Dance

"When you get the choice to sit it out or dance,

Dance."

~ LeeAnn Womack

When you slowly start to realize,

after a lifetime of fighting

just to have your opinions heard,

even if they're manipulated

and twisted

so they look like someone else's instead,

after a lifetime of rebuilding

and rediscovering yourself

beneath the ashes

of another attempt to exist

the way you're 'supposed to,'

after a lifetime

of toxic people

twisting the narrative

turning the spotlight on you

to hide the blood on their hands,

the handles and strings

they've been pulling you around by,

knowing you'll cower in the light,

after a lifetime of never understanding

things that have never made any sense

because everyone deserves better than this,

after a lifetime

of painting beautiful pictures

with words and music,

and having them buried

beneath 'try not to laugh' videos

and 'I'll pray for you' and

'It's all in your head' comments,

realizing that running away,

disappearing,

sticking my nose in book after book

until the food runs out

and the water runs dry,

would just be trading one cage for another.

Would just be seeing the world

I create in my mind through someone else's,

and not the world that actually exists.

"So I'll rise up,

rise like the day,

I'll rise up

I'll rise unafraid,

I'll rise up,

and I'll do it a thousand times again."

Andra got me through my divorce,

through 2 months in a freezing shelter

full of crying women

who had also had to live with

their own personal versions

of the pompous orange felon.

If they think they can do my job better:

let them.

If they think they can cost me everything material:

let them.

It's pretty sad when the thought

of losing everything material

and living on the streets

is more palatable than

continuing to try

to make sense out of the senseless.

The thing about humans is:

we can make a home anywhere.

We can build a life anywhere.

No matter how broken we are.

No matter how beaten down we get.

We rise.

We fight.

We dance.