Calling Out

I am screaming.  I am calling out.  Can you hear me?  I'm pouring out my soul.  Every last ounce of my being is laid out before you.  Can you see it?  And yet, I am pulling away.  Drawing back into myself...into a place where life is as it should be.

What is this place?  Where life is as it should be?  Nothing is familiar here.  There is a darkness that looms.  It is so thick that I can't see.  There is no visible light.  No path to find.  Others have been in this place, but their footsteps go in all different directions.

The darkness is getting thicker.  I am getting down on my hands and knees.  I'm crawling aimlessly, searching for something that is remotely familiar, but there is nothing.  There is pain coming from all around, but there is no one thing that I can say is causing it.

I don't want anyone in this place with me.  It's an awful place.  A place no one should ever have to enter. 

I call out again.  I am screaming.  Crying.  I am begging for you to hear me. 

And all at once I realize...you can't hear even the slightest sound of my cries...because they are all within my mind.  I keep retreating back into my mind because I don't want you to feel what I feel.  I don't feel as though I deserve to be loved.  Or to be held.

It's these moments...these moments of quiet distance...when I seem resistant to being close...that I need you to pull me close, no matter how much I struggle, put your hand through my hair and whisper that you love me.