I’m loving him with half a heart, this other half it’s lost.
In dreams I swim in while I sleep, when I wake it’s still gone.
When I close my eyes I’m searching for you, running through my past.
Breaking through strands of time just to hold you at last.
Floating down a river on my side you stood there in a suit, next to you a woman dressed in white and a baby between you two.
I called out to you and smiled and told you you’d have a boy of your own, I saw the joy on your face as I floated past down sorrows stream.

I guess this is the aftermath of sin and shame that I had once heard of. Never knowing that it was so real, I’m living in my pain.

Loving with half a heart while the other half is numb, is like playing a beautiful melody to the deaf, it’s as if it doesn’t exist.

I wake and remember where I am and with whom I share I my bed.
Looking at him while he sleeps, I remember you and your breath.
Calling his name, I’ve almost called yours more times than I can count, it’s like I’m stuck in times past and trying to break out of a glass clock.

That other half of my heart that’s lost within my sleep, please let me know when I can have it back and when I close my eyes there we’ll meet and again I’ll hold you as if it is the last.

Let me reach beyond this pit of seemingly endless darkness, pierce my hand through the roof of this imagined cave and grimace at the pain of the light that burns my skin. Claw to pull the weight atop that feels like a 500 lb. body that I've drug around for the last 3 and a half decades and whisper to myself that I can do this once again.
"Where did she go?"
I ask myself as if I'm literally searching for the girl that I once knew myself to be, as I stare at the blank sunken eyes in the reflection of the mirror. The woman who stood strong and built like an ox on that stage with the blinding lights and glimmer. The woman that carried her mothers ashes down those stairs that day from the crematory, picturing her frail body flung across her arms and once I let those ashes go, I never really let that weight off of me.
Weak.
Is the only word I feel that I have and I've wrapped myself within it and allowed my mistakes, anger, pain and loss engulf me.
"Where are you?"
I whisper again as I run back down the dark alleys of my thoughts in what seems to be a never ending run.
"Break free from this darkness"
I beg my heart to connect with my brain and ignite a fire in my soul once again.
"Mommy, I have to tell you something"
My little boy says in a playful, sweet endearing voice before he slips off to sleep.."I love you Mommy"
And my heart pierces and I pray that this jolt will ignite the fighting strength within me to rise back up and take on tomorrow as if it were my last day alive.
For now, I'll sleep.
I'll pray that I'll open my eyes at sunrise and this heaviness will somehow be lifted and I'll climb my way back through that black hole and I'll finally be able to fully embrace this gift that I've been given.

Sometimes,
All you feel is the pain within the confines of your heart and you're convinced that what molded and made you this way, is all that you've got.
Sometimes the silence is the most treacherous noise and you're certain your lungs will cease to inhale again if you have to hear it any longer.
Sometimes the aching of healing makes you wonder if it's worth it.
We're all hurting to heal and longing for contentment in one way or another.
It's just, how do we get there from here?
And can my tattered soul and wounded heart make the trek?
Is it really, just live, hurt, attempt to be whole and then die?
Do we get to at least hold the ones we lost again at the end of this?
Is there some sort of resolute or lesson learned?
Or is this it?

For the past two years, I've written parts of this in my mind and it never felt right to put pen to paper until now.
I needed to reach a place of peace and full forgiveness to fully express to you the language of my heart, in a way that would voice transparently true and real.
Whether I ever send this to you or not, it's finally on a tangible form of matter and emptied from my busy mind and heart, making room for more of what matters.
I hope this finds you well.

Written below is life.

