I cling to you because I have to.
I hold on to your rope as I swing across the river,
Not knowing what I will land on.
PTSD is what happens when the rope stops in the middle,
When the swing is interrupted,
And there is nowhere but water to go to.
I cling to your rope because those who walked with me severed their connection,
Let go of their resilience,
And let unravel the lengths of the trust we had woven together.
I have tested the limits of how long one person can keep a grip
Before they lose the will to hang on or their bloodied hands lose their tenacity.
I slid farther down on those brown coils,
Knowing the fall was inevitable and still wishing that I could change it.
As I was pulled through the air by the force gravity,
When the wind called my name as it sucked me down to the Earth,
I reached higher,
Telling myself that I could reach up and still grab on to your rope.
I did not expect the way that my tired hands would feel your absence,
Or the way the blisters would still burn.
I realized in that last breath of oxygen before "wet" became the only adjective
That air really does have friction.
My feet brushed the river and were swept onward by the current,
And I stretched up farther,
Feeling hot tears burn the corner of my eyes.
I knew that I would not reach you before I was submerged.
The water was a shock to the system but not nearly as cold as I thought.
It was a new kind of chaos mixed with serenity and the breathlessness
Of never knowing when you can take your next breath.
Being swept onward is both the bliss of being propelled forward despite obstacles
And the terror of never being quite in control of your own destiny.
I find myself repeatedly glancing through the surface,
Trying to visualize your rope spanning the length of my fear and my sadness
To pull me above the flooding plain.
They say run to high ground,
But I can’t when the current is tearing apart what is left of my sanity.
I understand why they call it a riptide.
And I have never felt so utterly trapped by this town’s narrow banks,
Never felt so scattered across the river’s slippery floor,
And I wonder to myself how far I might have to ride the current before somebody pulls me out.
My lungs burn with the water I have inhaled,
Fogging my oxygen starved brain.
If I could only breathe in the clean air of rest and serenity for a moment,
I might be content to continue swimming.
During these times that I cannot breathe,
I imagine you throwing me a life preserver.
I swim towards it,
Trying to decide if the red lines mean courage or destruction.
It requires both for salvation,
But I cannot destroy the damaged parts of me in order to be saved.
I visualize in my head the way it might feel to inhale for more than one breath at a time,
What it might be like to grasp hold of your rope,
What it might be like to have something solid to hang on to.
I imagine you being the highway,
Which is like a river but with good music and breaks.
I imagine you taking me from this place, if just for a moment,
So that I can find the parts of me that the water washed away.
I imagine you and me laughing with the windows down.
I am smiling because I can feel the air rushing by,
And I know that you will take me on a journey to a place I want to go.
I know that you will guide me towards the things that can tell me about myself.
This is what I imagine to remind myself to cling to the rope,
And this is what I pray for to my undefined higher power.
This is what I want in exchange for the all the previous ropes that came untied.
I want you and I fastened together by seatbelts and a common purpose.
I want you to love me
Because I have never been taught what it feels like to know yourself well enough to feel loved.