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.

If I'd bottled up every thought & ounce of sadness devouring me at this moment in time, it'd suffocate me.
When my chest actually feels the heaviness of hurt with every breath I inhale, I struggle to exhale...in the thought I'll be unable to retrieve my next breathe
Memories...of what was...what I needed it to be...hopes and aspirations for a home and family
Beat at my soul.
Death..it has died.. Grieving over the corpse of the thought of a love bond with him, that raised our little ones together & carried me into our elderly days..
But it was that..just a thought..
One that I conjured up in my need to feel safe..it never truly was..Love.
He never truly Loved...me.
Today I'll cry, I'll cry until I feel I've emptied my pain out of my chest and I can inhale fully again..

I sat next to him at my kitchen table, his left arm around my shoulder, my body pressed into his comforting cradle.
A warm silence filled the room..
Innocent childrens laughter in the distance.
I looked into his soft blue eyes..studied the creases of his crows feet...the natural age where stress had taken its toll...
He looked at me and ever so gently told me
"Your not a mistake, sometimes Gods plan is just bigger than what we realize"

My heart cracked..once again.
It was so loud this time it echoed in my ears..that familiar tightening began to form in my chest...as if my body was fighting to hold my heart together..the pain of grief shot into my throat..I was being strangled.. I fought as hard as I could not to break down and wail..Wail..Weep and Scream at my regrets..
The air was still..there was silence.
My eyes welled up with known tears...
I looked at him again..hoping he couldn't feel the fragments of my broken heart spilling into my skin...
I prayed again..silently..
Remembering...He is as close as the mention of his name..
Gods Grace laid between us..
I could feel his nestle..
His encompassing mercy fabricating this very moment.

He is the Healer.

I go to sleep, lonely.
When I open my eyes, the loneliness has grown and my heart hurts, it's heavy. There's a space in my heart that grows wider and deeper with every sunset and sunrise.
Invisible. I don't exist in my own life. With every inhale and exhale I fade away more. Without him even noticing. The pain is so intense, I've become numb. Dead to my own memories, insignificant in every small detail. I'm screaming, screaming from the bottom of a bottomless pit. He can't hear me.
Every touch to his body is without emotion. When he needs to fulfill himself, I'm only a body. No more than when I was paid to sell my soul.
Destitute. When I look in the mirror, there are remnants of a woman.

I long for the days when one caress lit up my insides. When a smile put chills down my spine and love could be made with eye contact. The scent of fresh made me want to crawl in bed and laugh and never emerge from the covers again. Where conversation could last for days, never in a hurry, because the most important people or things, were right there with us.

Hollow. Drowning and desperate.
I cry in random places at random times. I want the pain to leave me alone. To never have to feel this way. To wake up with a smile and roll over to make unforced love, that's real and desired. To laugh my day away and fill up my soul.

Tears. I thought they would dry up eventually. My heart and soul well up and gush out the hurt. I try to hold it in, hold it back, it overflows and I find myself wanting to be locked away in a dark room.

Broken. Shattered and unfixable.
I've made my life this.

I am broken.
Broken, to the depths of what has held me, to the inner function of my blood to run its course through my veins.
It's continual, every turn to a face of disappointment, every step toward hands reaching to me, an empty me. I'm lost, my nurturing motherly nature wanting nothing more than to sweep three tender hearts away into a life of security and home full of love where Gods grace lies on the floors where Mommy and Daddy's tears have wept on knees in prayer in the early mornings. Where six little feet touch that earth upon rising and can feel Peace...Peace...Gods loving arms wrapped around our hearts and guiding us.
I'm one woman, full of nothing.
Scraping by on scattered prayers and meaningless goals.
How can I guide these delicate hearts,  when upon opening mine at sunrise they flood hurt and continual tears? Is my faith so weak I haven't the strength to conjure up one ounce of prayer.
Joy, when I see my three beauties laughing, carefree and innocent, I feel joy.
What I'd give to snuggle up to them each morning and see their eyes light up with happiness, simply because I didn't have to work that day.
If I could rewrite this story of what has become the outcome of our lives.. I'd write it with caution, with sensitivity to Gods word, with a heavy momma heart and hands that reach to God with a face buried in prayer upon the opening of one eye at mornings dusk.
The crevasses, dark unending torturous valleys of discontentment and reflections of failure convince me again.. I'm unfit.
Yet the hearts I feel beating when I squeeze my beauties close on my chest and breathe in their full of life smiles...tells me I'm made for the role. Only a mama can hurt at the thought of her child hurting and worry about  the most minute details of their lives.
So I'll try, I'll try again today, to drown out the circumstances I've fallen into, push past the doubts that fear me, walk through the river of emotions that drop me to my knees, when I begin to cry, the tears that seem to have no end.
Despite this, I have life and am blessed.