I'm Rising

I am constantly reminded of how fragile love is.
Of how quickly it can be broken or dissolve
Of how one crack can lead to the whole tree falling over.

A tree that's supposed to support me when my own legs give out,
To protect me from harsh rays of sun and give me life in the form of a fresh breath of air.
A tree that I need and can't live without.
And yet I'm far from the land it grows on.
I'm deep in the ocean,
drowning.

I reach out to the branches around me, but instead they break off,
Leaving me without anything left to hold on to.
I think of how conditional love feels,
Gone that I have nothing left to give it
Leaving me lifeless, waiting for a force of nature to bring me to life,
or at least some artificial replication of it.

But the ocean never used to scare me before when I still trusted its soft and unreliable floor.
She never lets me forget the day I took a step too far in the wrong direction and it broke beneath me, crushed by the weight of my failures.

I knew that She existed, long before my foundation broke,
She being the dark shadow that follows me stride by stride
I see Her in my reflection instead of seeing myself, even when She tries to hide.

My battle is with Her but when I try to fight Her, it hurts me too
I hear Her words and I know they can't be true

And yet, I know the seed of doubt is easily planted and difficult to uproot.
Sometimes I don't feel prepared to derail the negative thoughts that keep coming at me

Sometimes I concede the battle with the darkest part of myself. I let myself believe that She is right and I am weak.
And on those days, I will break and sink a little deeper
because my loss means admitting that She's still there, somewhere inside me just beneath the surface, waiting for me to give in again.

I know that I have to fight harder and that one day, maybe I will feel stronger.
And so I have to remind myself
I'm not drowning
I'm rising to the surface