Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Keep breathing, don't lose focus...

 

“They call me damaged, I let them think what they like. They call me difficult because I don’t fit in the lines, but I didn’t get this far without any scars. I’m not brittle, well maybe just a little.”

“I tell myself keep breathing, don’t lose focus. I’m alive, I’m not a diagnosis. Keep breathing, don’t loose focus, I’m not a diagnosis” -Icon for Hire, “Brittle

 

This week has been brutal, truly. During meditation a few days ago I felt the spirit near to me and he told me that I was about to have my faith tested, to see if I would truly remain in the church for the rest of my days. Whenever I have moments like this I can never be completely certain if what I’m hearing is just an inner monologue, some sort of connection with the sub-conscious, or if it is truly the Holy Ghost speaking to me in that still small voice. More often than not, it seems to be the last one, at least it has been since returning to church.

At first I went into this week from a very high note of hope and excitement about church and my faith. I was told on Sunday that I was cleared to have a calling and that it was possible that I might get to go through the temple for endowment.  I even did the temple recommend interview with my bishop as the first steps to having my request sent to the first presidency. But in the back of my mind I knew that my hopefulness wouldn’t last. I knew that the spirit spoke true and that I would be tested. It’s now Wednesday and I feel like I’ve been running through the gauntlet of “do I belong here?” “Maybe I should just stop going,” “Maybe I was wrong and I’m just deceiving myself,” “Maybe they are right that I have committed a terrible sin by transitioning genders.”

Those feelings of hope faded rather quickly Sunday night and I felt what can only be described as the spirit departing from me. There was no sin or transgression associated with his departure (was literally reading scriptures) but it was an unmistakable shift. I feel attuned enough to the spirit these days that his absence is very noticeable. And so I knew that the trial was beginning, and I was right. It started subtle enough but tonight it came to a breaking point.

 While I do not believe that I have lost a friend, I am certain that I have lost an ally in my efforts to make room for transgender people in the church. That stake historian that was writing a piece about me has decided that the church policies don’t permit her to write my story any longer. There were other complicating factors but the point is, she was solidly in my corner, and now I’m not so sure she believes I belong in the church anymore; at least not as who I am right now. Only time will tell where everything lands but I feel truly discouraged. She tried to inform me about this with as much grace and kindness as possible, I believe, but the sting was only slightly lessened.

This came as a sequel of sorrow to numerous interactions on Instagram with people who tried their very best to convince me that I don’t belong, and that any belief that I do is simply delusional on my part. I can usually handle one of these every so often. It’s easy to roll my eyes and move on, but when there are multiple in a short span of time… it’s harder to just roll with the punches. Eventually one of them lands. One of these people suggested that it wasn’t possible for me to be righteous while also having transitioned genders. I’m grateful to report that my interactions with this person have shifted and they are trying better to understand. But they are the exception and their question made me second guess myself.

And so here I am, on the precipice of losing hope, trying desperately to dig down deeper than ever before for some degree of resilience to keep going. So, like the song lyrics go: I tell myself, keep breathing, don’t loose focus, I’m alive, I’m not a diagnosis.

The crazy thing is that back in the past when I struggled with remaining active in the church it was because of some failure of character or failure to overcome some temporal temptation. It was always about sex, drugs, or wanting freedom from a seemingly oppressive religion that seemed to think anything fun at all was a sin. Today, none of those things even resonate. I couldn’t care less about any of them, yet here I am struggling to remain active, and why? Because I’m worried I don’t have the endurance necessary to walk down the figurative street that is the church while the masses crowd around me to curse, demean, and spit on me. I don’t know how Christ did it. How did he endure the humiliation of having the very people he was trying to save mock, curse, and smite him as he carried that cross?

It brings me to tears to even consider what that must have been like for him… and all the while he endured it with patience, compassion, and longsuffering. He forgave those who drove nails into his flesh and mocked him during the final hours of his mortal life. He truly was God.

It feels like an impossible standard to measure myself against, and yet I feel constrained to do just that. We came here to be perfected didn’t we? We came here so that we would be tested to see whether we would choose righteousness or sin, right? If his endurance of unspeakable humiliation is the standard, then shouldn’t I be grateful to be tested in this way? Very few people have had to endure what I am going through… and just like I am looking to Christ for the right way to make it through, those transgender saints who follow after me will be looking to how I managed it. If I lose hope and walk away, then what does that say to them? Will my failure lead them to leave the church because they don’t see any hope of finding a place within it? My heart aches at the thought that my decision to give up could be the reason someone turns away from God and Christ instead of believing that they’re experience is important and they belong.

