Alone? Yes, But Not Always.

The times of day I feel the least crazy, the least afraid and the least alone are twilight. Usually the passage from day to night, when a sort of hush falls over the world. I see distant lights come on, but they don’t hurt my eyes. There’s a few minutes of calm in the world. No distant wailing of sirens, signaling some disastrous event. The birds begin to settle down for the night, squirrels climb to their nests, frogs slowly begin tuning up their section of the orchestra, preparing for the night’s symphony, and there remains nothing from the day that can hurt me. I’m safe.
It’s magical. Like God made this little space just for me, enough to keep me sane for one more night.

Then…either at sunrise or when the night closes in…it’s gone. I feel the weight of more than half a century fall on me. I feel deep sadness that I can never hold on to those few moments when I was granted peace, when I felt alive, connected to Mother Earth and God above.

When I wasn’t afraid anymore.

When I stopped crying inside.

Someone once told me that I was only sick because I wanted to be.

It’s a cruel thing to say. To anyone. No one would say such a thing to a cancer patient; why are the mentally ill presumed so different?

But that person only knew part of my story. They could not know the rest, and I finally came to understand that no one can.

I’m not anything like I wanted to be, nor can I ever be, but that’s okay.

People will always need people like me. They know we will understand, and that even if we don’t, we will be there for them anyway. After such a life of pain, we get a second wind. And we can carry a bit more because we love so much. Only the most battered of hearts can do that.

We will always tire again. Some of us will fall. Some will run away, but never stop believing in us, the weary, the beaten, the true walking dead, who don’t give up. We will come back. We always do until that day Mother Earth claims our twisted shells and our souls go to the Father of all.

Because until that day, we have our moments, the times when the sky is not yet dark, and the creatures of the night or the day have not yet broken the stillness…

The times when we are finally able to feel light and unburdened, to feel peace and see our places in the cosmos. And know that we are not, after all, alone in it.