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  • Writer's pictureby Bark.

I am no longer her

I am no longer her


Somewhere in the depth of my being is a little girl with bright blue eyes. A wild child filled with wonder of the world. She is innocent and joyful. A child of nature forever in love with flowers, bees and wide open spaces. Her heart belongs to the trees, the rivers and the wild sea. She walks with her head held high and not a care in the world. She is in love with music, memories of warm summer days, kittens and the feeling of grass beneath her bare feet. This child is the part of me that lives to be wild and free. To roam the Earth endlessly in search of beautiful flowers, drops of rain on a leaf and a friend to laugh with. She is the part of me that paints, that dances to music only I can hear, that creates with passion, and laughs with an exuberant zest for life and all living beings.


I am no longer her. And yet, she is a part of me.


But now I see how there is so much more to me. I see how, I have earned every bit of powerful, warm and tender “woman’ness" that I carry deep within my bones.


Mine are the stories riddled with hurt and betrayal—often my own—but they are also filled with glimpses of pure joy and moments of ecstatic love; love for life, for the heart beating next to mine, for all that we thought we were becoming, for the many hours of blissful conversations, for adventures, for laughter shared, for the choices I have made, for the roads I took—or, in some cases; did not take.

I am no longer a child, although she stills lives in me, I am a woman and I hold in me the seeds to life. I have brought life into this world twice and for that I am eternally grateful. Bigger blessings do not exist. And yet, in my dreams I am still sometimes hunted by the memory of the time when life was lost before it ever found it’s way to the moment of its first breath being taken. Lost in what started as a tinkling of bright red blood dripping down my legs as tears streamed down my face and I cursed my body for betraying the tiny beating heart beneath my own.


I later apologized to my body and told her how much I love her.


I have hurt people—and myself trying to protect this fearful heart of mine. Too afraid to speak my truth out of fear of an ocean filled with what ifs’. You see, there was another side to the bright eyed child. She also carries a deep sadness born out of moments of not being understood, of not being seen, heard or loved for who she was. Moments where no answers were given, no tears where whipped away and no comfort was found.

And sometimes in the middle of the night that child finds her way to me bringing all her hurt, all her doubt, all her fears. And for years it was too much for me. I didn’t know how to care for her and so we just sat together miserable filled with the echoes of what ifs.


What if he would eventually leave me? Simply walk away confirming what my shaking heart feared; that I, in fact, was not lovable.


What if they would see me, really see me and find that what they saw were flawed beyond what anyone would keep as company?


What if I could not measure up—if the stories of unworthiness I had told myself in the middle of sleepless nights turned out to be true?


What if……?


Then one night she came to me and I finally got it. I knew how to hold her, how to whip her tears and calm her trembling heart. So we sat there. Only this time I held her gently in my arms and as the hours passed, and as the darkness turned into light I felt her fears slowly disappear, and I knew that in that moment I could close the book, end the story and in one deep spectacular breath start a new one.


And so, I breathed. I closed the book. Grabbed a pen and started to write a new story—one filled with promises of a brighter tomorrow.


And as I did the sun came out, and off in the distance I saw a little bright eyed girl laughing loudly as she ran barefooted through the meadow.


And I continued to breathe.


~p.barksdale

by Bark.â„¢ // Walking Wilderâ„¢

©All Rights Reserved




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