And so, I must go on. This is the cross that I must bear, and I must keep walking down this street. I must not give up and cave beneath the pressure. I can’t let the God I love above all other things be disappointed that I wasn’t strong enough, not after all that Christ went through for all of us. I can see that not all the faces in the crowd are twisted in hatred. Just beyond the thronging masses that spit on me and condemn me, I can see kind faces filled with sadness at what they are seeing. I can hear their words of reassurance that not everyone in the crowd feels the way the loudest voices do. I can see that some who came to participate are having a change of heart. I can hear that underneath the angry shouts there are prayers for kindness and tolerance… and so, the answer is humility. The answer is forgiveness for those who wound me. The answer is faith that after all the trials, and suffering, and pain… there will be rest, there will be recompense, and there will be crowns of glory where moth and rust cannot corrupt.

Friday, February 17, 2023

Trans, Does Not Equal Sin

What is gender? No, really, what is it? Can you describe it for me? Because I seem to be a little confused about it. Wait, it’s not normal to be confused about gender? So, you’ve never questioned your gender and it’s always just made sense to you? Then what’s wrong with me?

               I wish, more than anything, that someone would have answered that last question with, “there’s nothing wrong with you, you’re just different, and different can be beautiful.” What would my life have looked like had someone been able to reassure me in that way, I wonder.

               So back when I first started questioning my gender in an outright, conscious way, I read a book called, My Gender Workbook by Kate Bornstein. It is, by all accounts, the book that had the biggest impact on my life, except perhaps the Book of Mormon. As I went through that book, filling out the quizzes and answering the many thought-provoking questions that Kate asked their readers, I found that everything that I’d been taught about gender was little more than a house of cards. If you start asking the right questions, the whole thing falls apart. Most people, however, aren’t comfortable with coloring outside the lines in this regard, especially in the church.

               People tend to cling to the binary like a life preserver while stranded out at sea, never realizing that they are actually in the shallow end of the pool and can find their footing if they just stand up. But why? No, really, why is the binary so important? Have you ever thought about it for more than a few seconds? My guess is that unless you struggle with some degree of gender confusion or dysphoria, the answer is you’ve never even questioned the binary at all.

               You see, it took me many years to finally come to an answer to the question of why the binary is so important to people, and the answer might surprise you. Contrary to what you might guess I didn’t find the answer in Kate Bornstein’s book, nor did I find it in their memoir. I found it through a deep dive into Buddhist philosophy and stories of the Buddha’s efforts to transcend attachment and suffering. The gender binary is a product of the dualistic nature of the mind which is in a constant state of either being in the past or the future; never in the present moment. When was the last time you were completely present without any thoughts separating you from the present moment? How long did it last?

               The dualistic mind is the root of all suffering, but more than that, the dualistic mind only ever sees the world in binary terms. Black and white, good and bad, heaven or hell, past and future, male and female. Grey, neutral, limbo, presence, and non-binary genders make the dualistic mind uncomfortable. Is there something between good and bad? Is there truly a neutral? If so, what makes it that way? Who gets to decide what’s good, bad, or neutral? Is it Heavenly Father? How do we really know what he thinks? The prophet tells us what he thinks, right? But if that’s the case why have the teachings of modern prophets contradicted teachings of earlier prophets? Isn’t God the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow? If so, then does that mean the prophets don’t actually know what he thinks, or is our assumption about him never changing incorrect?

Are you feeling uncomfortable yet? Chances are, something inside of you didn’t like part of that previous paragraph, but can you identify what that part is or even where it comes from? My goal isn’t to have you doubt the prophet or teachings of the church, but more to step outside of the simplistic dualistic thinking that ignores the actual complexity of God’s church and creation.

The point is, when we begin to blur the lines of gender beyond male and female the vast majority of people start to get a little antsy. If we step outside of those two boxes then there is no telling what’s out there, and that’s scary to most people. It was scary for me too, in the beginning. If I wasn’t male, but the world protested that I have to be because of their definition of what male is (which is actually a set of arbitrary and constantly shifting qualifiers that falter under deeper scrutiny), then what was I? Was I a woman? I felt like a girl inside, far more so than I ever felt like a boy. I wish I could adequately convey just how much my brain SCREAMS at me that I’m a girl, but words never do it justice.

