The Clouded Reflection

There are no words for what I feel right now… or maybe there are just too many to grasp. I don’t know… I don’t know anything anymore. I am heartbroken, I am humiliated, I am terrified… I’m angry, confused, and disillusioned… and without a doubt, I am indeed lost in a haze of uncertainty. Maybe everything I have been told that I am is true… maybe I am exactly what they say I am. I am insignificant… I am worthless… I am irrelevant… and I am deserving of nothing. Why did I think this time it would be different? All that I have ever wanted... all that I have hoped for… prayed for… wished upon a shooting star for… is forever beyond my reach. I can barely see it as it drapes in front of me, shrouded in a heavy mist, like a fog hovering over the beach’s cold, coarse sand. Tormenting and taunting me… luring me and mocking me. I don’t know what to do… and I don’t know what to believe as I stand motionless staring at an unfamiliar reflection in a clouded mirror. Although I have seen this face an infinite number of times, I no longer recognize the woman looking back at me. She is nothing more than a stranger now. Her every aspiration fading from her vacant eyes… her greatest desires draining from her pale, listless complexion. Soon nothing will remain but a hollow shell…

This twisted and seemingly endless path I travel has grown deeply worn and etched over time. The jagged terrain is permanently engraved with each and every loss and every single failure... rendering it forever scarred beyond recognition. I fear that I may never have the means to veer from this course. The steady burning I feel in my soul weighs down on me like an anchor. Every hour… every minute… every eternal second of each and every day I fight to rid myself of this unforgiving burden that devours my being and dictates my every waking thought. I battle tirelessly to break free from this prison that I have created for myself, and although the struggle seems futile, I know that with every sunrise that erupts through the dawning sky… with each smile that radiates from the unsullied faces of the purest hearts, this weight lifts just a few degrees more… leaving behind scattered fragments of hope in their wake, reminding me of the faith that once immersed my soul. And so I endure, knowing this one small and irrefutable, yet simple truth…

I am nothing…

And I am human…

                                                                                                            

Alethea J Salazar © 2017