Full Circle

Tottering in, clipped-winged and near lifeless, wide-eyed from psychosis and mistrust, we find ourselves sitting in the strangeness of a full circle, with many blinking pained, similar eyes staring back at us. The first step towards a life unbeknownst to us yet that we crave and hope it will be our saving grace. We listen intently or not at all, to only find ourselves back in the generous warmth of the circle. Only this time, we have begun to shed the cloak of unfamiliarity and begun instead to rub ourselves with the mounted up ashes of similarities that were caught and burnt in the fire of pain from broken families, marriages, pockets, selves; dead dreams, friends and babies; misguided relations, detached emotions, the drudgery of isolation, the seclusion of adoption, the hell of incarceration. We continue to come into the circle, even though we may do this half-heartedly, with some of us missing half our bodily organs. Yet with a glimmer of an illuminated light we may observe in the eye of our neighbour, we stay in hopes for our own paths to be brightened against the dark.

Progressing from being the newcomer in the circle that gave us life, we now stand fairly grounded in our welcomed respite, while gaining strength to look at those things within ourselves we’ve for so long despised.

Clear-minded, fully aware – the harshness of our past deeds aim straight at us, threatening to clean out the time we’ve had devoid of the toxins.

Sometimes it does. Sometimes we don’t end up back in the circle. Sometimes we end up square-fitted in a dusty box, remembered only as yet another sad statistic. Sometimes the grace of life allows back in.

Wounded yet grateful for another chance, the road of recovery can only fork so many times until we ultimately have to choose the road less travelled, to our salvation, or the familiar road, brimmed with Trojan promises that leads us back to the bitter hell.

So, in this circle, even if we sit here for the first time or have been here a decade, our true intentions are what keeps us returning, to receive the key holders, which are our faith and trust in our new lives.

Sometimes it’s easier to talk about this shit in third person or as an observer, but as I struggle with heightened anxiety that comes with cutting the losses with those people, places and things of my old self and I stand awkwardly, tongue-tied and excited in front of my new friends, in my renewed life, I stand in awe of the goodness that is my Higher Power, whose love shines through in all their faces – and I come to believe, over and over again, that no matter what, no matter what, I have come full circle in the glory of Life.