So my brain tells me I’m a girl/woman, but where does the definition of woman begin and man end? Is it solely about the formation or non-formation of certain gonads during gestation in the womb (i.e. penis or vagina)? If it is, what about those people out there who have both of those things? Or have neither of them? Where do they fit in, and who gets to decide that? Do they get to decide it or is it up to a doctor that’s known them for all of a few minutes? And if it is themselves that gets to decide that, then at what age do they get to decide that? And if they can decide for themselves, then why can’t you or I also make that decision? Feeling uncomfortable yet?

               What I’m attempting to do is to gently and progressively guide you, my darling reader, outside of your comfort zone where growth actually happens. We never grow inside our comfort zones, and boy do we ever love those comfort zones. Some may read this and still come away with a rigid and dogmatic belief that there are only two genders and nothing I say will ever change their minds. I’m not talking to them. They have their reward. They get to “be right” while I’m wrong, and they get to feel better about themselves and how they are more righteous or pious than I am. They get to safely stay within the confines of the dualistic mind that cannot tolerate the ambiguous or unclear.

               Who I’m actually trying to get through to are those of you out there who are still reading my words, not out of spite or some ego-driven desire to prove to yourself how misguided and wrong I am. If you’re still reading with no malintent, then you are at least somewhat willing to leave your comfort zone. You see the value in examining where and why our beliefs about gender come from.

               Consider for a moment, if you will, that Heavenly father decided at the creation that there would only be two types of birds in the world. Let’s even say they are either red birds or blue birds, and no matter how many times they mate or how many generations pass by, there have only ever been red and blue birds. Let’s just ignore for a moment how utterly drab and boring that would be.

 Now, let’s say that was the case and then suddenly people started noticing that a new type of bird was showing up, namely a purple bird. Do you think people would embrace the purple bird as a beautiful diversification worthy of reverence and celebration, or would they see it as a troubling aberration? Do you think they would believe that the purple bird was being permitted to exist by heavenly father for a divine reason? Or would they become afraid that something must be going terribly wrong with the bird population for this new kind of bird to exist? Would they even go so far as to label purple birds invasive and problematic and advocate for their eradication, so much so that they teach their children to avoid purple birds at all costs; not to mention formulate legislation at a national level to try to stifle the spread of this purple bird. All the while disregarding the bird experts reassuring them that the purple bird isn’t harming anything or anyone, they are just simply a diversification of something that’s long been one way but is becoming something else.

I’m sure it doesn’t take any stretch of the imagination to realize that most people would be afraid of the purple bird. They might even suggest that the purple bird’s existence is the sign that the end times are here. That, my darling readers, is what many people have been doing with transgender and non-binary people. We are a disturbing aberration to them, one that heralds only bad things, perhaps even the end times. They teach their children to hate and avoid us at all costs, because God forbid their own child also be transgender. This is especially true in much of the Latter-day Saint population.

               So why am I here doing this? Why am I writing these words when most people in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints would, at best, feel uncomfortable with my presence and at worst, think that I am a sinful degenerate? in some ways the latter isn’t wrong about that because I have been exactly that at times in my life. I’m recovering from addiction and an eating disorder, so I’ve been to rock bottom and back again; more than once. I’ve nearly destroyed my life with drugs and alcohol, and I’ve hurt many people along the way. I’ve committed just about every sin there is except murder. I am, by all accounts, the wretch from the song Amazing Grace.

Every day I have to pray that Heavenly Father helps me be of service to others in order to escape the bondage of self, because if I don’t, then on my worst day I can be the most selfish, dishonest, and cruel person you’ve ever met. That’s who I am when the “natural man” takes over my life. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need to be at church and read scriptures every day to put off the worst parts of the natural man, but I can’t do it without God’s help. Believe me, I tried.

But you know what my fettered past with sin, addiction, and self-destruction have nothing to do with, at least not directly? My gender. Me being transgender has never been the cause of my wallowing in my fallen state. The caveat, however, is that me being in a world that insists that I am a gender that I’m not, HAS in fact contributed to those failures of character. I didn’t use drugs, alcohol, and try to kill or torment my body with starvation and purging because I am transgender. I did those things because the world taught me that what I am and who I am, is shameful and wrong. The world told me that to be an aberration in this way, was a sin. I was told that I had to just accept my body and assigned gender as they were, and that to question or deviate from those expectations meant I was sick. And so sick is what I became. I hated my body. I hated myself. I hated being what I am, and it made me want to die. It made me believe that I not only deserved to starve, but that it was the only way I could truly punish my body for being something it wasn’t supposed to be.

