A couple of weeks ago an event pushed me to curiously search for the little stash of things I’ve kept which have been given to me by people from my past who’ve loved me, and I’ve loved back.
This poem was amongst the papers and pictures and when I read it (in two instalments through the tears) I knew I had to share it with you.
For a large portion of the years I lived with anorexia nervosa I was in a relationship.
This meant there was another person as close as a person can be who went through a lot of the confusion, exhaustion, and turmoil of what it means to live with anorexia nervosa with me.
In the painful time after we split up and where we were learning to go our separate ways after 7 years of going one way, he wrote me this poem.
I was just out of, yet another hospital discharge that had left me reeling, disoriented, disenchanted and desperate.
I couldn’t see through the pain, fear and shame that characterised those years.
I didn’t dare let myself get my hopes up for too long about any beauty or growing strength let alone the chance at a new life.
I was especially closed off from the idea that being imperfect was ok and yet in this poem he captured it all in a way I couldn’t have at that time. It would be another few years until I felt any form of tangible freedom was possible and it’s only reading his words now that they make full sense or perhaps more accurately sense in a completely different way to what they did back then.
I hope you appreciate the meaning within his words as I do now.
And more than this I hope you come to know that real and complete freedom from whatever has held you back, held you down and consumed you is possible.
Ember
Insidious and serpentine
Always managing to remain hidden from the outside;
Yet I see you skulking though my thoughts;
I hear you filling my mind with doubts that echo and echo and echo
I can feel your malicious will, your malevolent intent… and I know you are small.
Your spirit is hard and cruel; but it is weak and full of self doubt;
As every affliction, your tyranny is borne of frailty
because you know one day it will be you who is starved and guilty;
and you are scared;
You are so scared because you and I both know about the Ember;
Don’t try to deny it, we have seen it blaze;
It is always there, waiting to be fanned into flames;
Flames that will eclipse your darkness with light;
And from the ashes
Not a phoenix; no
Just a woman
Imperfect and beautiful.
~ Matt 2014
With my whole heart I hope this poem touched you in a way that was meaningful to you.
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie.
1 thought on “Ember”
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