The fear, desolation, loss, pain, abandonment, loneliness, sickness, regrets, rejection and utter disbelief, became a platform for growth.
Stretching my mind and heart to endure more than I thought I could handle and the belief that I could possibly die from a heartbreak, built me.
You've missed out on beauty.
Watching Gavin grow from the daily tears of losing his pawpaw and wondering when you were going to come back, to the occasional question about his past and he's grown into already completing multiplication equations at the age of 6. He aspires to be a paleontologist and travel the world, with a map tacked large across his bedroom wall, nestled in our home, the one that overflows with unconditional love. That allows breakdowns to happen, because we've all been there. He's come from daily tears to hilarious mannerisms and has a personality that every person, from his barber to his Taekwondo instructor, have fallen in love with. He still wakes up to silly songs every morning and is known as Best Buddy because he's the best boy that's ever lived. He knows he  is loved, despite the small ache that I know still gnaws at his tender heart from time to time and I've built a community of strength around him to assure him that he's safe.
Emily has grown into a strong beautiful almost woman. She's already chosen a career path and she strives daily to achieve small goals in order to reach the large ones. Mapping out her sophomore and junior year to be completed in one with home studies, and I'm amazed at her drivenness. She is kind, sincere, forgiving, understanding, smart and wonderfully gracious and thoughtful. She battled with severe anxiety after losing our home and went through months of cognitive therapy and medications to help her sleep. To now having voluntarily stopping the therapy, weening off of the medication, working out daily, eating healthy and taking on multiple babysitting jobs. This life pain has taught her that people make mistakes, that nothing in life is certain and to cling to your family tight because it's all that matters.
Kaitlyn still has her peculiar Ramona Quimby mischievous traits and never fails to ask the same mind boggling questions at the most in-opportune times. She's as tall as Emma and is drop dead beautiful. Her grades are exceptional and she's passionate about fitness and loves her friends. She was one of three 6th graders to make the competitive cheer team at her school, that cut 15 girls at tryouts.
What I Love most about her is her genuine thankfulness. Every time I check out a register at the grocery store or buy her things as simple as a toothbrush, she expresses gratitude like no one I've ever known.

The sleepless nights spent tossing and turning crying myself to sleep, replaying the story over and over in my head, have now turned to bright beautiful mornings.

I wake up to a person that makes it his daily goal to remind me that I matter & that I'm loved.
He's endured the tears flooded that followed with anxiety drenched vomiting, held me and told me that I'm the most beautiful, even in those states.
He's made me laugh from deep down in the belly, accepted all of my flaws and encouraged me like, never before.
He hides notes throughout the house and in my personal belongings so that I'll read them. In hopes that the words he's written will sink into my subconscious, the same way that the ink sunk into the paper and I'll finally believe my worth.

So, thank you.
For pushing me out.
For giving me the opportunity to see even more immense beauty in my children, forcing my heart to become bold and strong and giving me the die or fight strength to blossom into the Fierce woman that I've become.
I needed to prove you wrong when you spoke words of death over my life, "you're children will never amount to anything, because they have you as a mother".
Every new friend that I meet and families we befriend, are in awe of my relationship with my children and always congratulate me on having raised them into kind respectful people.
Thank you, for shaking my life so heavily that I was able to really know who God is, more deeply than ever. Forgiveness became a whole new meaning to me and my kids watched as all of the pieces healed and they've been able to heal right along side of me. Loving flawed and leading with love has become a staple of our home and lives and this learned trait will be inherent within them for the remainder of their lives. So once again, thank you.
I am where I'm supposed to be.
It's not unfinished business.
The pain is almost fully healed and I'm grateful to have experienced the pain and loss.
So that I can grasp what's at hand whole heartedly.
The sun still continues to rise, as you used to say and the morning fog lifting daily stripped the hardness from my heart.
You came into my life for a reason and a season and I wish you nothing but prosperity, love and happiness. Best wishes on the remainder of your life journey and I hope you have found peace, love and all of the wonderful joys that God freely gives.
Farewell.

Sincerely,

Natasha Ivory Evans

I've written a thousand words that have trailed behind me for decades.
If I attempted to turn around and pick them all up as if I'm collecting shells from a beachside, it would be wheelbarrows full.

Write.
Just write Natasha.
Quit attempting to perfect this gift and just let it unravel.
Don't criticize, judge or feel
Guilt over your need to shut away and bleed the thoughts that you're unable to speak onto paper.

Release the fear that captivates you. It's that uneasiness in knowing the pain that spills once I form these words into being readable and they sink into my heart and become truth.
Truth equals pain for me.

It's the fear that this truth might just **** me.
Is it possible to die of a broken heart, I often ask myself.

Battling this fear to write this novel is the one thing holding me back from healing.

Allowing my entire being to sink into it, and rage against the words as if I'm the flat of the ocean being ravished by the never ending waves.

Tossed and turned by the emotions that come with the process that forces you to heal.

It's the still, that resides between each word written, that quiet space that leaves me restless.

Calm the infuriation, unclench your teeth and let the words be written into reality.

My need to burst into a blood pumping release that lightens my heart from this heaviness is enough to shake the floor of the ocean.

Sometimes Dreams die..

Sometimes the fantasies that you create in your mind go to war with reality. And reality wins.

Sometimes the dreams that are fabricated in your thoughts are really just safe, soft places to escape to and can never be made to be tangible.

Sometimes there are forces that halt these selfish desires to hold you out for far more than you imagined.

Sometimes life does you favors, when you think it's sabotaging your dreams and you wake up to realize..that it was all destiny.