And you know what cured those things? I did it by working through all of that shame, and all the guilt for the things I did along the way that hurt people. I did it by surrendering my will to Adonai or Heavenly Father, and changing my ways. I stopped drinking. I stopped using. And I stopped trying to punish myself and my body for being different than I wanted it to be. I accepted that nothing in Heavenly Father’s world happens by accident, and me being transgender, was the way he intended it to be.

In short, I became meek, mild, and repented of my wicked ways. I turned my life over to Heavenly Father and only asked that he use it to make the world and lives of others better. And when I did that, you know where he led me? Back to the church… the one that barely accepts me and certainly doesn’t feel excited to have me, despite what official policies might say.

So, returning to my question about why I am doing this, the answer is simple. I’m not the one setting me on this path. Six months ago I would have laughed at the suggestion that I’d be back at church, and yet, here I am. Sure, I’m choosing to abide by what the spirit tells me and what my heart knows to be true, but ultimately I am doing this because Heavenly Father has steered me in this direction.

I wish I could say that I fully understand why he has done this or why I’m being asked to stand up and be visible in a space that shudders at even just the thought of what I am, but the honest answer is that I don’t understand it. I also don’t understand where all of this is leading, but like Lehi and Nephi, I’m putting my trust in the Lord’s directions, even as he instructs me to venture out into the sometimes inhospitable wilderness of a church that doesn’t seem to want someone like me.

All I know is that he wants me here, and wants me to be doing this. The opportunities I’ve had to reach tens of thousands of people in just the matter of a couple months with very little effort on my part only seems to confirm this. Believe me, that level of exposure, and that size of an audience is NOT easy to come by. I’ve been trying to achieve that for many years through other avenues (novels, blogging, YouTube, ect.) and one after the other, I had those doors shut in my face no matter how much time or effort I put into it. But the moment I come back to church, suddenly I’m being interviewed for podcasts, I’m having my testimony shared on social media, I’m having my questions sent to the leaders of the church, and I’m the subject of a piece being written by our stake historian for generations of latter-day saints to be able read about… all with virtually no effort on my part. Doors like that don’t just open by chance. As I said, nothing in Heavenly Father’s world happens by accident.

For whatever reason, the time for the church to change is at hand, and I seem to have some role in that happening. What it is or how big of a role it is, I have no idea, but I will see this through. One of my favorite songs recently has a lyric that goes “you can’t get any satisfaction when your trying to resist divine attraction.” If I walked away from this work or I decided to just sit quietly in my little corner of the church, I believe that I’d be miserable, because that’s not what he wants me to do. I’d be like Jonah not wanting to go to Nineveh because I was afraid the church would never change…

Very few others seem to have the desire to take on this task, at least not in this way, and so it must be me. People like me deserve love and compassion the way the savior taught. We deserve to have a seat at the table with everyone else, because we aren’t troubling aberrations, we are amazing diversifications. And just because we are different, doesn’t mean we aren’t also beautiful.

My heart sings with praises to Adonai, my God, king of kings, and ruler of the universe. I strive to always live up to the teachings of his beloved son, Jesus Christ. There is none other than him, by which any of us can be saved, and if you’re able to overcome the dualistic mind of the natural man, we will be glorified together in his kingdom some day. And on that day, you will see my true form… you will see my eternal, celestial, female body.

Monday, February 13, 2023

Decision for Life and Soul

The most important decision I made in my life was my decision to transition genders. If I hadn’t done that I would undoubtedly be dead right now. I know it sounds dramatic but it’s the ugly truth about this condition called gender dysphoria. In some ways it is almost a terminal illness if left untreated.  Have you ever had to stand on the ledge deciding between destroying everything in your life or ending your life? Because that’s the choice I had to make for me to finally feel at home in my body, in the world, and in my heart. I had to burn it all to the ground and start over again. I had to go through puberty a second time at the age of 29. I lost my wife, the person I loved more than anyone in the entire world. She was my best friend and now we basically never talk to each other. I had to walk away from a career I’d spent 5 years in. I had to walk away from friends and family members who would never try to understand my decision. But more than all of those things, the one that hurt in a uniquely singular way was losing the ability to ever return to church, or so I thought.

