PAIN

Only the PAIN is REAL.
All the moments spent scratching, clawing and fighting for joy like a flower bud breaking ground to meet the sun for the VERY first time...life has thrown every disrespectful indignity imaginable at me. And though I still stand, it's on shaky but stubborn and determined legs, a strong but bowed and pained back. Hands in fight stance and ready but numb, bloody and disfigured...my eyes dim with heaviness from the tears I no longer cry, but the vicious and coincidentally defiant rain and wind that whip about me....my mind, still sharp, razor blade sharp, but exhausted, traumatized, brutalized and stretched beyond capacity from the endless wars, battles, sneak attacks and overthrows it has navigated. But my resolve....like a steel trap. Determined to make it ALL count for something worthwhile like my very stressful pregnancy and single motherhood journey part deux.
I feel dejected, disgusted and deeply wounded by everything but I refuse to leave life empty-handed. I've had more robbed, stolen and plundered from me than a Watts, Baltimore and Los Angeles riot combined. Except my will to win. To right ALL wrongs. The redemption of all my survived horrors in life. I MUST be justified, vindicated and rewarded for my survival. The PAIN is ALL that's REAL. I, the embattled single mother, hobble forward heading to the rewards that I pray will be also and graciously take pain's place and make it the distant memory I've always strived to make it. And so shall it be. Ase'.

10/4/2015