Aug 24 Daily Entry -- Close

That night in Tampa, in the hotel, after the plane didn't take off, I got close to something. I don't know what it was, but I got close to it.

After I had visited my past, after I had sat catatonic in the airport, after I had babbled out my problems to the Uber driver, and gotten a complimentary water from the front desk, a doorway opened within me.

I cried and I pleaded for help and I sang my sorrow. And though I was alone, I knew someone heard me. Someones. They were listening.

There on a windswept inner landscape they listened as I told them it was more than I could bear. They asked me to bear it anyway.

That night they were so near to me, as if there in the room. They brought me vivid dreams, so real and beautiful that I cried out when I was ripped from them.

They followed me through that next day, though I can't say if they helped me or not. It was a dangerous day, so close to disaster.

They visited me again that night. They were so present. "We are proud of you," they said. And then they faded. The earth closed and the doorway shut. Dreams became ordinary. Life was manageable again.

I knew it was good to return to normal. The terror and despair was not something I could live with. But I missed their presence. Even in the abject misery that I was living in, I knew with clarity They were there, and They saw me, and They cared what happened to me.

When life returned to normal, They faded. I was safe and secure. My life was tolerable. But who really saw me? Without Them, I was unseen.