 

I can’t begin to explain the numerous little changes that my life and body went through when I stopped producing testosterone and started taking estrogen. I am a completely different person than I was before. That former identity, now hollowed out and decaying from neglect, is only a part of what I’m referring to. The body I now live in has only ever known estrogen as the primary sex hormone. Literally every single cell in my body has replicated and been replaced in the many years since I began this voyage through gender transition. So when I made the decision to come back to church after ten years away, it wasn’t really the same person who’d been baptized. Sure I had the memories of going to early morning seminary at 5:30 in the morning. Sure I remember going down into the baptismal font at the ripe age of 19. And I can never forget the wonderful experiences I had in the institute building during college. But those things feel like memories from a different life, one mired with an unquenchable craving for belonging.

 

I think back then I hoped to belong to a family, to a community, or to a joint purpose of heart, never realizing that what I really needed was to belong to myself. Can you understand what I mean? Can you step into my shoes and vicariously feel the impenetrable darkness of that feeling? How does one not belong to themselves?

 

That is what gender dysphoria felt like to me, never belonging to myself, never understanding why or how that was even possible. I tried so hard and in so many different ways to fill that darkness with the light of other things. With church, with friends, with love, with marriage, with sex, with drugs, and finally with alcohol. None of it satisfied. None of it shone further than a few feet in that veiled abyss of existential torment. I hated everything about who I was. I hated the way I looked, the way I sounded when I spoke, the way people saw me, and the way my body felt wrong in some way that I couldn’t have put words to. I hated being put in the box with the other men who always felt alien and confusing to me. I tried so hard to make that box my home, to stay there and bear it with dignity but I got to a point where being in that box even a minute longer than I had to be would be the literal death of me.

 

We all have crosses to bear in this life, and that is mine: to know that inside I’m a girl and on the outside I am something else. Even now, after 8 years of hormone replacement therapy, I still experience that feeling of incongruence. It’s dramatically less than it used to be. It used to be an ever-present torment all hours of the day and night, but now it’s more of a tedious annoyance that I forget about sometimes. No longer does it threaten my will to live and push me to the brink of killing myself.

 

In terms of belonging to myself I will explain it this way. Back before I fully accepted that I was transgender it felt like I was lost at sea, floating in the darkness with no sense of direction or how far away from my home I was. It felt inescapable, like I was doomed to just wait until dehydration withered my body until I gave up the ghost. Today, however, it feels like I live in the right apartment building, but the unit I actually should live in is just out of reach. I still have somewhere to lay my head at night, and I still get to point to the building and say I live there, but it’s still not quite the way it should be. You know how most apartment buildings have some units on the same floor that are WAY nicer and bigger than the others? Well I’m on the correct floor, but I’m in the smallest most uncomfortable unit instead of the nice one at the other end of the hall.

 

Much of the time I can walk through the world as if I am in that correct unit, but it never fails that there is something that knocks me down a few pegs, just to remind me that I’ll never be a “real” girl. That’s what I mean when I say I’m in the most uncomfortable apartment. It’s akin to being punched in the gut and having the wind knocked out of you, except instead of everyone being worried about you being okay, they are more affronted or confused about why you are pain. Although they never say it, people’s unconscious behaviors seem to say, “You chose this life as a transgender person, so what did you expect? You didn’t think we’d see you the same as the rest of us ‘real’ women, did you?”

 

So why on earth would I choose to go back to a church that is so incredibly unprepared for someone like me? Am I a glutton for punishment? Am I some kind of masochist who enjoys the torment and humiliation of social inequality? I can honestly say that I am not either of those things. What I am, though, is a daughter of God who has an unshakeable testimony of his restored gospel. Even when I lost my faith completely and vowed to never return to church, a piece of me always knew the truth of the Book of Mormon. I could never forget the powerful experience I had upon first reading first Nephi, chapter 1, verse 1. That’s all it took, “I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents…” and WHAM, I knew it was true. I could never deny that experience, even when I became convinced that Joseph Smith had made the whole thing up. So why come back? Because my heart tells me that this is where I belong, and always have.

 

Ever since I was a child, I have sought after God almost constantly. I have always felt the pull to commune with the divine and have had an almost constant desire to devote my life to God completely. So much so that before I joined the church, I contemplated becoming a Catholic priest, and later after I transitioned and left the latter-day saint church, I looked into becoming a Catholic nun. I wanted to devote every waking moment to my heavenly father, and nothing in this world has ever satisfied that desire nearly as well as being an active Latter-day Saint.

