I feel an empty inside of myself and a sadness that I haven’t been able to shake for weeks. I don’t normally talk much or have physical contact with other people and I haven’t seen any of my friends in months and things feel strange.

I float around my world as only a thin mist of fog. There are four walls here and I’ve stared at each of them while waiting for this funk to pass.

I was in the process of collecting the pieces of me and re-establishing my center of self when I fucked around and suffered a back sliding. The choice I foolishly made caused me to re-open a wound that I thought was healed but wasn’t. 

Something in my world is really dying right now and it feels very heavy on my soul. I’m so vulnerable and I have no one to console me.

I attempt to sooth myself with what I have available but the drugs and alcohol don’t work this time.

I stare out the window and watch the branches release orange leaves; but what day is it? I’m not quite sure.

I feel guilty for the quiver that starts deep within in my center. I’ve ignored it and have used mind control to make the heat go away over and over and over again.

I’m burning from the inside out.

I’m skittish and emotional and my heart hurts for some form affection. I can’t talk to the people that I care about for too long because doing so makes me burst into tears. I try to cry silently and out of the sight of my daughter.

I’m hurting but can’t put the pain into an explanation and can only hope my short, sniffled words will assure my friends that I am ‘okay, just not doing too good right now’.

I text as much as I have the strength too.

I wrap my arms around my body each night as I lay in bed waiting for sleep to take me. I want so badly to be held.

I think back to when I was a toddler and how I would always fuss with my mother at bed time. I feared sleeping alone then, and I dislike sleeping alone now, but since I’ve been single even when I wasn’t, what choice do I have?

I chastise myself for wanting to feel wanted. I’ve gotten too used to being alone. I’ve allowed myself to be left alone and I don’t like it but I nearly forced myself to be used to it.

I mentally challenge my own desire to want to be held and caressed by a man. And when I say a man, I don’t mean by just any man, no, what I mean is that I need the type of man that brings a woman joy when he makes love to her.

I’m in need right now, in a bad way, I’m demon possessed and need an exorcism to work through this bullshit. I’ve been desecrated and disrespected, broken and abandoned by the last person I offered my heart too.

What I need right now is to be needed. I need to be reassured and bought back to Earth.

But why is that so hard to admit this to myself?

I miss the company of a man, often, but its not something I feel that is okay to say because when you are a Black women it’s not cool to admit that you want or need a Black man.

But I did and I do and I want him right now.

Right now, I want to be held and to be told that I’m beautiful.

Right now, I know what I need and I know who can give me what I need but I won’t reach out to him for fear that I will put something between us that I’m not sure has an appropriate use.

But truth be told, I want this man so bad that I’ve committed the sensation of his hands on my body to memory.

I can close my eyes and almost feel him.

Almost.

But there’s nothing like the real heat of his hands on me.

And the flavor of his lips on my own.

Or the sound of his voice speaking my name.

I have no business being caught up like this but I’m falling with him.

I fight this feeling but I am also drawn to it. Would he understand my need to get lost in my lover?

Will he understand that I need to feel him and I need to know that he feels for me and with me and through me?

He’s hard to catch up with but he’s always right there. I don’t call often, I’m trying to hide the yearning that both of us know I feel. I’m off balance and enjoying the ebb and flow of discovering a man that I know is very deep.

I pick up my cell phone and simply text, “Please come….I need you”.

Five seconds later he hits me back, “I’m on my way”,  and my soul stills…just a little.