to you,

i know you are sick and i know you are dying.

i know it is scary but i do not want you to be scared.

i know this through my psychiatrist, who told me a couple of weeks ago, i do not know the date but i know it was a tuesday.

in telling me, the words felt like splinters, slowly piercing their way into the walls of my heart.

that tuesday was not just a day of the week. it felt like no one is living it but me, and, that somehow the day was mine and no longer belonged to anyone else. it wasn't a day of the week. it was a day that belonged to me.

my heart was throbbing as the splinters sank deeper, some more painful than others. i allowed myself to feel like that. i let myself hurt and be sad and feel, because you taught me that feelings are a beautiful thing and must be felt and must be acknowledged.

you helped me to learn their importance. you showed me how to take my anxiety and panic and turn it into an emotion that just needed to be noticed and felt, and to acknowledge its presence, and to treat that presence calmly and peacefully. to tell the panic and anxiety it was okay.

when they were okay, i was okay.

that tuesday i did the same thing to my pain. but i realised this was not the way i wanted to grieve you.

you are not my anxiety nor my panic. i could not tend toward the habit i have for processing negativity. i could not affiliate your positivity and wonderfulness with all the negative ******* that goes on inside my head, because you are love and solace. you are support and comfort.

i have since turned the splinters into seeds that will forever grow within and around my heart, with the piercings in its wall giving them the space to do so.

i did not know i could turn such pain into such beauty, but it seems as though i can. thank you for helping me to get here.

i know a considerable length of time has passed since i last saw and spoke to you, but i think you proud of me.

i want you to know that i am strong and i am proud of the person i am today. you have been a ray of hope in the sunlight that has allowed my garden to grow, much like the many lives of others you have touched.

i know that the purpose of therapy is not to find a solution or an answer to the problems we encounter, but to give the space in which we can learn and help come to the realisation that we, ourselves, want to find these solutions. it is where we learn to know we are enough. and not through others telling us we are, but us. we learn to know that.

it is not the therapists that make us better. they are more important than that because they help make us want to be better.

and that is what you give, and it is beautiful.

the seeds are planted in my heart, where you will bloom and blossom in the garden of my soul.

from the very depths of my heart,
i wish you all the strength and love you have given me.

from, me