But in this is my strength. In my inability to don the robe of pride. In my inability to be filled with praise and take refuge in compliments, this is my gift. Until now I felt numb and lost, in a perpetual state of always approaching. Now I feel centered and rebalanced, allowed to sit where I am and take note.

I am not that which is becoming anything. I am that. I am all. And in this knowing I am understanding multiple aspects of myself. There is no struggle, and yet I continue to struggle. There is not truth, and yet I continue to seek.

There is just being.

There is just being in this state of grace whatever it brings. The heartache, the question, the agonizing emptiness, the void that longs to be filled, it is all the same game, the same dance, and the partner is fear. And still I wait, thinking that if I move swifter than the rest of me I shall outrun the mystery. This isn’t true. Nothing is ahead of me, as nothing is behind. I am not being chased nor am I am the chaser. And thusly, I am in a place of waiting, waiting until the runner in me subsides, exhausted and forlorn, and returns to the only choice: that of basking in the light of truth.

I am what I am, and nothing I do or find or invent will change this. I am honorable, good, and opaque. I am that sunrise and sunset. I am that wave and that droplet. I am that which is everything. And like the tree, I need not surrender to the storms, I need just be: strong in the steadfast of my existence. I need not take up armor or weapon of mass destruction. There is nothing to excavate, demolish, or retrieve. I am already.

And here I am today, wondering why this took so long, remembering from before this exact place I stood, and watching all the scenarios of me pass by—the costumes, the robes, the dank-dazzling masks. Had I not been here all along, this child of the universe, entirely bathed and set out in truth?

I am tired of fighting this invisible ghost of me. Very weary. I surrender her to you. In all her ways. Her supercilious-self and forthright searching. I am as beacon and you are my light. You are shining within me and I within you. I am done looking. For today, I am done.

And when I arise to yet another version of self, I will remind her too, to rest, to be, to stop, to just wait. And in the waiting I shall let the movement and rush of the world subside, pass by as nothing but whispers of wind, touching down and embracing that which is us. Touching down and hushing us back awake.