The Time Has Come

This day, she and I (ghost) are one and the same. Today's pain is shared. For we both know what has caused it. It is us.
The weakness is us. The failure is in us. For the words from long ago, "You would make anyone miserable", haunt us. How can we believe this? How can we not?
~letdown encumbrance albatross obstacle vexation onus hindrance burden... she. intimate with such labels... hears sees feels is nothing else~
Desperately, reaching out, only to shove away the hand, the love that is offered. Hearing new words, yet disbelieving, unaccepting... emotions at war. The lines between past and present, fact and fiction blur.
Hallowed or hated?
Blessing or bane?
Comfort or curse?
Solace or suffocation?
What are we? How are we to know?
Myself? I've long borne these labels. Hiding them. Protecting her from them. She, on the other hand, has become numb to them. I must stop. For she, trying to heal, to open her heart to love, must face the demons of rejection from her past. In facing these, the weight, the crushing blow may bury her.
"How could they care what I have to say?"
"How could anyone love me?"
"Never enough. Never will be."
She knows what she faces and is terrified. The struggle to believe. To believe in herself. Such love to offer. Such tenderness she longs to give. Yet, such fear to conquer, such darkness to illuminate.
Always~
~On an endless quest for beauty in places that offer no pain~
Now... must open the door to possible pain, must open her mind to beauty. Beauty beyond that of the whisper wind, of the brilliance of a fall leaf, of a solitary path through the woods.. to that of the human spirit, to the love of another.
How can she? I cannot help. I cannot protect her any longer. I ache for her, but that battle is now hers alone...