 

I’ve been baptized Catholic, I’ve attended nearly every kind of church out there, and I have sought out truth through eastern religions and pagan beliefs. None of them had what I wanted or needed. The only thing that even came close to meeting my need for this connect during my 10 year departure from the church, was Judaism.

 

The two years of attending shabbat services, taking a class taught by the Rabbi on Judaism, and weekly adherence to the practices of making the sabbath day holy were some of the most rewarding years of my life. It felt like I was getting back to the roots of my faith in God. It was like contemplating the higher mysteries and embracing the simple connection to Adonai, Hashem, or Heavenly father (you pick which term feels best to you). I think I had to go through that to truly, fully, appreciate the importance of the Saviors atonement. Everything about his life and his sacrifice have been amplified a hundred fold now that I’ve spent that time embracing Adonai the way the jews have through history.

 

So the second most important decision I’ve ever made in my life was my decision to return to church as my true authentic self. I would say it was my decision to be baptized into the church, but even that pales in comparison to the leap of faith I had to take when I decided to come back to church. Baptism was exciting and I very much looked forward to it, but it was easy choice to make. This decision, however, filled me with terror and confusion. I kept asking myself over and over again if I was really going to go through with my plan to come back. I fretted over it, wrestled with it, and ultimately overcame the terror because my heart told me I needed to come back, that God would pave the way for me.

 

More than this I knew that it wasn’t just about me coming back and attending church, it meant that I was accepting a mission to become a spokesperson for transgender latter-day saints. I knew that I wouldn’t have the luxury of just sitting comfortably with allies in the ward. I was told by the spirit, in no uncertain terms, that the lord had a great and marvelous work and I was to be an instrument in that work. My desire to devote my life to God had finally arrived, and as much as I wanted to shrink from the task, I knew that this was what I was made for. This is why I was sent here as a transgender person. This was why I had to go through all of my troubles and trials. This was why I had to overcome all my various failures and losses, because I was being prepared to be able to endure the seemingly impossible task of calling the church to repentance in how it treats transgender individuals. I had to know what rock bottom was like so I could find the serenity of surrender to a higher calling and purpose. Nothing in this temporal plane matters all that much except the things we do and the lives we touch. I am here to touch the lives of those who feel rejected, marginalized, and invisible so that they know that their father in heaven loves them unconditionally, even if his children who run the church don’t always live up to that.

 

My first most important decision was to do the seemingly impossible so that I could belong to myself. My second most important decision was to do the seemingly impossible so that I could belong to my father in heaven. And to him, may my lips forever sing his praise: Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam

Friday, October 3, 2014

Within the Deep

You were mine and yet, I didn’t understand you.
When I looked upon you, I felt only fear and shame.
So, like a stone, I tossed you into the sea,
Deeper and deeper you sank, disappearing into the dark.



Over the years I would think of you.
Sometimes I could almost hear your desperate calls,
Echoing up through the murky depths
But, being afraid, I put up my walls


I went about my life, pretending you weren’t there.
I played my role and almost felt whole,
But inside I knew I could never be,
Not without you beside me.


Broken and tired I returned to that sea
To dive beneath the icy waves.
Down, down, down I went into the deep,
Until I heard you calling in my sleep.


Through the murky vale I heard your wail.
Desperate, I clawed my way to the bottom
And unlatched you from your prison
setting you free and pulling you up.


Onto the shore I dragged your frozen frame,
And with loving arms I embraced you once again.
Running my fingers across your frigid cheek,
I realize without you, I am just too weak.


So never more will I leave you alone,
To wallow in the deep like a star unshone.
Together we will shine true and bright,
Now that I’ve overcome my fright.


It doesn’t matter what they will say,
They’ll never understand us anyway.
Through the truth we will be set free,
to see just how beautiful we can really be.


-R.T. Edwins
(c) 2014

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

The Darkness Within


Oh, this darkness inside,

It gnashes its teeth and bares its claws.

 

It makes my heart weak

And subverts my will to its bidding.

 

Bending, bending, bending,

Until I’m nearly broken.

 

Oh where did this darkness come from,

That even the light of love falters to its blackness?

 

Alone I battle this tormentor,

Alone I fight to stay alive.

 

The cold knife shimmers in the dark,

Seeking ever, to meet its tender mark.

 

Can the darkness be overcome,

Or will this night, have my welcome?

-R.T. Edwins
(c) 2014